“That’s it; now you’re catching on fine,” he encouraged them, as they grasped some elemental principle of mining. He led them over a good deal of ground during these explanations. He piloted them with a rough carefulness which even included young Carrington. The boy’s being there at all amused him rather than otherwise. But Trevanion was guarding young Carrington with as wary an eye as he was watching Richards.
Mr. Wade decided that for the first time Richards was appearing to advantage.
Aboveground his crudities of manner might be repellent; here he was in his native element, shrewd, practical and zealous.
Mr. Wade began to feel that Trevanion the Taciturn was quite as likely to prove the villain of the piece.
To be sure, it appeared that they had embarked on a tremendous undertaking. Mr. Wade felt that the mine was larger than he had supposed, but, as Richards said, they might as well understand it thoroughly. On this Mr. Wade, with legs that threatened to drop from his hip sockets, plodded on.
Young Carrington turned white more than once, but shut his teeth and went on defiantly; and Hastings owned to himself that he was desperately tired. Trevanion was as unwearied as Cornish patience, but Richards was not trying to tired out Trevanion—physically.
It lacked five minutes of the noon hour when they saw the cage ahead of them, waiting at this, the seventh and lowest, working level of the mine.
Below, as Richard told them, was the development level, to which the cage did not descend.
“We can’t go down now,” he said, looking at his watch. “They’re just going to blast, and it will take an hour afterward for the smoke to clear. We’ll go up and have our dinner, and come down again this afternoon to finish up, eh?”
Lunch, up on the earth’s surface, with sunshine and first grade air. The words were as welcome to Mr. Wade as though an archangel had spoken them.