'Come Lucky. It's full of water. Adit's blocked. No outlet to the sea like there is in Wheal Garth.' 'Bit dangerous, isn't it — standing right over you like that?' He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. Maybe he got a kick out of working down there with a million tons of water towering above him in the flooded mine next door. But then he wasn't a miner. In this sort of country, honeycombed with old workings, how did he know what thickness of rock stood between him and the water in Come Lucky? The thought of it made my blood I run cold.
The cage came up and we got in. Inside, was a similar lever to the one outside. He threw it over and in a moment we began to sink slowly into the ground. At intervals black gaps showed in the circular walls of the shaft, marking the entrance to the old galleries. He stopped when we had gone fifty or sixty feet down. The gates opened on to a gallery rather larger than the others I had seen. 'What level is this?' I asked as we stepped out. 'It isn't really a level at all. We use it as a store room.' Our lamps shone on dry granite walls. A few yards down the gallery he stopped. 'This is where you'll live now.' He was pointing to the rock wall. 'Where?' I asked.
He peered down as though looking for a mark. Then he pressed against the rock. A slab pivoted inwards. I pressed against the lower slab. That pivoted too. 'An example of Slim's stone masonry,' he grinned. Inside was a rock chamber about twenty feet by twelve. There were three iron bedsteads, an Elsan lavatory, tin wash bowls, cases of tinned food. 'It's ventilated, and the slabs bolt on the inside,' he added.
He pivoted the slabs back into place and we went on. The gallery had various cross-cuts and winzes leading off it. He shone his lamp into a raise which rose steeply. That's the way to the surface,' he said. 'You can only go up in the gig if it's standing at the gallery.' Quite soon the gallery opened out into a big chamber. It was stacked with cases. 'This is the storeroom,' he said.
'Liquor?' I asked.
He pointed to the label on the nearest case and his teeth showed beneath his moustache in a grin. It was marked in Italian — Aranci. Oranges. 'Cognac,' he said. Then: 'Come on. We'll go down now. Friar and Slim will be bringing the remaining cases up from the adit.'
As we went down in the hoist I was very conscious of the growing sound of water. It was not only the water driving the hoist wheels. It was the steady, persistent trickle everywhere. The walls of the shaft glittered with it. Green water-weed lined the slimy, circular surface of the rock. In places water was actually gushing out from crevices. The wooden frame in which the gig ran was green. At the bottom we stepped out into a broad gallery down which ran an ankle-deep stream of water. The air was damp, and a cold draught brought with it the sound of the sea. 'This is the main adit,' Manack said as we sloshed down it towards the boom and suck of the sea. I could feel the sharp ridge of rails below the water. Men's voices came to us on the salt wind and a moment later the gleam of their lamps showed round a bend.
As they approached, Friar's voice called out, 'That you. Capting?'
'Yes,' Manack called back.
They were dragging an iron trolley. The sound of its wheels on the rails filled the gallery as they came up with us. 'Only a couple more cases,' Friar said. 'Per'aps you'll come up then and see to the sealing up of the stores.'