I followed her. There were tools, too. I took two saws and an axe and with a coil of rope over my shoulders, ran back to the shaft. I lowered the tools on the end of the rope, but the shaft was at an angle and they kept on getting caught on ledges of rock and on the timber framework of the hoist. The men below started shouting and banging on the wooden cage of the gig. Then one of them began to scream. It was a horrible sound. It ceased suddenly and Dave's voice began to sing 'Jerusalem'. The sound of the lovely hymn floated up the shaft with a thousand distorting echoes so that it sounded like a choir singing in a cathedral.
Then suddenly the sound tailed off and vanished. A man's voice began to shout. It rose to a scream and then vanished in a gurgle as though he had been throttled. Leaning out, peering down the shaft, I saw the light had faded to a faint glow. Then it was suddenly snuffed out like a candle. I called, but there was no answering cry from the black depths of the shaft. I stood up then and closed the wire mesh gates. 'We'd better go up to the house now,' I said.
Kitty nodded. She seemed dazed with the horror of listening to those men being drowned by the rising water. I took her arm and we went out into the cool, salt wind.
The house was in darkness as we topped the rise. It was just a black shadow sprawling there in the blackness of the night. I felt the girl's body tense as she saw it. God, how she must loathe the place! Cripples' Ease! It was a name that suited it. It must have been a bitter and cynical landlord who called it that in the days when the miners from Botallack used it as a pub.
We came to the track and started across it to the front door of the house. And then I stopped. The door was wide open and a figure moved in the darkness of the passage. It vanished. We crossed the track, close to the desolate little garden that had once flowered under my mother's hands. A light showed in the passage. We both stopped then, rooted to the spot. It was old Manack. He held a lamp in his hands and was gazing out of the doorway towards us, his mouth open and a wild look of horror in his eyes.
I started to move forward. 'No,' he screamed. 'No.' He leapt back and the door swung to, blotting out the light. There was the rattle of a chain and then the bolts were shot home.
I turned to Kitty. 'Maybe he thought we were ghosts,' I said.
She was trembling. She looked like a ghost, her hair hanging in sodden strands over her pale face and the slip clinging like a white shroud to her body. 'Come on,' I said. 'We need dry clothes. Then we'll go.'
'Go?' she said. 'Where to?'
'Italy,' I said. 'Didn't you get my message? I asked Captain Manack to tell you I was leaving on the Arisaig tonight and to ask you whether you would come with me. Remember?'