The gig was not there. He rang a bell. 'If nobody answers then it means that the gig's not in use,' he told me. 'If you're using it and somebody rings, you must answer its ring. There's a bell-push inside the gig.' There was no answer to his ring and he pulled over a large lever. Deep down the shaft I heard the sound of water and an instant later the clatter of the gig coming up. 'It's a pretty rickety contraption,' he said. 'Worked by a water wheel. Push the lever over that way and the gig goes down, this way and it comes up. All very Heath Robinson. But it works. My father won't use it. Prefers the ladders. The gig's slow, but it's got plenty of power, and that's what we need for the stuff we have to bring up in it.'
'Where do you get the water to drive it?' I asked.
'Come Lucky. It's full of water. Adit's blocked. No outlet to the sea like there is in Wheal Garth.' 'Bit dangerous, isn't it — standing right over you like that?' He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. Maybe he got a kick out of working down there with a million tons of water towering above him in the flooded mine next door. But then he wasn't a miner. In this sort of country, honeycombed with old workings, how did he know what thickness of rock stood between him and the water in Come Lucky? The thought of it made my blood I run cold.
The cage came up and we got in. Inside, was a similar lever to the one outside. He threw it over and in a moment we began to sink slowly into the ground. At intervals black gaps showed in the circular walls of the shaft, marking the entrance to the old galleries. He stopped when we had gone fifty or sixty feet down. The gates opened on to a gallery rather larger than the others I had seen. 'What level is this?' I asked as we stepped out. 'It isn't really a level at all. We use it as a store room.' Our lamps shone on dry granite walls. A few yards down the gallery he stopped. 'This is where you'll live now.' He was pointing to the rock wall. 'Where?' I asked.
He peered down as though looking for a mark. Then he pressed against the rock. A slab pivoted inwards. I pressed against the lower slab. That pivoted too. 'An example of Slim's stone masonry,' he grinned. Inside was a rock chamber about twenty feet by twelve. There were three iron bedsteads, an Elsan lavatory, tin wash bowls, cases of tinned food. 'It's ventilated, and the slabs bolt on the inside,' he added.
He pivoted the slabs back into place and we went on. The gallery had various cross-cuts and winzes leading off it. He shone his lamp into a raise which rose steeply. That's the way to the surface,' he said. 'You can only go up in the gig if it's standing at the gallery.' Quite soon the gallery opened out into a big chamber. It was stacked with cases. 'This is the storeroom,' he said.
'Liquor?' I asked.
He pointed to the label on the nearest case and his teeth showed beneath his moustache in a grin. It was marked in Italian — Aranci. Oranges. 'Cognac,' he said. Then: 'Come on. We'll go down now. Friar and Slim will be bringing the remaining cases up from the adit.'
As we went down in the hoist I was very conscious of the growing sound of water. It was not only the water driving the hoist wheels. It was the steady, persistent trickle everywhere. The walls of the shaft glittered with it. Green water-weed lined the slimy, circular surface of the rock. In places water was actually gushing out from crevices. The wooden frame in which the gig ran was green. At the bottom we stepped out into a broad gallery down which ran an ankle-deep stream of water. The air was damp, and a cold draught brought with it the sound of the sea. 'This is the main adit,' Manack said as we sloshed down it towards the boom and suck of the sea. I could feel the sharp ridge of rails below the water. Men's voices came to us on the salt wind and a moment later the gleam of their lamps showed round a bend.
As they approached, Friar's voice called out, 'That you. Capting?'
'Yes,' Manack called back.
They were dragging an iron trolley. The sound of its wheels on the rails filled the gallery as they came up with us. 'Only a couple more cases,' Friar said. 'Per'aps you'll come up then and see to the sealing up of the stores.'
'I'm just taking Pryce down to the end of the Mermaid.' Manack answered, 'I'll be right back.'
'Okay. We'll have the other two cases up by then.'
We stood aside to let the trolley with its load of two cases pass The sound of it dwindled in a hollow rumble as the light of their lamps disappeared round a bend.
The sound of the sea became louder as we descended the sloping tunnel. The dank, salt-laden air grew colder. Round another bend we came suddenly on a patch of daylight — a cold, grey light that was barely strong enough to reveal the black, slime-streaked walls. 'One of the old shafts,' Manack said as we paused, looking up a sloping cleft in the wet rock. Green, half-rotten ladders were pegged to the rock, snaking up through the gloom to the bright light that filtered down from above. The rock cleft sloped so many ways that it was impossible to see the top. 'This is the way my father comes into the mine. Sometimes he uses the gig, but not often. Personally, I wouldn't trust myself on those ladders. They've been there since before the war. The shaft is part of the really early workings of the mine. It's not shown on any of the plans and was only discovered after — after a nasty accident.'
'You mean when Mrs Manack was killed? Was this the shaft?'
He looked at me quickly. His face looked pale in the grey half-light. 'Yes,' he said. 'You know about that?'
I nodded. 'Friar told me,' I said.
'Friar talks too much.' He stared up the shaft.'She was my stepmother. I only met her once. A pretty little woman. They had to put ladders down to get her up. Her body was about halfway down. My father explored and opened up the rest of the shaft later. You wouldn't think a man would prefer the shaft where his wife was killed to the hoist, would you now? It's almost as though he dares the shaft to kill him, too.' He gave a harsh laugh and turned away.
As I followed him down towards the growing sound of the sea, I said, 'Your father is very interested in the mine, isn't he?'
'Interested! He's mad about it. He eats, sleeps and dreams Wheal Garth. He thinks of nothing else. Worked in it when he was a kid. Swore he'd own it one day. Now he does, every single share — except what the girl, Kitty, owns. That must have riled him.' He laughed. The sound of it echoed against the walls of the adit. 'The woman who was killed in that shaft was her mother. A few weeks before her death, Harriet Manack made a fresh will, leaving everything she possessed, which was mostly worthless holdings in Wheal Garth, to Kitty — or that's the story. My father never talks about it.'
I said, 'Your mother had holdings in Wheal Garth, didn't she?'
The beam of his lamp shone on me. 'How did you know that?' he asked.
'I didn't,' I answered. 'I was just guessing. A man whose sole interest is the acquisition of a mine might be expected to marry into a family that had holdings.'
'Yes,' he said. 'You're quite right. My mother's father was one of the original adventurers. He had quite a big shareholding.'
I hesitated. A question was on the tip of my tongue. But it stuck in my throat. It was too direct. I twisted it round another way. 'I suppose you hold an interest in Wheal Garth — from your mother?'
'No,' he answered. 'She left it all to the old man.' Again that harsh laugh. 'She was hardly likely to leave it to me. At the age of fourteen I ran away from school. Went to South Africa. Worked as a mechanic in a garage, opened up a tractor business, selling and delivering to Rhodesian farms, did a bit of engineering. I was a sad disappointment to them. They both wanted me to become a miner, you see. I don't suppose I'd written to my mother for a year at the time she died. And I was the only child. She died in 1924, just after I'd got to South Africa. I was fifteen then. After six years in South Africa I went to South America, trading in machinery along the western seaboard. Then I went to Mexico, fooling around in oil. I was in Persia, trying to outsmart the Arabs, when war broke out.'