Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines

by R. M. Ballantyne

It were vain to attempt to tell all that this good man said to the unhappy miner, but certain it is that from that time forth David became himself again—and yet not himself. The desire to wrestle and fight and race returned in a new form. He began to wrestle with principalities and powers, to fight the good fight of faith, and to run the race set before him in the gospel. The old hearty smile and laugh and cheery disposition also returned, and the hopeful spirit, and so much of the old robust health and strength, that it seemed as if none of the evil effects of the ruptured blood-vessel remained. So David Trevarrow went, as of old, daily to the mine. It is true that riches did not flow in upon him any faster than before, but he did not mind that much, for he had discovered another mine, in which he toiled at nights after the day’s toil was over, and whence he extracted treasure of greater value than copper or tin, or even gold—treasure which he scattered in a Sabbath school with liberal hand, and found himself all the richer for his prodigality.

Occasionally, after prolonged labour in confined and bad air, a faint trace of the old complaint showed itself when he reached the top of the ladders, but he was not now depressed by that circumstance as he used to be. He was past his prime at the period of which we write, and a confirmed bachelor.

To return from this digression: David Trevarrow made up his mind, as we have said, to “go on,” and, being a man of resolute purpose, he went on; seized his hammer and chisel, and continued perseveringly to smite the flinty rock, surrounded by thick darkness, which was not dispelled but only rendered visible by the feeble light of the tallow candle that flared at his side.

Over his head rolled the billows of the Atlantic; the whistling wind howled among the wild cliffs of the Cornish coast, but they did not break the deep silence of the miner’s place of midnight toil. Heaven’s artillery was rending the sky, and causing the hearts of men to beat slow with awe. The great boulders ground the pebbles into sand as they crashed to and fro above him, but he heard them not—or if he did, the sound reached him as a deep-toned mysterious murmur, for, being in one of the low levels, with many fathoms of solid rock between him and the bottom of the superincumbent sea, he was beyond the reach of such disturbing influences, tremendous though they were.

The miner was making a final effort at his unproductive piece of rock, and had prolonged his toil far into the night.

Hour after hour he wrought almost without a moment’s respite, save for the purpose, now and then, of trimming his candle. When his right arm grew tired, he passed the hammer swiftly to his left hand, and, turning the borer with his right, continued to work with renewed vigour.

At last he paused, and looking over his shoulder called out— “Zackey, booy.”

The sound died away in a hollow echo through the retiring galleries of the mine, but there was no reply.

“Zackey, booy, are ’ee slaipin’?” he repeated.

A small reddish-coloured bundle, which lay in a recess close at hand, uncoiled itself like a hedgehog, and, yawning vociferously, sat up, revealing the fact that the bundle was a boy.