The Killer Mine

by Innes Hammond

And then suddenly I realised that my hands were touching, not granite, but a softer rock. I got my torch out again. Yes, it was softer rock. That was why the floor had caved in. This was the same sort of rock that I had encountered shortly after Manack had led me across that sloping. Of course, this bad bit of country might extend over a wide area of the mine. But it was unlikely. The mine was predominantly granite. Soft stone would be only likely to fill in a fissure in the granite country.

I went on again. I came to a winze and peered down it. My torch barely showed me the outline of the walls. But a breath of cool air seemed to caress my face. I went down the winze and turned left into a narrower gallery, following the air. The walls were granite here and the roof was low. At the next bend the gallery finished in nothingness. I stood in the gap and looked out into what at first appeared to be a cavern. But I could just make out a wall of rock rising opposite me.

And then with a gasp of joy I saw a ledge running down to a fall of rock. The rock of the fall was soft and the water pouring over it had welded it into a solid mass. I slid down on to it. Surely this was the way Manack had led me? Surely I wouldn't be mistaken? There couldn't be two falls so identical. As I went down the gallery I became more and more convinced that I had stumbled on to the track by which I had come. The rock walls were soft. The roof was full of crevices and great cracks. Lumps of broken rock lay on the slime-covered floor.

And then I was suddenly at the sloping. I could hear the water pouring down the slope of the rocks to the sea far below. And right above me was that little pin-point of light that marked the top of a shaft.

The relief made me feel weak at the knees. I stood there for a moment, steadying myself and gazing up at that distant circle of light. What a difference it made to feel that I was in contact with the world above ground! It made even the darkness bearable.

Then I switched on the torch again and felt with my boot for the first of the iron staples. I found the wooden stump of the sloping timber. The staple was just above it, but I couldn't seem to find it. Perhaps in my excitement I was feeling in the wrong place. I took a firm grip at the handhold I had and felt farther out. But there was nothing, only the rotten stump of timber. I stepped back into the arch of the gallery then and leaned out with my torch glowing dimly against the rock above the stull.

There was no staple. Nor was there a staple above the next baulk of timber.

At first I thought this sloping must be different to the one I had crossed before. But there was the tiny pin-point of light high up above me and the slopping of the sea below. The rock formation was the same, too. I might be in the same cutting, but higher or lower than when I'd crossed before. Bui surely that fall of rock would not have been duplicated with the ledge running back and up to the narrow cleft that ran into granite country? I went back down the gallery to see. It was the same fall all right. When I returned to the slope I knell down and leaned out, shining my torch on to the place in the rock where I thought a staple should have been.

A ragged hole showed in a cleft. The iron of the staple had marked the rock and dirt was pressed back on either side. The staple had been knocked back and forth until it had fallen out.

It was then that my torch began to flicker. It hardly gave any light at all. I switched it off. Here, thank God, was not complete darkness. I could look up to that little circle of moonlight. Remote though it was, I derived some comfort from it.