Kevin Cassidy The Cassidy Chronicles

40. Four Wheel Drives Only; and Silencing The Crickets

  We set up camp in the forest about three hundred metres from the river, alongside where we’d come on a trickling of water and some small clear pools in a shallow gully. This put us about eight hundred metres or so down from Hell’s Deepest Pit and a kilometre down stream from the waterhole we’d used on that previous visit.

  Local knowledge told of a small deep lagoon in a bend of the Sherbert River there, information which subsequently proved correct. It suited our recreational requirements perfectly.

  As far as we could tell no one other than Angus had visited the Hell’s Pit area since the collapse. We knew Angus had been there, mainly because of his tunnel comment but also because he’d bashed an extension to his track through the forest in the old Blitz wagon. This had previously terminated about three kilometres from the cave-in; now it passed within a half a kilometre of it.

  I say “track” here, but in reality it was just a trail of wheelmarks and trampled saplings. Others would use it occasionally and they were welcome to do so, but it was more or less just a private (ahem) “…thoroughfare”. Following it in the ute meant regular log-shiftings or detour-making stops to get around the stumps and occasional deep wheel-ruts he’d left, Angus having pushed on with no thought whatever as to how something other than a high-clearance three-ton Blitz might cope.

  These days there’d be a sign. “Four-wheel Drive Vehicles Only”, it would say – most likely attached to his property’s back gate. Lacking such niceties we simply coped with these difficulties as we came on them.

  Our earlier visit had not seen much exploration, as activities on that occasion had been planned and supervised. This time, however, we were free to do as we wished. As a result we’d set off to confirm the existence of the lagoon immediately after setting up camp and having lunch.

  The rainforest here was not as broad as the big floodplain forests farther down the valley, with the average distance from river to ranges averaging only about a kilometre. Also scattered among the trees was an occasional rocky outcrop, small hills that were once part of an earlier landform, with all but their summits now buried in the silt of the shifting river.

  Other parts of the forest held mounds of a different type: waste dumps from the earlier gold mining and prospecting activities. Most were small and overgrown and none were dangerous in themselves, but all had an associated mine shaft. Occasionally a larger one was found and these potentially hosted a not-yet-collapsed cavern somewhere nearby.

  Many of the shafts and caverns had fallen in over the years and their subsidences partially filled by natural processes. Even so, stories of fallings-down old mine shafts still persisted so we always kept our eyes open.

  Three small mounds had been seen within cooee of our camp on that earlier visit, the leftovers of unsuccessful prospecting efforts made prior to the Hell’s Pit discovery.

  The Hell’s Pit workings were substantially different, however. The void there had been huge, and spoil from it plus that from the rest of the mine would have created an unusually large waste dump.

  For very sound practical and economic reasons, shafts and surrounding mounds were never far from where the miners were winning their gold. It follows from this then that the Hell’s Pit shaft and mound should have been a minimal distance from the cavern. Yet such was not the case.

  Sash and I discovered the spoil heap around nine the next morning. It was enormous, bigger even than I’d imagined, a broad flat-topped hill about three metres high supporting regrowth mature enough to pass for virgin forest. Equally surprising was its distance from the cave-in.

  We spent a considerable time searching for the shaft, poking and prodding the leaf litter cautiously with long thin sapling poles everywhere we went, but found no sign of it – collapsed or otherwise. It had to be there, though.

  —Except … why so far from the cavern?

  The answer had to lie in the secretive way prospectors worked in those days, something which applied doubly to anyone lucky enough to find a gold lead. They’d determine as quickly as possible which direction the deposit might be heading and peg further claims to secure the area.

  This would alert others, despite their insistence of having bugger all down there bar a bit of colour. The others would then peg claims of their own, as near to the find as they could.

  At Hell’s Pit the miners had prospered, as their gold lead had continued right through to where it had abruptly widened. There the workings had developed into the cavern that later became Hell’s Deepest Pit.

  But why was there no second shaft nearer the Hell’s Pit deposit? …one to provide ventilation and reduce the barrowing distance from the workface – for the gold gravel itself as well as the mullock created in developing the mine. And how did they ventilate the place anyway?

  Secrecy certainly had something to do with it. A second or third shaft would have shown the direction their workings were heading. Others would then have tried their luck, so creating a lot more prospecting mounds.

  Being on top of an old mine had certainly surprised us on that earlier visit. We’d stumbled onto this handy clearing in the edge of the rainforest and set up camp there – on its boundary, fortunately for us. Only later did I realise that the underlying void had probably made the ground-conditions unsuitable for tree growth, and this, over time, had created the clearing.

  By ten o’clock Sash and I were surveying the scene from the edge of the pit. Getting down into it didn’t look so difficult now. About ninety degrees around from the tunnel there’d been a further collapse. It left nothing more to negotiate than a steep leaf and rubble strewn slope.

  The other three had shown no interest in exploring the old mine. They’d opted instead to climb the spur ridge nearest our camp. Sash and I walked with them as far as the track then turned to followed Angus’ trail of trashed and trampled saplings. When we thought we’d gone far enough we turned back into the forest toward Hell’s Deepest Pit.

  Rocky’d had the most to say about our spelunking ambitions and had been going on about it before we’d parted. “…See I keep thinking about what happened in that Tarzan picture we saw last year,” he continued. “You know, in that old tin mine, when they were looking for the stolen diamonds. Part of the roof fell in and trapped them.”

  “Yeah!” put in Zack – instantly ready to review the film rather than discuss old mine-workings, “An’ when they didn’t come back Tarzan had to go in an’ rescue ‘em!”

  “Come on, Rocky,” said Sash. “In the pictures old mines always cave in. That’s what they have ‘em for.”

  “Yeah! Then the two baddies jumped into the skip-truck and got it rolling down toward the entrance,” Zack continued. “But that fell in too, just as they were getting out! It just flattened ‘em, ay!”

  “Don’t worry, Rocky,” I said. “We won’t be looking for trouble. We won’t be bangin’ on the walls to see what might happen. If it really does look dangerous we’ll just turn around and get out.”

  “...Then the other two start fightin’ over this girl and one of the torches gets smashed and...”

  “Anyway, the chances of it coming down at the exact moment we’re in there are buckley’s,” added Sash. “Why should it?”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” countered Rocky. “Ask Father O’Long. Anyway, I can tell you now; my name is definitely not on the list of volunteers.”

  “…But Tarzan knows a secret back way into the mine, only there’s this giant python livin’ there – in the cave that joins up with the workings!

  “—No wait! First he has to swim across this river full of man-eating crocodiles, just up from the waterfall. But he doesn’t know the dam has busted and there’s a wall of water coming down it and…”

  Somewhere about there Sash and I turned away from the expedition and its cinematic enthusiast and left them to climb their hill. As we so did so Peter Rabbit began explaining to Zack how we’d all seen the picture several times over an
d more or less knew the whole thing by heart.

  “Nah, let ‘im go,” I heard Rocky say as they disappeared into the bush. “It’s always ten times more exciting the way he tells it.”

  The other thing we noticed about Hell’s Pit was the large accumulation of leaf litter in the bottom. Apart from that – and the secondary collapse – it was just as I remembered it, just as I’d seen it in my dreams.

  More importantly, Sash’s enthusiasm had finally begun to fire-up. He now seemed as keen as I was about our “Tunnels of Doom Expedition” – as Rocky would have it.

  Despite our eagerness to get started we were both very much aware of Angus’ comment about the rock-fall in the tunnel, and realised that in ten minutes time we might well be heading to the spur ridge to join our mates.

  The previous evening, while clearing up after dinner, the mosquitoes had become so bad we were forced to take refuge under our nets.

  As we lay there on our swags Sash and I had begun a lengthy and speculative discussion about the mine – how it must have developed, the collapse, the condition of the shaft and tunnels etc, and what we might find. It was Rocky, though, who had the last word.

  Or words.

  “Ar shove a bloody sock in it, will y’se!” he’d suddenly shouted into the night. “It’s just a dark, dank, slimy, snake-infested, self-collapsing bloody rat-hole! Why anyone in their right mind would want to go blundering about inside a stinkin’ bloody death-trap like that is altogether beyond me! Now, can we get a bit of sleep?!!”

  Even the crickets were silenced by his outburst.

  Come to think of it, I don’t remember hearing them start up again.

  41. Monsters From The Black Lagoon; and The Reluctant Capitalist

  Sash was carrying a rope, brought in expectation of having to abseil into the pit, but now it appeared we may not have to use it. We would certainly need it to climb out on our return, though, so I tied one end to a stout-looking sapling, and Sash tossed the other end over the edge.

  Then it was Into the Jaws of Death (as Rocky would have it), except that rather than using the rope we elected to slide down on our bums. But the slope was a good deal more slippery than we’d thought.

  Down we plummeted, totally out of control, straight into a pool of thick watery sludge and rotting leaves – all of it convincingly hidden under a floating layer of dry leaf-litter.

  Neither of us was hurt. We just wallowed about in the thick black soup trying to stand up but continually falling back on account of our laughing so much.

  Sash eventually regained his feet. “Hey! You got a deener?” he enquired. “We could – aarrgh!” he yelled as he slipped over again. A moment later he reappeared, covered in fresh black glop. “…We could buy some more tickets and have another go!”

  He looked like the Monster from the Black Lagoon. Well, except for the laughter. So must have I.

  And the stench! It was enough to make your eyes water.

  “This is even worse than the dormitory septic,” I said as I tried to wipe the watery muck from around my eyes. “Lucky we didn’t land in the deep part.”

  Sash was trying to stand up again. “Yeah. We’d really be in the shit, ay.”

  With profound lack of grace we floundered around in the mire, trying to reach the rubble pile in front of the tunnel. So slippery was it that even staying upright was difficult, let alone moving forward without falling over. Mostly, though, it was because we were laughing so much.

  On reaching dry ground we set about scraping the muck from our hands and faces as best we could, then emptying out our shoes and clearing the water from our torches. These hadn’t suffered too badly as they’d been in my backpack schoolbag – which also needed emptying.

  Both torches were still working. So was the little spare one I’d thrown in. Our sandwiches had been saved by their newspaper wrappings but some of the biscuits were a bit soggy.

  At the tunnel entrance we shone our torches about inspecting what we could see of the old workings. The first thing we noticed was the absence of miners’ ghosts, giant pythons, rats, bats or a Sherbert Valley Tiger. Of equal importance was the appearance of the hard-packed gravelly-clay comprising the roof and walls. It actually looked quite sound. Despite the workings being decades old there was no crumbling evident at all, so we ventured inside.

  Angus was right about the rock-fall, however. After a short distance the tunnel ended. “Ah well...” Sash said resignedly. “I always wanted to climb the spur ridge.”

  “Yeah, it looks blocked solid. So what do you reckon Angus was doin’ in here?”

  “Same as us I’d say; just havin’ a look. Hey! If we get goin’ we can catch the others before they get too far up. Zack’s probably run out of breath already, telling ‘em about Tarzan.”

  “Wait up,” I said. “I want to make sure the tunnel really is blocked.” I shone my torch up into the space between the fallen rubble and the roof. The gap there angled upward a short distance but I couldn’t see an end, so I walked to the foot of the collapse and began climbing.

  This proved absurdly difficult. The rubble was steep and loose; it kept inviting me back to the bottom.

  Further up the gradient diminished. So did the headroom. I took off my schoolbag, pushed it in front of me with the torch, then crawled up into the slot on my hands and knees.

  Suddenly I found myself on clean dry sand. It had come from a layer in the sedimentary bedding, right at roof-level. Here was the weakness which caused the fall, I thought. None of it looked recent, though.

  I continued working my way forward. The space became even more confined.

  Further in it became worse. I managed a couple of metres on my elbows and knees, pushing the bag ahead with the torch as I went, then I lay down on my stomach and grubbed along, arms first … not good; it was getting difficult to move. I squirmed in a little farther then tried to look forward by raising my head.

  I couldn’t see much. The roof angled down and appeared blocked, like a blind-ended rabbit-hole. Yeah – and I was the stupid bunny who’d jammed himself into it.

  Then I became aware of a gentle draught on my face.

  A draught?!! That meant it wasn‘t blocked! And there must be another opening! …the original shaft, perhaps, or a second cave-in. I wriggled and squirmed and kicked myself along another couple of metres then looked again. The rabbit-hole opened out.

  I twisted my head sideways “Hey, Sash!” I shouted. “It’s open! We can get through!”

  At the top edge of the obstructing rubble I turned around then slid to the bottom feet first on my bum. Back in the cleft the light from Sash’s torch wobbled about as he struggled up the barrier. “I’m on the other side,” I yelled. “And there’s a breeze coming from somewhere. We might be able to get out this way.”

  Sash was worming his way along the tight part. “Wait up Casey,” came his muffled voice. “I’m coming too.” It was easier for him; he didn’t have a schoolbag.

  Suddenly he burst from the cleft and tumbled down the slope, his torch clattering down beside him. He sat up and grabbed it, then lay back and shone it down the front of his pants.

  “It’s a boy!” he shouted triumphantly. I just gaped in astonishment.

  “I done this before, Casey,” he confided to me as he got to his feet. “…like when I was a baby. It was easier this time, though.” He pointed his light along the tunnel. “Gees, look at that! It goes for bloody miles. Hey! Maybe we’ll meet Tarzan comin’ the other way!”

  I couldn’t stop laughing. “You bloody fool. Of course it goes for bloody miles. It’s a long way to the mound, remember.”

  Sash was on the mend, I noted happily. This was more the Ashley Saddlehead larrikin I knew.

  We set off walking and almost immediately came on a large colony of bats hanging from the roof and walls. They didn’t seem worried by our presence as long as we didn’t shine the torches directly on them.

  Nor was the drive straight. Instead it me
andered about, much like the original stream currents would have done. This was hardly surprising; it was the stream that deposited the gold the miners had followed, after all. We could also see where the tunnel widened and narrowed with their fortunes.

  Then the drive abruptly ended at a narrower right-angled cross tunnel. This only went six or seven metres to an opposing right angle turn which had us back in a working drive. I could only assume from this that their gold values had petered out, following which they’d mined across the lie of the gravel beds and come on the other end of (what had been) a discontinuity in their gold-lead.

  Generally speaking the workings had remained fairly dry, though here and there water had trickled along the floor and washed it clean. In other parts – where the floor had a depression – there was evidence of pooling. Then I noticed where water had been trickling down the wall. Interestingly, it had come from a hole in the roof.

  I stood directly beneath the hole and shone the torch upward. It was round and unusually straight, but how far up it went was difficult to judge as it was partially blocked with tree roots. The fact that water had issued from it suggested it went to the surface.

  Perhaps this was some sort of hand-augered exploratory hole, put down by the miners to locate the gold lead, I thought. It would have been slow and arduous work but quicker than sinking another shaft. It would also have been much less obvious.

  Later I saw more of these holes. All had a diameter of about fifteen centimetres, were positioned to one side of the tunnel and were ten or so degrees off vertical.

  Then, on a patch of fine water-washed sand, a couple of tiny yellow specks caught my eye. “Hey Sash!” I yelled. “Look at this. Those old blokes left some gold behind.” I knelt down, pinched the sand containing them between my fingers and deposited it on the palm of my other hand.

  Sash was a little way in front. “GOLD you say? Gold? We’re going to be rich! RICH!!! Hahahahaha!” The mine rang with his maniacal laughter as he ran back.

  I held up the fifty or so microscopic sand grains for him to inspect. Two of then glowed yellow in the torchlight. His eyes widened. “Gold! Wealth! POWER!” he said malevolently. “Ours; all ours.” In the torchlight he looked evil.

  “Jes’ hold on a mite, there, pardner,” I said menacingly. “Ah’m the one who found this here gold, an’ Ah’m a’aimin’ t’ keep it. Reckon Ah’ll git me down the Buckeye Saloon reeeel pronto an’ mebbe buy thet purty li’l Maybelle a coupla vanilla malteds.”

  A mean look came into Sash’s eyes. He whipped his torch up into my face like a drawn pistol. “Yooo orta be horrse whee-ipped, y’ dirty cheetinn’ rat!” he drawled in his toughest meanest cowboy accent, “An’ y’se can hand over thet gold raaaht now, too, cos Ah’m agoan take it fer meself.

  “Yep – reckon Ah mite go see Miz Julia, too, ‘fore Ah heads fer th’ border. Reckon she’ll fry out yer brains with them green snake-eyes’ a hers’n when she hearin’ bout you’n Maybelle … ony septin’ you ain’ got no brains.”

  “NO! Anythang but thet!” I pleaded. “Here, take the gold. Jes’ doan tell Miz Julia! Ah was only jokin’ bout Miz Maybelle. An’ she ain’ fancyin’ no worthless miner lak me anyways – less’n his wallet fat enough to choke a horse.”

  But we could keep it up no longer and just leant on each other, helpless with laughter.

  “We should be in the pictures,” I said when I could speak again.

  “Yeah. In The Marx Brothers Go West. Where they chop up the carriages to keep the train going. I’d loved to have been in that.”

  In the hope of finding more neglected wealth I backtracked a few metres and then spent some time on my hands and knees with the torch down close. Sash wandered on ahead – unbeknown to me – and around a bend in the tunnel. There he came on another drive lying crossways to the main workings, an earlier instance of where the miners had lost their gold-lead – and this time they’d crosscut the gravel beds a much greater distance.

  As I scoured the little riffles and wash-traps I became totally engrossed in what I was doing and soon lost all track of time. After a while I found myself staring at some odd-looking bits of quartz protruding from the clay of the washed-clean floor.

  Gradually the light dawned in my thick skull. Of course they were odd-looking. These were not river-stones; they were part of a thin quartz vein. I shone the torch more closely. Little yellow flakes glinted back.

  How very, very, interesting, I thought as I extracted a specimen from its socket in the clay. This represents the geology underlying the old river channels. The original miners must have missed seeing the gold. Either that or they simply followed the better values in the gravel beds.

  I looked up to tell Sash … but Sash was nowhere to be seen. In fact the tunnel ahead was in complete darkness.

  “Sash?” I enquired tentatively. “What are you doing?”

  There was no reply. The tunnel was silent.

  I listened for him a few moments longer. “Hey Sash,” I yelled nervously. “Don’t bugger around. Where are you?”

  But Sash wasn’t buggering around. And when he finally did say something it was all muffled and distorted by distance and the corners between us.

  “Bloody Hell!!” came the faint but excited yelling. “Casey! CASEY!!! Come an’ see this!!!”

  He sounded almost panicky, so I abandoned my king’s ransom and ran in the direction of The Voice from the Caves of Darkness.

  Gawd, I hope he’s all right, I thought. “Sash! What’s happening?” I yelled. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah; I’m good Casey,” I was relieved to hear his faint reply. “But have a look at this.”

  At the crosscutting drive I stopped abruptly. Was I supposed to turn left or right? The main tunnel went right; the left-hand one was low and narrow. Both were in darkness.

  I switched off my torch. A dull patch of light showed in the smaller passage.

  “You bloody drongo!” I shouted as I hunched over and set off along the narrow passageway. “You know we agreed about not gettin’ separated. Gees, I half bloody crapped meself back there when I couldn’t see your light!”

  “Yeah, sorry Casey,” came the reply. “I wasn’t thinkin’, ay.”

  As I squeezed along the smaller passage I could see its end, but where was Sash? Then I realised. He was in yet another drive, one branching off from the downstream side of the crosscut.

  “Have a look at this,” he said as I arrived there. “I never seen anythin’ like it. Just look at all the gold!”

  He was at the workface-end of a short decline, a somewhat roomier affair than the cramped exploratory crosscut I’d come in by. Where he stood was a metre and a half deeper than the rest of the tunnels.

  I have to say, though; it was the gold that really caught my attention.

  In a vein of glassy white quartz it was, down the left side of the declining floor. As much ore had been taken as was possible, leaving the in situ floor material covered here and there with clay spillage, but wherever the quartz was visible it was peppered with gold.

  The end of the decline looked even more dramatic. There the gold-rich seam extended up the work-face to as far as the base of the old river channels, above which were its gravel-beds.

  At the top of the decline slope (and presumably under the floor of the narrow exploratory drive), the quartz vein was no more than a few centimetres wide. Down the decline slope it increased in width until, at the workface it reached some forty centimetres.

  And there was gold all through it. There were rich patches and less rich patches, but hardly anywhere that wasn’t generously speckled with the yellow metal.

  Sash had his torch aimed at a narrow little iron-wheeled barrow parked near the bottom of the decline. In it were some hand tools and a couple of carbide lamps. “What do you reckon about this stuff,” he said. “Isn’t it all just a bit out of place?”

  Out of place was right. These workings were much more recent than an
ything done by the original miners. And this was reef mining, not alluvial – though I’m sure the old-timers would have been happy getting their gold from any source as rich as this.

  But they’d not found it. Instead, they returned to the trace they’d found as they mined across the gravel beds (and they certainly wouldn’t have missed seeing it). But they must have thought it was too low in grade to be what they were looking for and kept crosscutting, then eventually gave up and went back went back to it – realising as they mined into it that it was actually their gold lead’s offset tail.

  Whatever the case, in cutting across the old river beds to find their gold-lead again they’d missed seeing this prize by centimetres. Then, I imagine, just as the quartz-stringer I’d found had been exposed by trickling water, so this vein had been uncovered.

  Eventually someone checking out the old workings must have come into this dead-end cross-drive ... and there in the floor lay exposed the thin end of this gold rich quartz vein, and the farther they dug into it the better it became.

  For a time Sash and I were utterly mesmerised by it all and crawled over it millimetre by millimetre on our hands and knees, sweeping away the dirt with our fingers and blowing it clean to see the gold.

  Eventually I realised we had better keep moving, so I took the gimpy hammer from the barrow to break off some samples. Despite its age, its wooden handle was in good condition and the head was tight, so whoever owned it must have soaked it in oil.

  But getting a sample was more difficult than I’d imagined. The quartz rock was not only tough, it was also firmly attached to the rest of the world. In fact I hammered until I was half stupid before a couple of pieces came off. As a result I decided that hand-mining this little reef would have required a plan and plenty of time.

  None of it would have required explosives. Certainly the quartz was hard and tight, but the country rock had weathered to a tough sandy clay and was workable with a miner’s pick. Whoever was here would first have excavated the softer material alongside the quartz reef, leaving the quartz to be broken out with a minimum of effort.

  As for my samples… Well, neither of them was bigger than a biscuit, but both were good examples of the gold mineralisation. After looking them over Sash tucked them into my schoolbag then picked up one of the carbide lamps in the barrow.

  “I wonder how long this has been here,” he said. “I mean these things are old all right but they’re not that old.”

  “I dunno,” I replied. “A fair while, I reckon.”

  “Hey look at this, Casey. Something’s been scratched on the bottom.” After a bit of scraping he added, “It’s kinda corroded, but I think it says ‘E J G’.”

  A shiver went up my spine. “That’s old Gower’s initials, Sash. Ebenezer Josia Gower. Gees, this must be the answer – you know, to the riddle of Gower’s gold. See they never did work out where he got all the stuff they found in that shot-box after he died. In the end they decided it must have come from Tennant Creek or the Tanami or somewhere. But the colour was wrong; it looked exactly like Sherbert Valley gold.”

  “What stuff in what box? What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Gower’s gold, Sash. They found it in a box … in his gun cupboard. The others all had lead shot in ‘em but one was full of gold. And in his Will he said there was plenty more where that came from.”

  “Did he now? I’d heard about the gold but not about the box.”

  “Well, take it from me, Sash: the gold was in a box. Gees, this answers a lot of questions.”

  “Well yeah,” remarked Sash knowingly. “But not as many as it might pose, ay – like what should we do about it and should we tell the others? …In fact, should we tell anyone at all?”

  “I dunno,” I muttered. “But don’t worry about it now. See the interesting thing here is that no one even knew old Gower was looking for gold. But he must have been, ay, otherwise what was he doing down here.”

  “Same as us, I suppose – just having a look.”

  “Well maybe. But what I was going to say when you’d bloody disappeared was that I had found some gold as well.” I reached into my pocket and gave him the stone I’d collected earlier – almost forgotten in the excitement. “It’s not much, but it’s not alluvial, either.” I pointed out the tiny specks of yellow on its clean, water-washed end.

  Sash squinted at it in the torchlight.

  “Gower probably found something like that,” I continued, “most likely in the floor of the drive the same as I did, but possibly up on the mound. Whatever the case, he certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest with that boxful of gold. From what I heard they were goin’ in all directions trying to find where he got it.”

  “He must have covered his tracks pretty well then.”

  “Yeah. But those in the know didn’t go out prospecting. They looked for Gower’s tracks or signs of other activity, except that in the end they found nothing: no tracks or diggings or anything.”

  After a final look at the gold seam in the workface we set off back along the narrow crosscut. “Why would they have gone so far with this crosscutting tunnel when their gold was back here?” Sash asked as we walked along. Just then the passage we’d arrived by loomed dark on our right and the crosscut opened out.

  We walked straight on. Ahead in our torchlight we could see a larger passage going off to the left at a right angle.

  “It’s the main drive,” said Sash. “Where they lost the gold and started crosscutting to find it again.”

  He was right. Straight ahead the crosscutting tunnel’s dimensions tapered-off; further in it ended. We turned left.

  “Maybe it was too poor,” I said in answer to his question. Maybe they hoped to find something better then gave up and went back to it.”

  Yet something about Gower’s bonanza didn’t add up. “Hang on, Sash,” I muttered. “When you think about it...”

  “‘Aaarrr, me boy! It’s the thinkin’ an’ the drinkin’ what’ll currrrdle your brain,’ me granddad always says. “‘And especially the thinkin’.”

  “Does he now. You know what, though. I don’t think old Gower came here much at all. That quartz vein is rich enough to have made him a wealthy man – if he’d ripped it all out in one go. So why didn’t he do it?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he didn’t like workin’ in these old tunnels.”

  “And you might be right. But from what I’ve heard he was an eccentric old coot. Maybe he wasn’t interested in bein’ wealthy. Maybe he only came down here when he needed a bit of capital.”

  “What. You mean like getting money from a bank account or something?”

  “Yeah. Like a bank account.”

  “That’s a crazy idea, Casey,” Sash muttered, referring back to my earlier suggestion of Gower’s frugality.

  “Perhaps so. But perhaps he was crazy enough to be content with his life. Perhaps he wasn’t interested in bein’ rich.”