"I suppose the workings below are just like this?" said Geoffrey. "Just the same, sir," was the eager reply; "and if you'd like to give up now, we could inspect this drive for a few hundred yards, and then go back. It's rather dangerous, though, for there have been some falls from the roof, and the galleries are like a net." "But I don't want to give up," said Geoffrey, laughing, "and am ready as soon as ever you like." "I never got any one to get down farther than this," said the manager, who started again, descending in silence, broken only by the occasional echoing whirr of the ascending and descending buckets, and the hiss and splash of the falling water. The heat seemed to increase, and the depth might have been miles, so endless seemed the ladders, and so tedious the descent. "Give me a word if you feel likely to let go," said Geoffrey's guide just when they were on one of the wettest, weakest, and most slippery ladders of the descent. "There was a man once fell off this very ladder, and knocked off the man below him as well." "Were they hurt?" said Geoffrey. "Don't suppose as they were," was the cool reply. "They broke through platform after platform, for the woodwork was very rotten just then. They couldn't have known any thing after they fell, for they were quite dead when they got them up. It was a gashly job." "Pleasant incident to relate now," thought Geoffrey. Then aloud--"You don't often have accidents?" "Well, not very. We get a fall of rock sometimes, or a ladder breaks, or a man falls down the shaft. Now and then, too, there's a bit of an accident with the powder when they are blasting. But we do pretty well. We're not like your coal-mining folks, with their safety-lamps and gas." "The mines are, of course, free from foul air?" "Oh, yes; sweet as a nut." "But how much farther is it?" said Geoffrey. "Surely we've come down a thousand feet." "Well, yes; I suppose we have," said the man, coolly. "I don't think there's more than a half-dozen more ladders. Yes, seven," he said. These were steadily climbed down, but seemed the longest of them all. At last, however, they stood beside the great sump or water-cistern, which received the end of the vast pumping apparatus, all of which Geoffrey carefully examined with a look of disgust at its primitive character and clumsiness. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. PENGELLY--MINER. "I should just like to shake hands with you, sir," said Geoffrey's guide, wiping his hand carefully upon his flannel trousers after using his fingers to snuff both candles. "I never thought you'd come down half-way--that I didn't. You're a plucked un, sir. That's about what you are, if you'll excuse me." Geoffrey laughed, and shook hands with his guide, finding that he had risen wonderfully in the man's estimation, the manager looking at him quite admiringly. "My name's Curnow," he said, "Richard Curnow, and I'd like to see you again, sir. Now what can I show you?"