"In that case, it won't matter what I meet with," was the grimly significant reply; "but be careful, my good fellows, for I trust my life to you in this instance."
"If the tackle did break, thee'd soon be in jowds" (i.e., pieces), said Treherne, with a saturnine smile.
An oar and a stout pole, which two of the party carried, were laid across the mouth of the shaft.
A double-sheaved block was securely lashed to them; a strong rope was rove through the sheaves, and a species of cradle was formed for the adventurous Audley Trevelyan.
Long familiar with his native rocks, the latter when a bold boy, had clambered by Bodrigan's Leap at Portmellin,* when seeking for puffins' nests, and could look without shrinking from the steeps of Gurnard's Head, Tol Pedn Penwith, and the fantastic cliffs of Tintagel. He had been doted on by the miners, with whom he had often descended the deepest shafts, clad like themselves in flannel shirt and trousers. Thus attired, he had explored the vast levels and silent galleries by the dim light of a feeble candle, while, as Sybil told of Denzil, he could hear the roar of the Atlantic over his head, and the boulders dashed by its force on the bluffs of the Land's End; and thence beyond, in levels half a mile out at sea, where the passing ships glided like silent phantoms many a fathom far above where he wandered.
* So called from Sir Henry Bodrigan, who in the reign of Henry VII. sprang down the cliff, when flying from his neighbours Trevannion and Edgecumbe, who sought to capture or slay him. He was so little injured by the fall, that he reached a vessel sailing near the shore, and escaped to France. A mound, called the Castle Hill, and a farm-house, once part of a splendid mansion, are all that now remain of the abode of this fine old Cornish family.
Fearlessly he tied himself to the cradle which old Michael Treherne prepared for him; a lantern was hung at his neck, leaving his arms free, and now a dozen of strong and careful hands were laid on the ropes.
"Lower away, my lads," cried he, almost gaily; and with something like a gasp of anxiety in his throat, the General saw his young friend's face disappear as they lowered him into that awful orifice, the mouth of a shaft that went down a thousand feet and more.
"Steady, my booys!" cried old Treherne, in a species of glee.
Those who witnessed this descent were none of them, perhaps, very impressionable men; yet even to them, there was a gloomy horror in the idea of the vast profundity of the deserted mine, over which Trevelyan swung; and the wildness of the night, the storm at sea, the whistling and howling of the wind as it swept the rocky promontories, and rolled the waves in foam against them, were not without their due effects upon the mind.