It was an ugly, low archway, fringed with ferns, and whose interior was glossy with what looked like green metallic tinsel, but proved to be a dark, glistening, wet lichen or moss.
The place, like all others of its kind, had an attraction for Geoffrey, and he went in a short distance to peer forward into the gloom of the narrow passage through the rock, and to listen to the dripping, echoing sounds of the falling water.
It was a part of the working of the old mine, and, doubtless, had been driven in first by the adventurers in search of a vein of tin or copper, after striking which they had sunk the perpendicular shaft on the cliff—the one by the path where he had had his encounter with Pengelly; and, by a little calculation, he reckoned that this adit or passage would be about a hundred yards long.
“I’ll have lights some day, and Pengelly and I will explore it.”
He went no farther, for there was always the danger of coming upon one of the minor shafts, or “winzes” as they were called, which are made for ventilating the mine, and joining the upper and lower galleries together. In this case the winzes would have been full of water, like the great shaft, up to the level of the adit, which would run off the surplus to the beach.
More by force of habit than for any particular reason, he threw a great stone in, to make a crashing noise, which went echoing and reverberating along the dripping passage, and then he went on.
“Poor lass, she would have had a poor chance,” he said, “if she had thrown herself down the old shaft up yonder. I don’t think I dare have dived down there. Nay,” he added, laughing, “I am sure I dare not.”
He went on fast now, noting the difficulties of the pathway up which he had helped Madge in the dark; and then, pausing half-way up to take breath, he uttered an exclamation.
“I shouldn’t have thought it possible,” he said. “Why, it seems almost madness now. Well, I got her there safely, and I have been thanked for my trouble.”
Old Prawle was hanging about, busy, as usual, with a fishing-line, as Geoffrey went down into the Cove, nodded, and tapped gently at the door.