With the water streaming from her, Bessie crept on to the rocky floor of the adit, and, panting and sobbing hysterically, she hastened to unwind the clinging covering from the helpless babe; but, in the darkness and confusion, it was some minutes before she got it free and held it to her dripping breast, kissing it, holding it to her lips to feel whether it breathed, forgetting her own terrible position as her thoughts all went to her little charge, and calling it by the most endearing names.
There was no response, no fretful cry, no shriek of pain or suffering; the little thing lay inert in her arms, and in her agony, as a fresh horror burst upon her, Bessie spoke to it angrily, and shook it.
“Cry!” she exclaimed. “Oh, if it would only cry! Baby, baby! Oh, heaven help me! it is dead—it is dead!”
She held it tightly to her breast for a moment or two as she knelt there, rocking herself to and fro. Then a thought struck her, and, changing her attitude to a sitting position, she held the little thing in her lap, wrung out the cloak as well as she could, and wrapped the child in it once more to try and give some warmth to its little fast-chilling limbs. As she did so, Bessie felt how dearly she had grown to love the little helpless thing whose mother’s illness had made it so dependent upon her.
“Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do?” she sobbed at last. “Will no one help me? Mr Trethick! Father! Help!”
“I might as well cry to the sea,” she moaned at last, as she held the baby more tightly to her breast. “Now let me try and think, or I shall go mad.”
She remained perfectly motionless, with her teeth set fast, for a few minutes, beating down the horror that threatened for the time to wreck her reason.
“I can think now,” she said. “He threw me down the old shaft, and I got into the adit, where I’m kneeling. If I try, how can I get out?”
She thought again, but she was so confused by her fall that it was some time before she could realise the fact that she might creep through this old passage hewn in the rock, and, if not stopped by a fall from the roof, come out upon the shore.
“But the winzes!” she said, with a shudder. “The winzes!”