"Take care what you are at," cried Balfour, eagerly; "you may slip down and kill yourself, sliding along like that."
Solomon laughed contemptuously. "Never fear, Sir; I have had too many mischances with mines to fear them. I have fallen down worse places, and been shut up in others far deeper and darker than Wheal Danes, without food or candle, for a week, and yet lived through it. The shaft has not yet been dug, I reckon, as will prove—Oh, here's the torch."
He dragged from under the overhanging rim of the pit a piece of wood like a bludgeon, one end of which was smeared with pitch; and placing the lantern with its back to the wind, pushed the stick inside, which came out a torch, flaming and dropping flame.
"There's our corpse-candle!" cried Coe, triumphantly; "that would keep us without witnesses, even if any one were so bold as, in a night like this, to venture near Wheal Danes, to trespass on Tom Tiddler's ground, where we shall pick up the gold and the silver." There was a wild excitement, quite foreign to his habit, about this man, and he whirled the torch about his head in flaring circles.
"Keep your wits steady, if you please," observed Balfour, sternly.
"It is over now, Sir, and I am in the counting-house again," answered Solomon, submissively. "I felt a little exhilarated at the prospect of plucking a fruit that has been ripening for fifty years, that's all. This Wheal Danes is the very aloe of mines, and it is about to blossom for us only. You had better take the torch yourself; the lantern will serve for me; but just show a light here while I place the ladder."
Balfour held the blazing pine aloft, and disclosed the gaping mouth of the old pit, its margin wet with the rain, and its sheer sides slippery with the damps of ages.
"It would be easy enough to get down without this contrivance," observed Solomon, grimly, as he carefully adjusted the ladder, the foot of which was lost in gloom; "but it would take us some trouble to find our way back again without wings."
"In daylight, however, I dare say it looks easier," said Balfour, carelessly.
"It may look so, but it ain't. Nothing but a sea-gull ever goes in and out of Wheal Danes; even the bats keep there, where indeed they are snug and warm enough."