u 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.

"Go on," said Oliver, pursing his lips with a grim smile, as he followed
his leader across the narrow bridge.

Captain Dan continued his progress until he reached the pump-shaft, the
proximity of which was audibly announced by the slow ascent and descent
of a great wooden beam, which was styled the "pump-rod." Alongside, and
almost touching it, for space was valuable there, and had to be
economised, was the iron pipe--nearly a foot in diameter--which conveyed
the water from the mine to the "Adit level."

The slow-heaving plunge, of about ten feet in extent, and the sough or
sigh of the great beam, with the accompanying gurgle of water in the
huge pipe, were sounds that seemed horribly appropriate to the
subterranean scene. One could have imagined the mine to be a living
giant in the last throes of death by drowning. But these were only one
half of the peculiarities of the place. On the other side of the shaft
an arrangement of beams and partially broken boards formed the
traversing "ways" or tube, up which were drawn the kibbles--these last
being large iron buckets used for lifting ore to the surface.

In the present day, machinery being more perfect, the ancient kibble has
been to some extent supplanted by skips, or small trucks with wheels (in
some cases iron boxes with guiding-rods), which are drawn up smoothly,
and without much tear and wear; but in the rough times of which we
write, the sturdy kibble used to go rattling up the shaft with deafening
noise, dinting its thick sides, and travelling with a jovial
free-and-easy swing that must have added considerably to the debit side
of the account of working expenses. Between the pump-rod and the
kibble-way there was just room for the ladders upon which Captain Dan,
followed by Oliver, now stepped. This shaft was very wet, water dropped
and spirted about in fine spray everywhere, and the rounds of the
ladders were wet and greasy with much-squeezed slime.

It would seem as though the kibbles had known that a stranger was about
to descend and had waited for him, for no sooner did Oliver get on the
ladder than they began to move--the one to ascend full, and the other to
descend empty.

"What's that?" excla