Gavin kept his face expressionless. ‘I am not sure he is ready to eat in civilised company.’
Lang raised shaggy eyebrows. ‘How so?’
Gavin explained how Jason had come to them. Lang smiled, saying nothing. He made it his business to know what was going on in the world about him and was already familiar with the story. He thought it would be interesting to see the boy for himself.
‘Bring him anyway,’ he said. ‘It will be interesting to ask him about his experiences.’
‘If you can get him to talk about them you will have done better than we have,’ Gavin said.
But it was not himself the miner had in mind to ask the questions of Jason. ‘It will also give him an opportunity to meet someone of his own age,’ Lang said. ‘My son Stefan.’
He smiled genially and stroked his whiskers. Let the two boys make friends with each other and I shall soon know all there is to know about him. About Matlock, too, perhaps.
‘Perhaps you would like to take a look around the mine before you return to your hotel?’ he suggested.
The two men rode down the hill side by side, Walter Lang on a grey the size of a war horse, Gavin astride the bay gelding that had brought him from Whitby Downs.
The miners’ cottages were clustered around a spring about half a mile from the main workings but had already begun to extend up the hill towards the site of the mine itself. The tiny buildings were mostly of wattle and daub construction, white-washed and thatched with straw. Bags covered the open window spaces and blew gently in the wind.
‘They have no glass,’ Lang explained as they rode past. ‘Glass is expensive, not so?’ His barking laugh was as hard as his eyes. ‘At least the bags help to keep out the flies.’
‘Must be hot as Hades, this time of year,’ Gavin commented.
‘As ovens,’ Lang agreed. ‘Some of the men have built their houses partly underground to try and get away from the heat. One or two wanted to dig burrows along the creek bank as they have done at the Burra Burra mine further north but I would not allow it. Too much danger of disease, you understand.’
As they approached the mine workings they passed long tables strewn with mounds of broken rock. Gangs of barefoot boys clustered around the tables, picking over the lumps with a speed and dexterity that Gavin found extraordinary.
‘Mine pickers,’ Lang explained in his lordly way. ‘We pay them six shillings a week to separate the ore from the dross.’
Lang reined in by a half-built chimney spiked with scaffolding around which a gang of men laboured furiously. From a large brick building fifty yards away came the thunder of machinery, the constant hiss of steam that hid its roof in a swirling grey cloud. ‘Smelt house.’ Lang had to shout to be heard above the din of the machinery. ‘We refine our own copper here.’
‘What is the chimney for?’
‘The mine output has been falling,’ Lang explained. ‘There is too much water. We have bought a pump and condenser from England to pump the mine out. It should be operating in June. Then we can follow the lode deeper.’
‘So we cannot see the new workings now?’ Gavin asked.
‘They do not exist.’
‘And the present ones?’
‘You can see them, certainly. But it will be dark and dirty and in some parts dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘There are holes, flooded sections … Mining is dangerous, Mr Matlock. Physically and financially. As many speculators have learned to their cost.’
‘So I can see nothing?’
‘Would you know what you were looking at if you could?’
‘Perhaps not.’ He could see the frenzied activity that surged about him; perhaps that was all he needed to see.
‘This town is going ahead,’ Lang told him. ‘Since we have been in correspondence for so long I would like to make you the first offer to join Penrose and myself in our new extension. But you understand it is not our most important concern. Mr Penrose owns another mine—Wheal Sennen—and I also have other interests. Besides, if you feel you would rather not join us I am sure there will be many other takers.’
Gavin suspected Lang was right but was uneasy at investing so much money in a venture which he understood so little and which, at this stage at least, he could not even see. Lang was looking for five thousand pounds. It was a fortune. There was another problem, too. Lang’s bluntness grated. Gavin was used to being in charge of his own affairs; how would he feel investing money in an operation where this man would be calling the shots?
‘I should like to meet Mr Penrose,’ he said.
‘You shall. At dinner.’
Joshua Penrose turned out to be a garrulous, red-faced Cornishman of perhaps fifty, not tall, with broad shoulders and a winning smile.
‘Welcome to Kapunda, Mr Matlock,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Matlock, of course.’ Bowing.
‘You will pardon Mrs Lang’s absence,’ Lang told Asta. ‘I own another house at Langmeil, in the Barossa Valley, and she seldom comes to Kapunda.’
Penrose winked at her. ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Matlock, that you will also have to put up with me by myself since there is no Mrs Penrose at all.’
‘You are a widower?’
‘Bachelor, ma’am. Could never find a woman to take me.’
They went in to dinner: Lang at the head of the large mahogany table, Gavin and Asta on either side of him, Penrose next to Asta and the boys Jason Hallam and Stefan Lang at the foot.
‘I hope you are enjoying the Miners Arms?’ Penrose smiled ironically.
‘We are used to plain living,’ Asta told him.
‘You’ll get that at the Miners Arms, sure enough.’ He stared at her frankly, moist lip and lively eye. A bachelor he might be but one who evidently enjoyed the company of women. More than their company, perhaps. ‘There is talk of a new hotel,’ he told them, ‘but that won’t be for a while yet. Always assuming they can get a licence for it.’
‘They will get it,’ Lang said. ‘Mr Whittaker is behind the venture and he is no fool.’ He turned to Gavin. ‘Mr Whittaker runs the store and post office. He is one of our leading businessmen.’
‘I thought you were that,’ Gavin said.
‘I have certain interests,’ Lang conceded. ‘It is necessary to diversify to survive, is that not so?’
‘Survive?’ Penrose laughed, face redder than ever. He raised the glass he held and tipped its contents down his throat. ‘Mr Lang owns half the Barossa Valley.’
‘You, of course, are the true adventurers.’ Lang addressed Gavin as he had all evening; Asta was a guest at his table but not, it seemed, to be included in his conversation. ‘Living on the very frontiers of civilisation.’
‘It can be basic living, at times,’ Gavin acknowledged.
‘There is a Lutheran pastor wishes to minister to the natives in your area,’ Lang said.
Gavin had little time for ministers, Lutheran or otherwise. ‘I would not advise it.’
‘Is it true you lived with the natives?’ Stefan asked Jason.
In this grand house, seated at the elaborately laid table, Jason felt as out of place as a pig in a tree. He looked closely at the youth facing him, unsure whether to respond to this initial overture or not.
‘Yes,’ he said cautiously.
‘What was it like?’
There was no way of explaining what he had learnt and experienced during his time with the nunga. He compromised. ‘It was different.’
‘Different in what way?’ Stefan was slightly built, perhaps a year younger than Jason, with brown eyes and a deeply cleft chin.
‘Nothing like this,’ Jason said, gesturing at the room. ‘They don’t have houses at all.’
Stefan’s eyes grew round. ‘Where do they sleep, then?’
‘On the ground. It’s not too bad, when you get used to it.’
‘And where you are now … Do you sleep on the ground there, too?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What’s it like?’
/>
‘Oh,’ Jason said airily, thinking of the hay barn in which he slept. ‘Like this. Only larger,’ he added.
‘Do you have mines there?’
Jason was not prepared to admit to the complete absence of mines in the area of Whitby Downs. ‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘Have you ever been down a mine?’
‘No.’
Stefan glanced cautiously up the table but the other diners were listening to one of Joshua Penrose’s anecdotes and were paying them no attention. He leant across the table. ‘Would you like to?’
‘Can you arrange that?’
‘Of course. I go down all the time. My father doesn’t know. He’d stop me if he did.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘He says it’s too dangerous.’
Just the challenge Jason needed.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down the mine.’
The banshee howl of the mine whistle fractured the early morning air as Jason slipped out of the hotel and made his way along the lane towards the clutter of mine buildings.
They had agreed to meet at the site of the new chimney. A team of men was already at work. Jason expected that any moment someone would ask him what he was doing but no-one took any notice of him.
He looked about him. Spindly wooden gantries, connected to each other by a spider’s web of ropes and pulleys, leant this way and that like a party of drunks. Around the workings piles of dirt several times higher than the buildings rose into the early morning sunlight. Over everything was an air of ferocious and focused energy the like of which Jason had never witnessed before. Everyone was working as fast as they could and, watching the scurrying, purposeful figures, he felt something of their excitement stir in him.
‘I wondered if you’d come.’
He turned: Stefan stood grinning at him. He was holding two resin hardened hats, each with a tallow candle secured to the brim.
‘What do we want the hats for?’
‘In case we hit our heads.’
The shaft was a square of darkness descending into the earth.
‘How deep is it?’ Jason did not often feel apprehensive but did so now.
‘Fifteen fathoms.’
Ninety feet … He had climbed a lot higher on the Kitty’s rigging but there he had been able to see what he was doing. Here it was the darkness rather than the depth that troubled him.
‘They wanted to go deeper but they hit water. They’ve brought out an engine from England. When it’s working they’ll be able to pump out the water, then they can go further down.’
‘Why should they do that?’
‘Because that’s where the best ore is.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My father says so.’
How does he know? Jason wanted to ask but did not.
‘Let’s go down,’ Stefan said.
‘How?’ Sounding nervous despite his efforts.
‘Down the ladder, of course.’ Stefan looked at him. ‘You scared?’
‘No.’ But was.
Stefan swung himself over the lip of the shaft and climbed out of sight. Jason hastened to follow him. The blackness of the shaft was a horror to him but it would be a hundred times worse if he had to grope his way down alone. Of course there was nothing to make him go at all but not for the world would he back off now.
He lowered himself backwards over the edge of the shaft, feeling the depths sucking at him. His arms and stomach were trembling, his feet groping for the first rungs of the ladder fastened to the timber framework of the shaft.
He tested the first rung nervously. It felt secure enough. He lowered himself, feet groping, hands groping, until he found the next rung. His breath was loud in the narrow shaft. Below him was a rustle of diminishing sound as Stefan clambered swiftly down the ladder.
Jason gritted his teeth and followed, foot by foot, yard by yard.
It grew dark, utterly dark. He could see nothing at all. The weight of the blackness pressed upon him. He craned his head to look upwards, trying to gauge how far he had come. Above him the rectangle of light shone with a painful brilliance. It was difficult to judge how far away it was; certainly not as far as he had hoped.
No help for it. He went on down. Slowly his arms and legs got more into the rhythm of things, panic ebbing as he went.
The air was warmer here, stagnant, as though it had been lying at these depths for a very long time. It was wetter, too, the ladder’s rungs slippery with moisture. Jason looked down and saw a faint flicker of light far away in the depths of the earth. He hoped it marked the bottom of the shaft. He went on, the flickering light drew nearer, and as he came to it realised that it was not the bottom at all but the entrance to a horizontal tunnel opening up from the main shaft.
Stefan was there, candle burning on the brim of the hat that he was wearing. Jason stepped into the tunnel beside him. Beneath their feet the shaft continued its silent plunge into darkness.
‘Let me light your candle …’
They moved down the tunnel, Stefan leading. The roof was low and they had to crouch almost double to get along. Before they had covered fifty yards Jason’s back muscles had begun to protest at the unnatural way of walking.
Imprisoned in his fluttering cone of light, Jason heard sounds of activity emerge from the tunnel ahead of them. The sounds grew louder until the tunnel opened into a chamber hewn from the rock and Jason saw about him the smoky flame of candles and hunched, scurrying shapes of miners working. Picks rang on rock, boots clattered, loads of broken stone were shovelled into wheeled skips. The din was as absolute as the silence that had preceded it. There was dust as well as noise; it swirled about them, irritating eyes and throats, casting a grey pall across the candlelight.
It was like arriving in hell.
Once again Jason was mesmerised by the frenetic movements of the miners: everyone active, everyone knowing what he was doing. Hell it might be but it excited him, the idea of extracting riches from the rock.
‘How do they know what they’re doing?’ He had to shout to be heard above the din.
‘They know.’
Which was no answer.
‘How did anyone know the copper was here?’
‘They found the lode on the surface and followed it down.’
A dark oval in the rock wall on the far side of the chamber showed where the tunnel continued. Stefan gestured towards it.
‘We’ll go through there in a minute.’
Jason was anxious to explore further. ‘Why not now?’
‘Because they’ll be blasting soon to bring down more rock.’
A whistle blew, the sound penetrating in the confined space. A number of figures emerged from the far tunnel. The men took cover. Activity ceased. They waited for what seemed a long time.
‘What—’ Jason began and the earth shook.
The flames of the candles gusted sideways. A cloud of dust and smoke jetted out of the tunnel opening, the dull thud of the detonation followed by a clatter of falling stone. Acrid fumes billowed through the chamber and set them coughing.
‘Come on,’ Stefan urged, ‘before they start working in there.’
Without waiting for an answer he got to his feet, ran across the chamber and disappeared into the opening, Jason hard on his heels.
The fumes were far worse inside the tunnel but they groped their way along until they reached the place where the explosives had brought down the rock. The charges had been placed in a side gallery that was now half-filled with fallen stone. Light from the candles played over the rock’s gleaming surface.
‘How do we get through there?’ Jason wondered.
‘We don’t,’ Stefan told him. ‘We go straight on down the tunnel.’
‘Where does it take us?’
‘To some old workings. I often go there. Come on!’
On the other side of the chamber the tunnel went on, dipping and ducking, splitting and re-splitting into side workings so confused and extensive
that it seemed a marvel to Jason that the rock roof above them had not collapsed long ago.
They came to another shaft and, looking up, saw daylight far above their heads.
‘One of the first shafts,’ Stefan said. ‘No-one’s worked it for years.’
Jason knew he would have been lost here within minutes but Stefan made his way through the maze with the confidence of one who had been here many times before.
The Neu Preussen mine had been open only five years yet already these early workings, abandoned after the ore had been stripped from them, had begun to revert to the rock. The air tasted dead on their tongues, piles of fallen stone lay at intervals along the deserted tunnels, the timber shoring that held up the roof had begun to buckle under the unrelenting pressure of the hundred feet of rock and earth above them.
The process was still continuing; occasionally, above the sound of his own breathing, Jason heard a creak, a groan, from the roof to show that up there the earth was still working.
‘Is it safe?’
Stefan’s laugh rang off the rock walls. ‘Of course it’s not safe. That’s what’s exciting about it.’
It was exciting; frightening, too. Stefan was right: the sense of fear caused some of the excitement yet there was more to it than that, a sense of adventure that had nothing to do with danger. Riches that had lain undisturbed for millions of years … Jason was excited by the idea that you could find them and by discipline, knowledge and determination bring them into the light. The thought had ignited a slow fuse within him.
‘Look at this,’ Stefan said.
On the far side of the chamber there was an opening in the ground. Jason went cautiously to the edge and looked down. A shaft, sides lined with timber, plunged vertically downwards. Twenty feet beneath them reflected candlelight danced on the sullen surface of water.
‘This is as low as we can get until the engine’s running,’ Stefan whispered, the sound magnified by the closeness of the rock walls about them. ‘Below this level everything’s flooded.’ He leaned right out over the edge of the shaft, staring down at the mirror of the water below them. ‘Imagine what it would be like to fall in there. You wouldn’t get out in a hurry.’
A Far Country Page 21
