I got to my feet and stepped across the yawning circle of the shaft. It needed an effort of will to go on. It had been a near thing and I was badly shaken. I'd never been in an old mine before. At the next bend I had to stop, for Manack was standing by the entrance to another narrow gallery, his head cocked on one side as though listening. I could see his eyes glittering in the light of his lamp which was reflected from the streaming walls. Again I had the feeling that he was waiting for me.
This feeling became an obsession. I started to wonder whether he had deliberately chosen a gallery that led across an old shaft. But it seemed ridiculous. Why should the man think any one was following him? With the sound of water all round he couldn't possibly have heard me falling.
He disappeared into the dark cleft. Again I was following his lamp as it led me like a will-o' — the-wisp along a twisting corridor in the rock. I went more carefully now, using my torch where possible, and where not, testing in front of me with my feet at each step.
The light ahead suddenly vanished completely as though it had been blown out. I waited a second in the darkness, listening. I could hear nothing but the sound of water and a distant whispering that might have been the sea or a gush of water. It was an eerie sensation, standing there in the complete darkness, listening for the sound of a footstep that I could not possibly hear.
At length I switched on my torch and went forward by the red gleam that shone between my fingers. A few steps farther on I caught quite definitely the sound of the sea. It was a whispering murmur, like the sound of wind in trees. The gallery opened and the floor of it vanished again, sloping in wet rock into an abyss of watery sound. A whole seam had been hewn out here, leaving a blank space between the rock walls. And high above me a little circle of moonlit sky showed. It was a long way away, like a pin-point of light. It was hard to believe that up there was a world of gorse and heather with the lights of farmsteads shining out. Maybe at this very moment the girl and boy I'd seen earlier in the day were leaning against the circular wall that marked the shaft, gazing out across the sea to the silver of the moon track. It didn't seem there could be any world, but this nightmare maze of tunnels creeping tortuously through dripping, slime-covered rock.
The floor of the gallery didn't vanish like it had done before. It continued across the sloping surface of the rock in a wooden platform. Most of the lagging had decayed and fallen away. But the bare stulls, driven into holes in the rock, remained. They were green and rotten with age. I tested the nearest with my boot, clinging to a hand-hold on the rock before trusting my full weight on it. The wood broke with a soft crunch and I could hear it bouncing down against the rock walls until the sound of it was drowned by the sound of the water.
It was no use trusting my weight to those wooden stumps. Yet Manack had gone ahead of me. I shone my torch across the gap. It was about twenty feet and on the other side there was the dark cleft of the gallery continuing. For a wild moment I thought I was what old Cornish miners would have called pisky-led. Suppose that light I had been following wasn't Manack's at all? The old stories of the Knockers and the Hand of Dorcas came to me. And then I bent down and shone my torch along the line of the stulls.
Iron staples had been driven into crevices in the rock. That was how Manack had got across. No goblins. No piskies. Just solid iron staples. They seemed to bring a breath of sanity into that dank place. I went across then, holding my torch in my mouth and clutching to hand-holds with my belly flat against the slimy rock as my feet sought and found each staple, testing it before venturing my full weight on it.
But I was very thankful when I was across that gap and in the gallery beyond. I went on then. There was no light ahead now. A piece of rock fell out of the wall as I steadied myself against it. I shone my torch on the roof. The rock was no longer granite. It was softer and there were great gaps in it and crevices. More and more often my feet stumbled against broken chunks of it. It was a piece of bad country. Shortly afterwards I came to a fall, blocking the gallery. It was an old fall and the rock was so soft that the water pouring over it had moulded it into one slimy mass. The roof was higher here and a ledge in the left-hand wall ran back and up to a dark cleft. I climbed this and instantly saw Manack's lamp shining on the walls. Again I had the feeling he had been waiting for me The rock was granite again now and so low that I was bent almost double. It led to a place where several galleries met. They were all of them little wider than clefts. I plunged on after Manack's light. I was scared now of losing touch with it. This part of the mine seemed honeycombed. Every now and then I was passing openings in the rock — cross-cuts, winzes, raises, galleries — all higgledy-piggledy, the way the ore had been ripped out of the mine. And they all looked so much alike.
Twice I took a wrong tunnel, turned back and found Manack's lamp still quite near to the point where I had mislaid my way. I became obsessed with this idea that he was waiting for me, that he wanted me to follow him. And every time I thought of having to find my own way back, I broke out into a sweat of fear. I tried desperately to retain in my mind a mental impression of each new gallery, each turn and twist. But there were so many of them. It was utterly impossible. Not only that. I had to concentrate on following the dim light of the lamp ahead. And whilst hurrying, at the same time to test the ground under each foot.