A circumstance occurred just then which surprised him not a little, and tended to fix this locality still more deeply on his memory. While he was standing in the level, waiting until the captain should relight and trim his much and oft bruised candle, the kibbles began their noisy motion. This was nothing new now, but at the same time the shout of distant voices was heard, as if the gnomes held revelry in their dreary vaults. They drew gradually nearer, and Oliver could distinguish laughter mingled with the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps.
“Foolish lads!” ejaculated Captain Dan with a smile, and an expression that proved he took some interest in the folly, whatever it might be.
“What is it?” inquired Oliver.
“They are racing to the kibble. Look and you shall see,” replied the other.
Just then a man who had outrun his comrades appeared at the place where the level joined the shaft, just opposite. Almost at the same moment the kibble appeared flying upwards. The miner leaped upon it, caught and clung to the chain as it passed, and shouted a defiant adieu to his less fortunate comrades, who arrived just in time to witness him disappear upwards in this rapid manner “to grass.”
“That’s the way the young ones risk their lives,” said the captain, shaking his head remonstratively; “if that young fellow had missed the kibble he would have been dashed to pieces at the bottom of the shaft.”
Again Captain Dan said “Foolish lads,” and shook his head so gravely that Oliver could not help regarding him with the respect due to a sedate, fatherly sort of man; but Oliver was young and unsophisticated, and did not know at the time that the captain had himself been noted in his youth as an extremely reckless and daring fellow, and that a considerable spice of the daring remained in him still!
Diverging to the right at this point Captain Dan led Oliver to an old part of the mine, where there were a couple of men opening up and extending one of the old levels. Their progress here was very different from what it had been. Evidently the former miners had not thought it worth their while to open up a wide passage for themselves, and Oliver found it necessary to twist his broad shoulders into all sorts of positions to get them through.
The first level they came to in this part was not more than three feet high at the entrance.
“A man can’t hold his head very high here, sir,” said his guide.