The next day Joe departed to the town again, much to the children’s joy. ‘He’s got the day off,’ said Aunt Polly. ‘You will have to do some of his jobs. You boys can pump up the water for the day.’
The boys went off to the well and let down the heavy bucket, unwinding the chain till the bucket reached the water. Jack peered over the edge.
‘Just like one of those shafts over in the island,’ he said. ‘Wind up, wind up, Tufty – here goes!’
The children hurried over all the work that Aunt Polly set them to do. Then, making certain that the car was gone out of the garage, they begged a picnic lunch from Aunt Polly and raced down to Joe’s boat.
They undid the rope and pushed off, the two boys rowing hard. As soon as they were out on the open sea, up went the sail. ‘Off we go to the Isle of Gloom,’ said Dinah, in delight. ‘Gosh, I’m glad we’re coming with you this time, Jack. It was hateful being left behind last time.’
‘Did you bring the torches?’ asked Philip of Lucy-Ann. She nodded. ‘Yes. They’re over there with the lunch.’
‘We shall need them down the mines,’ said Philip, with an air of excitement. What an adventure this was – to be going down old, old mines, where possibly men might be secretly hunting for copper. Philip shivered deliciously with excitement.
The sailing-boat, handled most expertly by the four children, went along well and they made very good time indeed. It did not seem to be very long before the island loomed up out of the usual haze.
‘Hear the waves banging on the rocks?’ said Jack. The girls nodded. This was the dangerous part. They hoped the boys would find the rock passage as easily as before, and go in safely.
‘There’s the big hill,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘Down with the sail. That’s right – easy does it. Look out for that rope, Lucy-Ann. No, not that one – that’s right.’
The sail was down. The boys took the oars and began to row cautiously towards the gap in the rocks. They knew where it was now. Into it they went, looking out for the rock that lay near the surface, ready to avoid it. It did scrape the bottom slightly and Lucy-Ann looked frightened. But soon they were in the calm moat of water that ran gleaming all round the island, between the shore and the ring of rocks.
Lucy-Ann heaved a sigh of relief. What with feeling a bit seasick and scared, she had gone quite pale. But now she recovered quickly as she saw the island itself so near.
They landed safely and pulled the boat up on to the shore. ‘Now we make for the hills,’ said Jack. ‘My word, look at the thousands of birds again! I never in my life saw such a lot. If only I could see that Great Auk!’
‘Perhaps I’ll see one for you,’ said Lucy-Ann, wishing with all her heart that she could. ‘Philip, where’s that green-coloured stream – and the pile of tins? Anywhere near here?’
‘You’ll see soon,’ said Philip, striding ahead. ‘We go through this little pass in the hills.’
Soon they could see the bright green stream running in the valley among the hills. Jack paused and took his bearings. ‘Wait a bit. Where exactly was that big shaft?’
The girls had already exclaimed over the other holes in the ground, and the queer tumbledown erections beside them. ‘There must have been some sort of shaft-head,’ said Jack, considering. ‘Now, where’s that pile of tins? It was somewhere near here. Oh – there’s the shaft, girls!’
Everyone hurried to the big round hole and peered down it. There was no doubt but that the ladder leading down it was in very good condition. ‘This is the shaft the men are using,’ said Philip. ‘It’s the only one whose ladder is safe.’
‘Don’t talk too loudly,’ said Jack, in a low voice. ‘You don’t know how sound might carry down this shaft.’
‘Where are those tins you told us about?’ said Lucy-Ann.
‘Over there – by that rock,’ said Philip, pointing. ‘Go and see them if you want to.’
He shone his torch down the shaft, but could see very little. It looked rather sinister and forbidding. What was it like down there? Were there really men down there? The children mustn’t be discovered by them – grown-ups were always angry when children poked their noses into matters that didn’t concern them.
‘Jack – I can’t find the tins,’ said Lucy-Ann. Philip made an impatient noise. He strode over to show them the pile.
Then he stopped in astonishment. The place under the rock was empty. There was nothing there at all. The tins had been removed.
‘Look at that, Jack,’ said Philip, forgetting to speak softly. ‘All those tins have gone. Who took them? Well – that just shows there are people on this island – people who have been here since we last came too. I say – isn’t this exciting!’
19
Down in the copper mines
Lucy-Ann looked round her fearfully as if she half expected to see somebody hiding behind a rock.
‘I don’t like to think there may be people here we don’t know anything about,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack. They’re down in the mines. Shall we go down this shaft now, and see what we can discover?’
The girls didn’t like the look of it, but Lucy-Ann felt that it would be worse to stay up above ground than it would be to go down and keep with the boys. So she said she would go, and Dinah, who wasn’t going to be left all alone, promptly said she would go too.
Philip spread the map of the underground mines out on the ground, and they all knelt down and studied it. ‘See – this shaft goes down to the centre of a perfect maze of passages and galleries,’ said Philip. ‘Shall we take this passage here? – it’s a sort of main road, and leads to the mines that were worked right under the sea.’
‘Oh no, don’t let’s go there,’ said Lucy-Ann, in alarm. But the other three voted to go there, so the matter was decided.
‘Now, Kiki, if you come with us, you are not to make a noise,’ warned Jack. ‘Else, if we go anywhere near the miners, they will hear you, and we shall be discovered. See?’
‘Eena meena mina mo,’ said Kiki solemnly, and scratched her poll hard.
‘You’re a silly bird,’ said Jack. ‘Now mind what I’ve told you – don’t you dare to screech or shout.’
They went to the head of the shaft. They all peered down, feeling rather solemn. An adventure was exciting, but somehow this one seemed a bit frightening, all of a sudden.
‘Come on,’ said Philip, beginning to go down the ladder. ‘Nothing can happen to us really, even if we are discovered. After all, we first came to this island to see if we could find a Great Auk for Freckles. Even if we were caught we could say that we’d keep our mouths shut. If the men are friends of Bill Smugs, they must be decent fellows. We can always say we are his friends.’
They all began to climb down the long, long shaft. Before they were halfway down they wished they had never begun their descent. They had not guessed they would have to go so far. It was like climbing down to the middle of the earth, down, down, down in the darkness, which was lit now by the beams from four torch lights.
‘Everyone all right?’ asked Philip, rather anxiously. ‘I should think we must be near the bottom now.’
‘My arms are terribly tired,’ said poor Lucy-Ann, who was not so strong as the others. Dinah was as big and strong as any boy, but Lucy-Ann was not.
‘Stop a little and rest,’ said Jack. ‘Golly, Kiki feels heavy on my shoulder. That’s because my arms are a bit tired too, I expect, with holding on to the ladder-rungs.’
They rested a little and then went on downwards. Then Philip gave a low exclamation.
‘I say! I’m at the bottom!’
With great thankfulness the others joined him. Lucy-Ann promptly sat down on the ground, for her knees were aching now, as well as her arms. Philip flashed his torch around.
They were in a fairly wide passage. The walls and ceiling were of rock, gleaming a coppery colour in the light of the torches. From the main passage branched many galleries or smaller passages.
‘
We’ll do as we said and keep to this main passage, which looks like a sort of main road of the mines,’ said Philip.
Jack flashed his torch down a smaller passage. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘The roof has fallen in there. We couldn’t go down that way if we wanted to.’
‘Golly, I hope the roof of this passage won’t fall in on top of us,’ said Lucy-Ann, looking up at it in alarm. In places it was propped up by big timbers, but mostly it was of hard rock.
‘Come on – we’re safe enough,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘I say – isn’t it thrilling to be hundreds of feet below the earth, down in a copper mine as old as the hills!’
‘It’s funny that the air is quite good here, isn’t it?’ said Dinah, remembering the musty-smelling air in the secret passage at Craggy-Tops.
‘There must be good airways in these mines,’ said Philip, trying to remember how the airways in coal mines worked. ‘That’s one of the first things that men think about when they begin to work mines underground – how to get draughts of air moving down the tunnels they make – and channels to drain off any water that might collect and flood the mine.’
‘I’d hate to work in a mine,’ said Lucy-Ann, shivering. ‘Philip, are we under the sea yet?’
‘Not yet,’ said Philip. ‘About halfway there, I should think. Hallo, here’s a well-worked piece – quite a big cave!’
The passage suddenly opened out into a vast open cave that showed many signs of being worked by men. Marks of tools stood out here and there in the rock, and Jack, with a delighted exclamation, darted to a corner and picked up what looked like a small hammer-top made of bronze.
‘Look,’ he said proudly to the others. This must be part of a broken tool used by the ancient miners – it’s made of bronze – a mixture of copper and tin. My word, won’t the boys at school envy me this!’
That made the others look around eagerly as well, and Lucy-Ann made a discovery that interested everybody very much. It was not an ancient bronze tool – it was a stub of pencil, bright yellow in colour.
‘Do you know who this belongs to?’ said Lucy-Ann, her green eyes gleaming in the torchlight like a cat’s. ‘It belongs to Bill Smugs. I saw him writing notes with it the other day. I know it’s Bill’s.’
‘Then he must have been down here and dropped it by accident,’ said Philip, thrilled. ‘Golly, our guess was right then! He’s no bird-watcher – he’s living on the coast with his car and his boat because he’s friends with the men working this old mine, and brings them food and stuff. Artful old Bill – he never told us a word about it.’
‘Well, you don’t go blabbing everything out to children you meet,’ said Dinah. ‘Well, well – how surprised he would be if he knew we knew his secret! I wonder if he’s down here now?’
‘Course not, silly,’ said Philip, at once. ‘His boat wasn’t on the shore, was it? And there’s no other way of getting here except by boat.’
‘I forgot that,’ said Dinah. ‘Anyway – I don’t feel afraid of meeting the secret miners now that we know they are friends of Bill’s. All the same, we won’t let them know we’re here if we can help it. They might think that children couldn’t be trusted, and be rather cross about it.’
They examined the big cave closely. The ceiling was propped up with big old timbers, some of them broken now, so that the roof was gradually falling in. A number of hewn out steps led to a cave above, but the roof of that had fallen in and the children could not get into it.
‘Do you know what I think?’ said Jack suddenly, stopping to face the others behind him, as they examined the cave, ‘I believe that light I saw out to sea the other night wasn’t from a ship at all – it was from this island. The miners were giving a signal to say that they had finished their food and wanted more – and the light from the cliff was flashed by Bill to say he was bringing more.’
‘Yes – but the light came from our cliff, not from Bill’s cliff,’ objected Philip.
‘I know – but you know jolly well that it’s only from the highest part of the cliff that anyone signalling from the cove side of the island could be seen,’ said Jack. ‘If somebody stood on that hill in the middle of the island and made a bonfire or waved a powerful lamp, it could only be seen from our cliff, and not from Bill’s. So Bill must have gone to our cliff that night and answered the signal.’
‘I believe you’re right,’ said Philip. ‘Old Bill must have been wandering about that night, behind Craggy-Tops – and you saw his signalling light and so did Joe. No wonder old Joe says there are “things” wandering about at night and is scared of them! He must often have heard Bill and seen lights, and not known what they were.’
‘I expect Bill went off to the island in his boat, as soon as he could, with fresh food,’ said Jack. ‘And he took away the pile of old tins. That explains why it is they are gone. Artful old Bill! What a fine secret he has – and we are the only people who know it!’
‘I do wish we could tell him we know it,’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘I don’t see why we can’t. I’m sure he’d rather know that we knew it.’
‘Well – we could sort of say a few things that will make him guess we know it, perhaps,’ said Philip. ‘Then if he guesses, he’ll own up, and we’ll have a good talk about the mines, and Bill will tell us all kinds of exciting things.’
‘Yes, that’s what we’ll do,’ said Jack. ‘Come on – let’s explore a bit further. I feel as if I know this cave by heart.’
The passage swerved suddenly to the left after a bit, and Philip’s heart gave a thump. He knew, by the map, that when the main passage swerved left, they were going under the sea-bed itself. It was somehow very thrilling to be walking under the deep sea.
‘What’s that funny noise?’ asked Dinah. They all listened. There was a curious, far-off booming noise that never stopped.
‘Miners with machines?’ said Philip. Then he suddenly knew what it was. ‘No – it’s the sea booming away above our heads! That’s what it is!’
So it was. The children stood and listened to the muffled, faraway noise. Boom-boooom, boom. That was the sea, moving restlessly over the rocky bed, maybe pounding over rocks in its way, talking with its continual, rhythmical voice.
‘It’s funny to be under the sea itself,’ said Lucy-Ann, half frightened. She shivered. It was so dark, and the noise was so strange.
‘Isn’t it awfully warm down here?’ she said, and the others agreed with her. It certainly was hot down in the old copper mines.
They went on their way down the passage, keeping to the main one, and avoiding all the many galleries that spread out continually sideways, which probably led to other workings of the big mines.
‘If we don’t keep to this main road, we’ll lose ourselves,’ said Philip, and Lucy-Ann gave a gasp. It had not occurred to her that they might get lost. How awful to go wandering about miles of mine-workings, and never find the shaft that led them upwards!
They came to a place where, quite suddenly, a brilliant light shone. The children had rounded a corner, noticing, as they came to it, that a glimmer of light seemed to show there. As they turned the corner of the passage they came into a cave lighted by a powerful lamp. They stopped in the greatest surprise.
Then a noise came to their ears – a queer noise, not the muffled boom of the sea, but a clattering noise that they couldn’t recognise – then a bang, then a clattering noise again.
‘We’ve found where the miners work,’ said Jack, in an excited whisper. ‘Keep back a bit. We may see them – but we don’t want them to see us!’
20
Prisoners underground
The children huddled against the wall, trying to see what was in the cave before them, blinking their eyes in the brilliant light.
There were boxes and crates in the cave, but nothing else. No man was there. But in the near distance was somebody at work, making that queer clattering, banging noise.
‘Let’s go back,’ said Lucy-Ann, frightened.
‘No. But look – there’s a
passage going off just here,’ whispered Philip, flashing his torch into a dark tunnel near by. ‘We’ll creep down there and see if we come across the miners working somewhere near.’
So they all crept down the tunnel. As they went down it, pressing themselves closely against the rocky sides, a rock fell from the roof. It gave Kiki such a fright that she gave a squawk and flew off Jack’s shoulder.
‘Here, Kiki!’ said Jack, afraid of losing her. But Kiki did not come back to his shoulder. The boy stumbled back up the passage to look for her, whistling softly in the way he did when he wanted to call her to him. The others did not realise that he was no longer with them, but went on down the tunnel, slowly and painfully.
And then things happened very quickly. Someone came swiftly up the tunnel with a lantern, whose light picked out the three children at once. They cowered back against the wall and tried not to be dazzled by the lantern. The man carrying it paused in the greatest astonishment.
‘Well,’ he said, in a deep, rather hoarse voice. ‘Well – if this doesn’t beat everything!’ He held his lantern up high to see the children more clearly. Then he called over his shoulder.
‘Jake! Come and take a look-see here. I’ve got something here that’ll make your eyes drop out.’
Another man came swiftly up, tall and dark in the shadows. He gave a loud exclamation as he saw the three children.
‘Well, what do you think of that!’ he said. ‘Children! How did they come here? Are they real? Or am I dreaming?’
‘It’s children all right,’ said the first man. He spoke to the three, and his voice was rough and harsh.
‘What are you doing here? Who are you with?’
‘We’re by ourselves,’ said Philip.
The man laughed loudly. ‘Oh no, you’re not. It’s no good spinning that kind of tale to us. Who brought you here, and why?’
‘We came ourselves in a boat,’ said Lucy-Ann indignantly. ‘We know the gap in the rocks, and we came to see the island.’