coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual
rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the
windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a
standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and
there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this
Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a
packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach,
curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for here
ventilation must have been very limited; and a large number of these
masses had been shot down by only three hands, as I found: for through
three hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, built across a large gugg,
projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, which must have glutted
themselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of disgust, having
swum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped from a
small clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, two
youths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridges
and provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at the
spur of suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and I
conjectured that here must be the mine-owner, director, manager, or
something of that sort, with his family. In another dipple-region, when
I had re-ascended to a higher level, I nearly fainted before I could
retire from the commencement of a region of after-damp, where there had
been an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, devastated, and
grotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other quarter, no
momentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the pumping-shaft
rope-ladder.

* * * * *

One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, called
Cornwall Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rocks
where Land's End dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue sea
between, and not a house in sight, save the chimney of some little
mill-like place peeping between the rocks inland--on that day I finished
what I may call my official search.

In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonely
house by the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by an
artist, of the bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. I
went to it, and found its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah,
shel