“Hal—le—hal—le—lu—i—jah. Hal—le—hal—le—lu—i—jah.”
And so on slowly, every other syllable being accompanied by a stroke of the pick. Then, as the verse of the old-fashioned anthem being sung came to an end, there was a pause, the light seemed to be shifted, and the singer began again, but this time choosing Luther’s hymn as an accompaniment to the strokes of his pick.
“Here’s a gentleman come to see you, Amos! Creep out, my lad; we can’t get in to you.”
They had approached the singer till the ceiling was so low that it would have necessitated crawling to where Geoffrey could see by the light of a candle, stuck with a lump of clay against the rocky wall, a dark figure, half lying upon one side, vigorously working a sharp-pointed steel pickaxe, and chipping down fragments of glistening tin-grained quartz.
On hearing the summons, the figure gave itself a roll over and crawled slowly out, when in the short, lame, thick-set miner Geoffrey recognised the man with the piece of conger eel who had explained the fishing to him on the cliff.
“This is our Amos Pengelly,” said the manager, as if he were showing one of the curiosities of the mine; “works all week-days and sings psalms; goes out preaching on Sundays.”
“Well,” said Geoffrey, bluntly, “he might do worse.”
Amos nodded and looked curiously at the speaker, who went down on hands and knees to creep to where the miner had been at work; took down the candle from the wall, and examined the vein of glistening tin and the fragments that had been chipped off.
“Very poor stuff,” said Geoffrey, as he returned.
“Ah, we work out poorer stuff than that,” said the manager, “don’t we, Amos?”