Heart of the World

by H. Rider Haggard

After this experience, having nothing to live on and no friends, he was obliged to labour with his hands like a peon, and this he did in many ways. He broke horses, he herded cattle; once, even, for two months he sank so low—it makes me angry to write of it—as to be forced to wait upon the guests in an inn at Panama.

Thence he drifted to Nicaragua, and became mixed up in mining ventures, and when first I met him he had been a miner for ten years. Most of this time he spent managing a mine for an American, in the Chontales country, on the frontier of Honduras, where the fever is so bad that few white men can live. Here it was that he learned to speak Spanish and the Indian or Maya tongue. At length, after an attack of fever which nearly killed him, he left Honduras, and came to Mexico, where he accepted the management of this silver mine at Cumarvo. Hitherto it had been worked by a Mexican on behalf of its owners, who dismissed the rogue for stealing the ore and selling it.

This mine, though very rich, was hard to deal with profitably because of the water gathered in it, and all the months that the Señor Strickland had been its captain he was employed in driving a tunnel upwards from a lower level in the cliff, in order to drain the workings. Shortly after I came into his service this tunnel was finished, for now I was able to obtain plenty of labour, which before he had lacked, and we began to bring to bank ore running as high as two hundred ounces to the ton, so that for some months all went well.

Then of a sudden the ore body dipped straight downward, as though it had been bent when hot, and we followed it till the water increased so much that we were unable to carry it out, for in those days there were no steam pumps in Mexico, such as are now used for the drying of mines. First we tried to strike another vein, but without success; then we attempted to pierce a second drainage tunnel at a still lower level, but, after more than three months’ labour, the rock became so hard that we were obliged to abandon the task.

Now there was nothing to be done except to stop work at the tunnel, and report the matter by letter to the owners of the mine, employing ourselves meanwhile in the smelting of such ore as we had stacked. This, indeed, we needed to do in order to pay wages with the silver, seeing that after the first few months the owners ceased to remit us money.

One evening, on returning from the smelting-works to the house, I found the Señor Strickland, his chin resting on his hand and an unlighted cigar in his mouth, seated at a table, on which lay an open letter. All through our misfortunes and heavy labour he had never lost heart, or forgotten to smile and be merry, but now he looked sad as a man who has just buried his mother, and I asked him what evil thing had happened.

“Nothing particular, Ignatio,” he answered; “but listen here.” And he read the letter aloud.

It was from one of the owners of the mine, and this was the purport of it: that the shaft had become choked with water because of the incompetence and neglect of the señor; that they, the owners, hereby dismissed him summarily, refusing to pay him the salary due; and, lastly, that they held him responsible in his own person for such money as they had lost.

“Surely,” I cried in wrath, when he had finished, “this letter was written by a man without shame, and I pray that he may find his grave in the stomachs of hogs and vultures!” for I forgot myself in my indignation against those that could speak thus of the señor, who had slaved day and night in their service, giving himself no rest.

“Do not trouble, Ignatio,” he said, with a little smile, “it is the way of the world. I have failed, and must take the consequences. Had I succeeded, there would have been a different story. Still I think that, if ever I meet this man again, I will kick him for telling lies about me. Do you know, Ignatio, that, with the exception of one thousand dollars which remain to my credit in Mexico, I have spent all my own money that I had saved upon this mine, and of that thousand dollars, eight hundred are due to you for back pay, so, whatever trade I take to next, I shall not begin as a rich man.”