I looked about me by the light of the dim candles and saw that the shaft was divided by a wood partition, one side being reserved for the ladders, the other for the pump to work and the stout rope to go up and down and draw the buckets, there being openings in the wood-work opposite each of the galleries.
“Well, you don’t say anything,” said my father.
“It’s very dark, sir,” replied Bigley.
“Yes,” said my father; “and it’s darker still farther in. What do you say, will you go on?”
“If Sep does.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, “I shall go;” not that I wanted to go any farther, but I felt that I could not draw back; though I would very gladly have been up in the bright sunshine instead of in the damp gloomy hole, shut in by ladders and wood-work, and with, the falling water seeming as if it was gathering force, and ready to rise as it does in a well.
But there was no time for thinking. My father was leading the way along the large square-shaped gallery, the candles casting curious shadows which glided along the walls, as if our company had been joined by some of the spirits of the mine.
As we went on, my father stopped from time to time to hold his light against the wall, for us to see where the lead ore glistened, and promised to be thick when he was disposed to work in another direction.
We could hear the water trickling still along a channel which had been cut on one side of the gallery, and every here and there great drops gathered on the wood-work that propped the roof, and fell with a plash making Bigley whisper to me:
“Suppose the sea was to break in.”