part, he would hear only a tap-tapping, no louder than that of a
woodpecker, for the sound would come from a great distance off through
the solid mountain rock.

The work was hard at best, for it is very warm underground; but it was
not particularly unpleasant, and some of the miners, when they wanted
to earn a little more money for a particular purpose, would stop behind
the rest and work all night. But you could not tell night from day
down there, except from feeling tired and sleepy; for no light of the
sun ever came into those gloomy regions. Some who had thus remained
behind during the night, although certain there were none of their
companions at work, would declare the next morning that they heard,
every time they halted for a moment to take breath, a tap-tapping all
about them, as if the mountain were then more full of miners than ever
it was during the day; and some in consequence would never stay
overnight, for all knew those were the sounds of the goblins. They
worked only at night, for the miners' night was the goblins' day.
Indeed, the greater number of the miners were afraid of the goblins;
for there were strange stories well known amongst them of the treatment
some had received whom the goblins had surprised at their work during
the night. The more courageous of them, however, amongst them Peter
Peterson and Curdie, who in this took after his father, had stayed in
the mine all night again and again, and although they had several times
encountered a few stray goblins, had never yet failed in driving them
away. As I have indicated already, the chief defence against them was
verse, for they hated verse of every kind, and some kinds they could
not endure at all. I suspect they could not make any themselves, and
that was why they disliked it so much. At all events, those who were
most afraid of them were those who could neither make verses themselves
nor remember the verses that other people made for them; while those
who were never afraid were those who could make verses for themselves;
for although there were certain old rhymes which were very effectual,
yet it was well known that a new rhyme, if of the right sort, was even
more distasteful to them, and therefore more effectual in putting them
to flight.

Perhaps my readers may be wondering what the goblins could be about,
working all night long, seeing they never carried up the ore and sold
it; but when I have informed them concerning what Curdie le