“I told you to mind your head,” said Captain Dan, relighting the candle; “you had better carry it in your hand in the levels, it will light your path better. Look out now—here is a winze.”
The captain pointed to a black yawning hole, about six or seven feet in diameter, which was bridged across by a single plank.
“How deep does it go?” asked the youth, holding up his candle and peering in; “I can’t see the bottom.”
“I dare say not,” said the captain, “for the bottom is ten fathoms down, at the next level.”
“And are all the winzes bridged with a single plank in this way?”
“Why, no, some of ’em have two or three planks, but they’re quite safe if you go steady.”
“And, pray, how many such winzes are there in the mine?” asked Oliver.
“Couldn’t say exactly, without thinkin’ a bit,” replied the captain; “but there are a great number of ’em—little short of a hundred, I should say—for we have a good many miles of levels in Botallack, which possesses an underground geography as carefully measured and mapped out as that of the surface.”
“And what would happen,” asked Oliver, with an expression of half-simulated anxiety, “if you were to fall down a winze and break your neck, and my candle were to get knocked or blown out, leaving me to find my way out of a labyrinth of levels pierced with holes sixty feet deep?”
“Well, it’s hard to say,” replied Captain Dan with much simplicity.