A beautiful sight down in this region was worth looking at, so I succumbed. Jansen lifted up the planks, told the men to cover us well up as soon as we had disappeared, in order to keep the ore from the upper shaft from tumbling on our heads, and then, diving down, politely requested me to follow. I had barely descended a few steps when the massive rafters and planks were thrown across overhead and thus all exit to the outer world was cut off. There was an oppressive sensation in being so completely isolated from the outside world—barred out, as it were, from the surface of the earth. Yet how many there are who spend half their lives in such a place for a pittance of wages which they squander in dissipation! Surely it is worth four dollars a day to work in these dismal holes.
Bracing my nerves with such thoughts as these, I scrambled down the rickety ladders till the last rung seemed to have disappeared. I probed about with a spare leg for a landing place, but could touch neither top, bottom nor sides. The ladder was apparently suspended in space like Mohammed’s coffin.
“Come on, sir,” cried the voice of Jansen far down below. “They’re going to blast.”
Pleasant, if not picturesque, to be hanging by two arms and one leg to a ladder, squirming about in search of a foothold, while somebody below was setting fire to a fuse with the design, no doubt, of blowing up the entire premises!
“Mr. Jansen,” said I, in a voice of unnatural calmness, while the big drops of agony stood on my brow, “there’s no difficulty in saying ‘Come on, sir!’ but to do it without an inch more of ladder or anything else that I can see, requires both time and reflection. How far do you expect me to drop?”
“Oh, don’t you let go, sir. Just hang on to that rope at the bottom of the ladder, and let yourself down.”
I hung on as directed and let myself down. It was plain sailing enough to one who knew the chart. The ladder, it seemed, had been broken by a blast of rocks; and now there was to be another blast. We retired into a convenient hole about ten or a dozen paces from the deposit of Hazard’s powder. The blast went off with a dead reverberation, causing a concussion in the air that affected one like a shock of galvanism; and then there was a diabolical smell of brimstone. Jansen was charmed at the result. A mass of the ledge was burst clean open. He grasped up the blackened fragments of quartz, licked them with his tongue, held them up to the candle, and constantly exclaimed: “There, sir, there! Isn’t it beautiful? Did you ever see anything like it?—pure gold, almost—here it is!—don’t you see it?”
I suppose I saw it; at all events I put some specimens in my pocket, and saw them afterward out in the pure sunlight, where the smoke was not so dense; and it is due to the great cause of truth to say that gold was there in glittering specks, as if shaken over it from a pepper-box.
Having concluded my examination of the mine, I took the bucket as a medium of exit, being fully satisfied with the ladders. About half-way up the shaft the iron swing or handle to which the rope was attached caught in one of the ladders. The rope stretched. I felt it harden and grow thin in my hands. The bucket began to tip over. It was pitch dark all around. Jansen was far below, coming up the ladder. Something seemed to be creaking, cracking, or giving way. I felt the rough, heavy sides of the bucket press against my legs. A terrible apprehension seized me that the gear was tangled and would presently snap. In the pitchy darkness and the confusion of the moment I could not conjecture what was the matter. I darted out my hands, seized the ladder and, jerking myself high out of the bucket, clambered up with the agility of an acrobat. Relieved of my weight, the iron catch came loose, and up came the bucket banging and thundering after me with a velocity that was perfectly frightful. Never was there such a subterranean chase, I verily believe, since the beginning of the world. To stop a single moment would be certain destruction, for the bucket was large, heavy and massively bound with iron, and the space in the shaft was not sufficient to admit of its passing without crushing me flat against the ladder.
But such a chase could not last long. I felt my strength give way at every lift. The distance was too great to admit the hope of escape by climbing. My only chance was to seize the rope above the bucket and hang on to it. This I did. It was a lucky thought—one of those thoughts that sometimes flash upon the mind like inspiration in a moment of peril. A few more revolutions of the “whim” brought me so near the surface that I could see the bucket only a few yards below my feet. The noise of the rope over the block above reminded me that I had better slip down a little to save my hands, which I did in good style, and was presently landed on the upper crust of the earth, all safe and sound, though somewhat dazzled by the light and rattled by my subterranean experiences.—From “Adventures in the Apache Country,” published by Harper & Brothers, New York, and used by their kind permission.