'Yep,' Friar answered. 'Mind the cable,' he said to me as we went forward.
The cable was taut at about waist height. A dark bulk showed in silhouette against the light of Slim's lamp. It was a flat platform of wood about six feet wide, its wheels resting on the rock ledges on either side of the gallery. As we drew nearer I saw there was an air compressor standing just in front of it. Two planks were up-ended against the strange carriage. 'Is this the top of the Mermaid gallery?' I asked Friar.
'That's right, mate,' he answered. 'An we're goin' ter ride a't ter work in style. This 'ere is known as the Basket.'
'Why the Basket?' I asked.
'Lumme,' he said. 'You wouldn't need ter ask that question if you'd worked as long as Slim and me 'as ter get the thing workin'. A bleedin' year we bin cuttin' them ledges. An' you'd better go careful when you blast yer way up to the sea bed. 'Cos if this 'ere contraption don't work when the Mermaid's been flooded me an' Slim'll 'ave a word ter say ter you. Won't we, Slim?'
'You know my view,' Slim's voice answered.
'Bleedin' pessimist, you are,' Friar said. 'Fifty quid's the bet. An' don't you forget it.' He turned to me. 'Me an' Slim's got a bet of fifty quid on the Basket. 'E says the Capting's scheme won't work when the sea's in the Mermaid. I says it will. The Capting's no fool, Slim. You don't know 'im as well as I do 'E's an engineer, an' don't yer forget it.'
'Even engineers get hoist with their own petard.'
'Wot the 'ell are you talkin' aba't? Wot's a petard?'
'A mine,' Slim answered with a sardonic laugh. 'Come on. he added, 'let's get the compressor loaded on to the Basket Levering with crowbars we manoeuvred the compressor on to the platform of the carriage. 'Better check that we got every fink on that you need,' Friar suggested. I flashed my lamp over the platform. There was a pneumatic drill, steel drills, air pipe, drill-holder, picks and shovels.
'What about charges?' I asked.
'The Capting 'as 'em,' was the reply.
'Okay,' I said.
'Right. Up you get, then.' I climbed up beside the compressor 'Any more for the Skylark.' Friar grinned and clambered up behind me. Slim went up the gallery to the bottom of the shaft He threw over a lever. There was the sound of a gear engaging and I sensed the cable ahead of us sucking out of the mud. An instant later I was nearly jerked off my feet as the contraption began to move forward. The compressor swayed as the rubber-tyred wheels moved over the uneven surfaces of the ledges. The sprung bearings at the sides grated and clattered against the rock sides of the gallery. 'It's worked by the same wheel wot runs the hoist,' Friar shouted in my ear.
I nodded. It was impossible to talk. The gallery sloped steadily downwards, opening out before us to the extent of the beam of our lamps. The carriage swayed and clattered And yet, considering that it was not on rails, but on rock ledges, it ran remarkably smoothly. The gallery began to level out. Water splashed on my hands and face from the roof and lay in dark pools that reflected the light of our lamps.
'We're under the sea now,' Friar yelled in my ear.
I nodded. But I wasn't thinking any more about the weight of water over our heads. I was becoming accustomed to the mine and my thoughts were engrossed in the ingenuity of Captain Manack's idea. When he had first told me that he was letting the sea into the gallery in order to provide an undersea route for contraband to be brought into the mine, I must admit I thought the whole idea quite fantastic. But now I was beginning to realise that it wasn't quite so fantastic as it seemed, only rather unorthodox.
The use of caves for smuggling, whether natural or hewn by hand, is as old as the hills. It had not surprised me, therefore, to find the underground workings of an old mine being used in this way. But an undersea entrance, with the contraband dropped over the side on wire slides on to an underwater truck — that was an entirely novel idea. True, the whole contraption, with its hawser-drawn carriage and rock ledge rails was crude. But then so much of mining is crude.
The carriage slowed up as the scaffolding at the end of the gallery came into view. It stopped directly beneath the shaft that had been begun in the roof. 'Well, wotjer fink of it, mate?' Friar asked in the sudden silence.
'Okay,' I said.
'Reck'n it'll work?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I think it will.'
He nodded and his cheeks cracked in a grin. 'It'd ruddy better,' he said. 'More'n a year we bin cuttin' they ledges. An' just over twenty-three 'undred kerb stones we made outa the rock we cut. So for Gawd's sake be careful when yer blast through to the sea. I got fifty pa'nd on it.'
'I will,' I said. I was looking up at the dark hole that showed between the scaffolding. I think at that moment I had forgotten everything else but the job of breaking through to the sea bed as neatly as possible. It's a ticklish job blasting through to what Cornish miners call the house of water. I hadn't done it for a long time, not since I was in the Rockies — in the Coolgardie fields I'd always been working deep. The job only happens in hilly country. Your mine has been developed to the limit of the capacity of the pumps to remove the water. When you reach that limit you have to consider some alternative means of de-watering. If the mine is on the side of a mountain, as so many of the mines in the Rockies are, then the next thing is to drive an adit from the nearest valley up under the mine to act as a drain for the water that is preventing deeper development. It's quite a straightforward job, provided there's no underground river or reservoir of water — that's what makes it dangerous. You probe ahead with a long drill. And sometimes when you reach the house of water and the drill comes out with a gush of water pouring from the drill hole, the whole face of the adit collapses, drowning the miners. There'd been some nasty accidents like that at mines my father and I had worked in. But it had never happened to me.
In this particular case, drilling up to the sea bed, it was less dangerous in one respect — Manack had said he could give me accurate figures for the amount of country we had to blast through. On the other hand, the weight of water was likely to be much greater than one would ordinarily encounter. I stood there for quite a time, gazing up into the gaping hole and considering the problem.
'Come on, mate,' Friar said at length. 'Let's get crackin'.'
'Okay,' I said.
We removed the tools, fitted the air pipe to the compressor and got the drill up to the platform of the scaffolding. Friar then went down to the very end of the gallery where the giant block and tackle was fixed that held the hawser, pulled a rock out of the wall and lifted the receiver of a field telephone. He wound the handle and then said: 'Slim? Okay — yes, she's workin'. Pull the Basket back about four yards, will yer?' An instant later the hawser at the rear of the carriage drew taut and the whole thing, complete with compressor, backed away from under the scaffolding. 'Yes, that's fine,' Friar said as the carriage stopped. He replaced the receiver and climbed up on to the platform beside me, 'On'y fing we ain' got laid on da'n 'ere is room service.' He peered up at the shaft above our heads. 'Wot aba't when the ruddy sea comes in?' he said. 'It's the only fing as far as I can see that may gum the 'ole works.'
'You mean if too much rock comes in and blocks the carriage way?' I asked.
He nodded.
'That's my job,' I said. 'We'll keep to light blasts, clearing the rock after each blast, as you've been doing up to now. In the end there'll be a thin crust of rock between us and the sea. If the rock's sound it'll be all right.'
'An' if it ain't?'
'You won't be around to pay Slim the fifty quid you'll owe him,' I said.
'Gawd!' he breathed, and I could see his face was a shade paler. He wasn't a miner and I don't think he enjoyed working underground, anyway. But give him his due — he wasn't a coward. Only at the very end did he let his fear get the better of him.