"The upper mouth you speak of, Michael, is about fifty feet below where we stand; surely, the tide could never reach it, even at full flood?" "But who will venture down to see?" asked Treherne, almost with a grin on his hard old visage. "I shall!" "You, Mr. Trevelyan--you, sur?" "Yes." "Dare you go down, Trevelyan, with that terrible sound in your ears?" asked the General, and all present murmured the same thing, save Sybil's servants, who moaned and wrung their hands. "Dare I go down?" repeated Audley, "when a woman is in the case--a lady--Sybil Devereaux! To whom are you talking, General? Have I not for a joke taken a letter to the Devil's Post Office, and will I shrink for this?" he asked, referring to the deep and dangerous chasm at Kinance Cove, where the sea bellows for ever with a thundering sound, and from time to time hurls a column of water furiously through an aperture, when those who are adventurous enough to descend in the dark and deliver a letter, as if to the presiding Genius of the place, will find it rudely torn from their fingers by an inward current of air, accompanying the reflux of the sea. "We have blocks and tackle with us," continued Audley; "rig them to poles laid across the shaft, and by Jove, I'll go down with a lantern; quick, my lads, for God's sake lose no time!" "Are you not afraid of gas--or foul air, Trevelyan?" asked the General. "I don't mean to go to the bottom." "Of course not; but if the rope should break?" "In that case, it won't matter what I meet with," was the grimly significant reply; "but be careful, my good fellows, for I trust my life to you in this instance." "If the tackle did break, thee'd soon be in jowds" (_i.e._, pieces), said Treherne, with a saturnine smile. An oar and a stout pole, which two of the party carried, were laid across the mouth of the shaft. A double-sheaved block was securely lashed to them; a strong rope was rove through the sheaves, and a species of cradle was formed for the adventurous Audley Trevelyan. Long familiar with his native rocks, the latter when a bold boy, had clambered by Bodrigan's Leap at Portmellin,* when seeking for puffins' nests, and could look without shrinking from the steeps of Gurnard's Head, Tol Pedn Penwith, and the fantastic cliffs of Tintagel. He had been doted on by the miners, with whom he had often descended the deepest shafts, clad like themselves in flannel shirt and trousers. Thus attired, he had explored the vast levels and silent galleries by the dim light of a feeble candle, while, as Sybil told of Denzil, he could hear the roar of the Atlantic over his head, and the boulders dashed by its force on the bluffs of the Land's End; and thence beyond, in levels half a mile out at sea, where the passing ships glided like silent phantoms many a fathom far above where he wandered.