Les indes-noirs. English

  CHAPTER V. SOME STRANGE PHENOMENA

  MANY superstitious beliefs exist both in the Highlands and Lowlands ofScotland. Of course the mining population must furnish its contingentof legends and fables to this mythological repertory. If the fields arepeopled with imaginary beings, either good or bad, with much more reasonmust the dark mines be haunted to their lowest depths. Who shakes theseam during tempestuous nights? who puts the miners on the track of anas yet unworked vein? who lights the fire-damp, and presides over theterrible explosions? who but some spirit of the mine? This, at least,was the opinion commonly spread among the superstitious Scotch.

  In the first rank of the believers in the supernatural in the Dochartpit figured Jack Ryan, Harry's friend. He was the great partisan ofall these superstitions. All these wild stories were turned by him intosongs, which earned him great applause in the winter evenings.

  But Jack Ryan was not alone in his belief. His comrades affirmed, noless strongly, that the Aberfoyle pits were haunted, and that certainstrange beings were seen there frequently, just as in the Highlands. Tohear them talk, it would have been more extraordinary if nothing of thekind appeared. Could there indeed be a better place than a dark and deepcoal mine for the freaks of fairies, elves, goblins, and other actorsin the fantastical dramas? The scenery was all ready, why should not thesupernatural personages come there to play their parts?

  So reasoned Jack Ryan and his comrades in the Aberfoyle mines. We havesaid that the different pits communicated with each other by means oflong subterranean galleries. Thus there existed beneath the county ofStirling a vast tract, full of burrows, tunnels, bored with caves,and perforated with shafts, a subterranean labyrinth, which might becompared to an enormous ant-hill.

  Miners, though belonging to different pits, often met, when going to orreturning from their work. Consequently there was a constant opportunityof exchanging talk, and circulating the stories which had their originin the mine, from one pit to another. These accounts were transmittedwith marvelous rapidity, passing from mouth to mouth, and gaining inwonder as they went.

  Two men, however, better educated and with more practical minds than therest, had always resisted this temptation. They in no degree believedin the intervention of spirits, elves, or goblins. These two were SimonFord and his son. And they proved it by continuing to inhabit the dismalcrypt, after the desertion of the Dochart pit. Perhaps good Madge, likeevery Highland woman, had some leaning towards the supernatural. Butshe had to repeat all these stories to herself, and so she did, mostconscientiously, so as not to let the old traditions be lost.

  Even had Simon and Harry Ford been as credulous as their companions,they would not have abandoned the mine to the imps and fairies. For tenyears, without missing a single day, obstinate and immovable in theirconvictions, the father and son took their picks, their sticks, andtheir lamps. They went about searching, sounding the rock with a sharpblow, listening if it would return a favor-able sound. So long as thesoundings had not been pushed to the granite of the primary formation,the Fords were agreed that the search, unsuccessful to-day, mightsucceed to-morrow, and that it ought to be resumed. They spent theirwhole life in endeavoring to bring Aberfoyle back to its formerprosperity. If the father died before the hour of success, the son wasto go on with the task alone.

  It was during these excursions that Harry was more particularly struckby certain phenomena, which he vainly sought to explain. Several times,while walking along some narrow cross-alley, he seemed to hear soundssimilar to those which would be produced by violent blows of a pickaxagainst the wall.

  Harry hastened to seek the cause of this mysterious work. The tunnelwas empty. The light from the young miner's lamp, thrown on the wall,revealed no trace of any recent work with pick or crowbar. Harry wouldthen ask himself if it was not the effect of some acoustic illusion, orsome strange and fantastic echo. At other times, on suddenly throwing abright light into a suspicious-looking cleft in the rock, he thought hesaw a shadow. He rushed forward. Nothing, and there was no opening topermit a human being to evade his pursuit!

  Twice in one month, Harry, whilst visiting the west end of the pit,distinctly heard distant reports, as if some miner had exploded a chargeof dynamite. The second time, after many careful researches, he foundthat a pillar had just been blown up.

  By the light of his lamp, Harry carefully examined the place attackedby the explosion. It had not been made in a simple embankment of stones,but in a mass of schist, which had penetrated to this depth in the coalstratum. Had the object of the explosion been to discover a new vein? Orhad someone wished simply to destroy this portion of the mine? Thushe questioned, and when he made known this occurrence to his father,neither could the old overman nor he himself answer the question in asatisfactory way.

  "It is very queer," Harry often repeated. "The presence of an unknownbeing in the mine seems impossible, and yet there can be no doubtabout it. Does someone besides ourselves wish to find out if a seamyet exists? Or, rather, has he attempted to destroy what remains of theAberfoyle mines? But for what reason? I will find that out, if it shouldcost me my life!"

  A fortnight before the day on which Harry Ford guided the engineerthrough the labyrinth of the Dochart pit, he had been on the point ofattaining the object of his search. He was going over the southwest endof the mine, with a large lantern in his hand. All at once, it seemedto him that a light was suddenly extinguished, some hundred feet beforehim, at the end of a narrow passage cut obliquely through the rock. Hedarted forward.

  His search was in vain. As Harry would not admit a supernaturalexplanation for a physical occurrence, he concluded that certainlysome strange being prowled about in the pit. But whatever he could do,searching with the greatest care, scrutinizing every crevice in thegallery, he found nothing for his trouble.

  If Jack Ryan and the other superstitious fellows in the mine had seenthese lights, they would, without fail, have called them supernatural,but Harry did not dream of doing so, nor did his father. And when theytalked over these phenomena, evidently due to a physical cause, "Mylad," the old man would say, "we must wait. It will all be explainedsome day."

  However, it must be observed that, hitherto, neither Harry nor hisfather had ever been exposed to any act of violence. If the stone whichhad fallen at the feet of James Starr had been thrown by the handof some ill-disposed person, it was the first criminal act of thatdescription.

  James Starr was of opinion that the stone had become detached fromthe roof of the gallery; but Harry would not admit of such a simpleexplanation. According to him, the stone had not fallen, it had beenthrown; for otherwise, without rebounding, it could never have describeda trajectory as it did.

  Harry saw in it a direct attempt against himself and his father, or evenagainst the engineer.