The Killer Mine

by Innes Hammond

So this was the Cornish tin coast. There was a lump in my throat. Since I was old enough to understand, my father had talked to me of little else but this strip of Cornwall where he had lived and worked until he married. And I was actually standing on Carn Kenidjack — the Hooting Carn. This was where the two tinners were supposed to have watched the Devil's wrestling match.

Below me three tracks sprouted from the heather and thrust dirty-brown fingers down to the stone-tilted roofs of the miners' cottages on the coast road. I got my bearings from my map. That was St. Just, away to the left there, and Botallack, and Boscaswell where my father had been born, and Trewellard. Yes, and there was Pendeen — I could just see the white pimple of the lighthouse peeping above the rim of the coast. A little to the left the two shafts of Wheal Geevor showed black scaffolds against the copper sea. And that waste of broken rock down by the cliff edge, that was Levant.

I knew the line of the coast by heart as though I had spent my boyhood exploring it. I needed no map to tell me which was Cape Cornwall and Kenidjack Castle. I had felt a sudden excitement as I found Botallack Head and recognised, in the scored cliff-top behind it, the surface workings of the Botallack mine. I could even pick out the various shafts, getting my bearings from the broken ruins of the old engine houses that were the only ordered things in that chaos of tumbled stone. The mine was derelict now, but in my father's day it had been a great copper producer. He had taken me through it gallery by gallery, describing each level in the minutest detail, so that looking down on it from Cam Kenidjack I could almost see the outline of the underground workings just as my father had so often traced it for me on the dusty floor of our hut.

I thought of Kalgoorlie and the seething mine valleys of the Rockies and the big new concrete buildings that housed their plants. And they seemed so recent and characterless beside this little strip of torn-up coast where tin had been streamed by men who had left traces of their rude hut circles and megalithic burial chambers up here on these desolate moors. These were the mines that had given the Ancient Britons the ore to barter with for ornaments and silks with Greek merchants from Marseilles way back in the Bronze Age… And only fifty years ago the whole area had seethed with activity, as thousands of men worked beneath the rugged cliffs and even out under the sea. And now it was all derelict. Just that one mine — Wheal Geevor — still working.

The ruddy glow of the sun began to fade out of the heather. The great red ball was sinking behind the gathering storm clouds.

I watched until the last red slice of it disappeared. And when I looked down the slope of the hillside to the coast again, the sea had become a dark abyss and the worked cliff-tops and broken hillside were gloomy and unfriendly. The heather was like burnt stubble now and the rocks took on weird shapes in the gathering dusk. The country seemed to shiver in the cold wind and withdraw into its dark past.

I went on again then, making for the nearest of the tracks that led down into Botallack. But I went slowly, almost reluctantly. Now that I was face to face with the future I felt ill at ease again. I tried to pretend that if I didn't like the job I could go elsewhere. But back of my mind there lurked a fear that I should not be allowed to do that. All sense of excitement at returning to my father's own country was drained out of me. Perhaps it was because all warmth had left the country with the setting of the sun. It was bleak and bare — and depressing. Or perhaps I had a sense of premonition.

By the time I had reached the coast road that runs from St. Ives to the Land's End it was almost dark. The clouds mat had fringed the horizon when the sun set were now a black mass piled up half across the sky. Distant lightning forked in jagged streaks, providing the only indication where cloud ended and sea began. After each flash, the far-off roll of thunder sounded above the dull roar of the sea and the moan of the wind in the telegraph wires. To the north, the revolving light of Pendeen Watch swung in a white glare through the dark of the gathering storm.

Many of the cottages must have disappeared since my father's day, for Botallack was now little more than an inn and a few farm buildings. There was not a soul on the road. But from the lighted doorway of the inn came the sound of an accordion and men's voices. They were singing The Old Grey Duck.' I hadn't heard that old song since my father had died. It had been a great favourite with him when he was drunk. I hesitated. I did not want to face the curious gaze of the inhabitants of this tiny village. Yet I had to find out where Captain Manack lived and I needed a drink to steady myself. I needed time to think too.

There were about half a dozen men seated in the bar when I went in. Two were playing Cornish skittles; the rest were grouped around the accordion player. He was a big, burly man with short, grizzled hair and he sang with an old clay pipe clamped between toothless gums. The singing was punctuated by the clatter of the wooden pins as the ball on its string swung through their ranks. A big fire blazed in the grate and the place looked warm and cheerful. I crossed over to the bar and ordered a pint of beer, very conscious of the fact that the singing had almost ceased as they watched me. Samples of ore stood among the bottles and glasses that twinkled at their reflections in the mirror that backed the shelves. There was a leaden chunk of mother tin and a big lump of iron pyrites that glittered brighter man gold in the strong light. The landlord was friendly enough, and I began talking to him about the mining industry. He was short and wide in the shoulders. Every now and then he gave a little rasping cough and his skin had the grey pallor of silicosis.