Читать книгу In the Wake of fortune - Ivan Dexter - Страница 6

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One of the most ancient mines in venerable Cornwall was the Wheal Merlin. Its underground workings extended for miles and formed a perfect labyrinth likely to prove fatal to the uninitiated explorer.

Having been worked for hundreds of years, nearly every spot was hallowed or cursed by the memory of a fatal disaster. The awestruck miner would show the visitor places where human self-sacrifice had reached sublime heights, or mayhap where personal malice in vengeful mood had invoked aid of death to remove a hated rival or to gain a little wealth. Every subterranean gallery was filled with unwritten and unpainted legends, but to the superstitious miners and residents of the district they were infinitely more real and enduring than if wrought in marble or bronze.

Considering the primitive manner in which the mine had for ages been worked it was a marvel that the accidents had not been more numerous and more serious. Even with simple appliances in use a great depth had been attained, and the work of ages had caused the district around St. Columb's Cove to be honeycombed with underground drives.

In olden times the mine was noted for its rich yields and miniature battles had been fought for its possession.

An ancient representative of the Trenoweth family, who had been worsted above ground at the outpost from which he defended his property, took refuge below, and for several days fought the enemy in its drives. His better knowledge of these ramifications enabled him to triumph, but the victory was a hard one.

A villager named Penfold, who worked in the mine, was either bribed or forced into showing the enemy underground, and this man paid dear for his treachery. Having been captured, the enraged miners took him to the surface and then dropped him seven hundred feet to the bottom of the main shaft.

His was one of the ghosts that was said to walk by the credulous people, and whenever the phantom appeared it was looked upon as an omen of fast approaching evil to the people of the hamlet.

Such superstition as this may appear childish to the matter-of-fact people of today in Australia. It should not be forgotten, however, that even at this latter end of the nineteenth century there still lingers in many parts of Cornwall superstitious beliefs that ceased to obtain followers in other parts about the middle ages.

Mining is essentially a precarious and dangerous calling, and in such a remote spot as St. Columb's Cove—almost cut off from communication with the busy world, and in a locality where nature herself conspired to overawe man—there was nothing strange in the fact that the miners employed in the Wheal Merlin should still cherish the legends of their forefathers.

Indeed, they had some ground for the strange beliefs they held.

On more than one occasion weird predictions had been verified in a strange and remarkable way. Omens that could only have been of supernatural origin had, through the key of certain prior prophecies been interpreted, and they had been fulfilled.

More than one hundred years before the date on which this story opens an ancestor of Edward Trenoweth had met the phantom of Penfold in one of the drives of the Wheal Merlin. The spectre—so Trenoweth said—pointed menacingly in a northerly direction, and then, like the usual orthodox ghost, vanished.

This Trenoweth was a man more than ordinarily sceptical for a Cornishman, and he refused to listen to the appeals made to him by certain of the villagers when he told them of the apparition. They urged that he should not work in the mine for a week and a day or harm would befall him.

The period of a week and a day was universally consulted as the longest in which a spirit could exercise a malign influence.

Even Mrs. Trenoweth urged her husband to take heed of the warning given, but he was obdurate. He pointed out, like a shrewd, sensible man that he was, that he could not see how working the mine would precipitate his fate any sooner than remaining above ground for a few days, and perhaps having an encounter with some straggling smugglers or pirates who might drop into the Cove.

If his hour had come his bolt would fall equally sure above ground as a few hundred feet below the surface.

This is the view that the practical man of today would take in such matters, but the sequel showed that Trenoweth should have taken the kindly advice.

Next morning he descended the shaft in company with nine men who were embued with the courage of their master, but none of them ever came to the surface again alive.

Shortly after noon an outburst of air from the main shaft told the alarmed villagers that some catastrophe had happened, and they flocked to the mouth of the mine.

Some of the experienced miners, when they heard the rush of air, knew but too well the nature of the fatality. It was evident to them that an inrush of water had taken place, and this proved to be the case.

When a few of the more daring descended the ladders they found that the shaft was nearly half full of flood waters. It was thirty feet above the drive where Trenoweth and his men were working, and it was certain that they must have perished.

They were working in the main drive to the north and the fatality was soon found to have been caused by the bursting in of water from an old mine shaft had not been worked for a century.

It was weeks before the bodies were recovered, and the villagers went about their task as if obeying a command of fate. They shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders but said little, for they knew that Trenoweth had paid with his life his disregard of the phantom's warning.

And so from generation to generation these grim legends of spectial appearances and their results were handed down until they seized on men's minds and became clothed in the habiliments of reality, presenting themselves as infallible articles of flesh and blood.