“Mr. Jansen, upon the whole I think I’d rather go down by the ladder, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Certainly, sir, suit yourself; only the ladder’s sort o’ broke in spots, and you’ll find it a tolerably hard climb down; how-so-ever, I’ll go ahead and sing out when I come to bad places.”
With this the Norwegian disappeared. I looked down after him. The shaft was about four feet square; rough, black and dismal, with a small, flickering light, apparently a thousand feet below, making the darkness visible. It was almost perpendicular; the ladders stood against the near side, perched on ledges or hanging together by means of chafed and ragged-looking ropes. I regretted that I had not taken Jansen’s advice and committed myself to the bucket; but it was now too late. With a hurried glance at the bright world around me, a thought of home and unhappy conditions of widows and orphans, as a general thing, I seized the rungs of the ladder and took the irrevocable dive. Down I crept, rung after rung, ladder after ladder, in the black darkness, with the solid walls of rock pressing the air close around me. Sometimes I heard the incoherent muttering of voices below, but could make nothing of them. Perhaps Jansen was warning me of breaks in the ladder; perhaps his voice was split up by the rocks and sounded like many voices; or it might be there were gnomes whisking about in the dark depths below. Down and still down I crept, slower and slower, for I was getting tired, and I fancied there might be poisonous gases in the air. When I had reached the depth of a thousand feet, as it seemed, but about a hundred and forty as it was in reality, the thought occurred to me that I was beginning to get alarmed. In truth I was shaking like a man with the ague. Suppose I should become nervous and lose my hold on the ladder? The very idea was enough to make me shaky. There was an indefinite extent of shaft underneath, black, narrow and scraggy, with a solid base of rock at the bottom. I did not wonder that it caused a buzzing of the brain to fall fifteen feet and light on top of the head. My brain was buzzing already, and I had not fallen yet. But the prospect to that effect was getting better and better every moment, for I was now quite out of breath, and had to stop and cling around the ladder to avoid falling. The longer I stood this way the more certain it became that I should lose my balance and topple over. With a desperate effort I proceeded, step after step, clinging desperately to the frail wood-work as the drowning man clings to a straw, gasping for breath, the cold sweat streaming down my face, and my jaws chattering audibly. The breaks in the ladder were getting fearfully common. Sometimes I found two rungs gone, sometimes six or seven, and then I had to slide down by the sides till my feet found a resting-place on another rung or some casual ledge of rock. To Jansen, or the miners who worked down in the shaft every day, all of this, of course, was mere pastime. They knew every break and resting-place; and besides, familiarity with any particular kind of danger blunts the sense of it. I am confident that I could make the same trip now without experiencing any unpleasant sensation. By good fortune I at length reached the bottom of the shaft, where I found my Norwegian friend and some three or four workmen quietly awaiting my arrival. A bucket of ore, containing some five or six hundred pounds, was ready to be hoisted up. It was very nice-looking ore, and very rich ore, as Jansen assured me; but what did I care about ore till I got the breath back again into my body?
“Stand from under, sir,” said Jansen, dodging into a hole in the rocks; “a chunk of ore might fall out, or the bucket might give way.”
Stand from under? Where in the name of sense was a man to stand in such a hole as this, not more than six or eight feet square at the base, with a few dark chasms in the neighborhood through which it was quite possible to be precipitated into the infernal regions? However, I stood as close to the wall as was possible without backing clean into it. The bucket of ore having gone up out of sight, I was now introduced to the ledge upon which the men were at work. It was about four feet thick, clearly defined, and apparently rich in the precious metals. In some specimens which I took out myself gold was visible to the naked eye. The indications of silver were also well marked. This was at a depth of a hundred and seventy-five feet. At the bottom of this shaft there was a loose flooring of rafters and planks.
“If you like,” said Jansen, “we’ll go down here and take a look at the lower drift. They’ve just struck the ledge about forty feet below.”
“Are the ladders as good as those above, Mr. Jansen?” I inquired.
“Oh, yes, sir; they’re all good; some of the lower ones may be busted a little with the blastin’; but there’s two men down there. Guess they got down somehow.”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Jansen, I’m not curious about the lower drift. You can show me some specimens of the ore, and that will be quite satisfactory.”
“Yes, sir, but I’d like you to see the vein where the drift strikes it. It’s really beautiful.”