Killer Mine by Hammond Innes

Author:Hammond Innes [Innes, Hammond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Pisky-Led

I stopped the gig at the main adit level and with my hand cupped over my torch so that it showed only a glimmer of red light, I hurried down the gallery. The air was very still. No wind blew up from the sea. There was no sound of waves. The only sound was the drip of water. The quiet of the place magnified the sound. The drip of water and the stillness both seemed merged. It was as though night had seeped down into the galleries and the mine slept.

The adit seemed longer than when I had come down it with Captain Manack. I was almost running. I was afraid I had missed the old man. But when I reached the bend that brought me in sight of the bottom of the shaft he used, there was his lamp glowing yellow against the walls of the gallery. I stopped then. The old man was going down the gallery towards the sea. I followed. I had switched off my torch. I could see the shape of the gallery against the distant light of his lamp.

A ghostly glimmer of moonlight filtered down into the gallery as I went past the shaft by which he had descended. Glancing up, I could see the ladders snaking up over the dripping rock walls. Ahead of me the light of his lamp disappeared. He had turned off to the right. The gallery was suddenly dark. I switched on my torch and almost ran to the point where his light had disappeared. He had turned up a cross-cut. I thought he must be going down to the Mermaid. But when I turned into the crosscut and reached the shaft leading to the Mermaid, it was just a black hole with the rungs of a ladder sticking up out of it. I switched off my torch and stood there in the darkness, listening. All about me was the drip and gush of water. Behind was the sigh and gurgle of the sea in the adit. And ahead the rhythmic suck of the pump. The unearthly stillness of the mine was full of sound. No chance of hearing a man’s movements.

The cross-cut forked just beyond the open hole of the shaft. I chose the right-hand one. It was little more than a cleft in the rock, about the height and width of a man. It sloped sharply down and then levelled off with ochre-coloured water ankle deep. My boots were full of it. The roof came gradually lower until I was bending almost double. I hit my head on a protruding rock and cursed. I uncupped my torch and shone the powerful beam ahead of me. The tunnel straightened out until I could see at least fifty yards along it. No sign of Manack. I knew then I had taken the wrong turning, for I had not been that far behind him.

I turned and hurried back. The left-hand fork was no wider than the other and it, too, sloped down.

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