said Barney. “Bin more’n two hunnert years and it still be standin’. That be good Cornish buildin’ ye know.”
After climbing over broken bricks and slopping through wet ferns and puddles Dad stopped to pull vines away from the wall to let us pass. Behind the vines was an old piece of rusted equipment. It was a huge drum, covered in rust, with jagged teeth around the sides. Pushed up against it was a bunch of long iron rods, each with a large iron ball at its foot. Everything dripped and ran with moisture. Water swirled around our feet.
“Aye!” said Barney, stopping and puffing on his pipe. How did he keep it going in this rain I wondered? “That be the crusher I‘m thinkin’. Ye kin see the crushin’ rods there though they be right rusty.”
“We must be near the south end by now” said Dad, looking at the map and gazing around the ruins. We skirted a couple of large pools filled with slimy water, their surface coated in purple algae. “The sulphur pits I be wagerin’” muttered Barney. “They be right deep so don’t be fallin’ in mind ye.”
“Ok!” said Dad. “We’re at the southern corner.” We could all see the damaged corner wall and, beyond it through the rain, the rocky jut of Long Nose Point and the Rocks of Gold, and the thick spike of the lighthouse. Looming darkly in the background, barely visible through the mist and rain, was the Gannett.
“Rohan’s map shows that the tunnel, if there is one, is somewhere close by this end of the factory” said Dad. “But not right at the corner. The map shows that the tunnel starts a few metres back along the eastern wall. Let’s spread out and see what we can find. Remember. We’re looking for some type of opening or trap door, in the wall or in the floor. It might be of brick or cast iron, or even timber, but whatever it is it will be rotten. Look closely and give everything a good knock to see if it’s hollow. And be careful.”
We spread out along the wall. Everyone flicked on their torches because of the gloom, and we picked up the nearest chunk of wood we could find. For the next two hours we searched on both sides of the wall. The wall was almost completely collapsed and we found no tunnel or trapdoor anywhere. George had a false alarm when she found an old cupboard, but even it was empty. We pulled vines and grass away from the ruins and even moved piles of old bricks but there was nothing under them, only an old, scarred stone floor. And it continued to rain. Icy cold streams showered us when we pulled down the vines, and water ran around our feet in torrents. Away to our right the flare of the lighthouse cut through the murk at intervals of about 20 seconds. If anything it seemed to make it darker. At midday Dad stopped the search and stood up, rubbing his back. “We’re not having any luck” he said. “Let’s have some lunch and a think about it. Maybe there’s a better way.”
We sat down in the shelter of the remaining corner wall. It gave us a little cover from the rain and it was quieter, being away from the wind. As we munched on the chocolate and sipped our water we were all a bit dejected. It was all just a gamble anyhow. Dad has pointed that out last night. The map was two hundred and fifty years old, and so were the ruins. There might not even be a tunnel. And everything was so old and wrecked we might not find it anyway.
We sat and stared forlornly at the ruins. We were dry where we sat, and protected from the wind, but beyond the wall the rain pounded down. “Listen to that” said Charlie. “It sounds like a waterfall. The water must be pouring down the cliff.” We all stopped eating and listened. Sure enough, somewhere close by we could hear the rush of water.
“Probably lots of waterfalls here, it rains so much” muttered George.
“Well I’ll be.” We turned and looked at Barney and Dad. They were staring at each other, their faces excited. “I think the lass may have it do ye think?” asked Barney. Dad and Barney jumped to their feet.
“Look!” said Dad, his voice loud “Look where you’re sitting. It’s dry. All morning we’ve been slogging through water up to our ankles and the old factory was full of water as well. But not here! Why not in this corner? Because water always seeks the easiest path. If we want to find the tunnel, we follow the water!”
Dad turned and looked over the broken bricks of the old wall and down the slope towards Long Nose Point. “We need to search outside the factory. The sound of the water tells us it’s flowing in that direction” he said, pointing down the hill. “Let’s take another gander at those maps.”
Dad took off his rain jacket and laid it on the rough stone floor, with the inside up. Then he took the maps out of his backpack and spread them on top of the rain jacket. He put the naval map on top of Rohan’s map, as he had done before, and lined up the coastal landmarks and towns as best he could. There were a lot of differences. We saw that on our first examination of the maps. The coast was out of alignment, and the shape of headlands and bays was different. But the key difference we were concerned about was the location of the Powder Mill and the tunnel. Dad traced his finger across the page from Polperro to Looe and up to the Powder Mill.
“You can see that there’s a lot of variation between the two maps. I think we have to accept that the naval map is the more accurate of the two, but that’s not to say that it’s accurate in every aspect. As we saw with the siting of the mill.” His finger tapped on the map paper. “See here. The location of the Powder Mill on Rohan’s map, and the location of the ‘abandoned factory’ on the naval map, are roughly two to five hundred metres apart. I’m guessing that distance based on the scale shown on the naval map. But we don’t have any scale reference for Rohan’s map, so it could be one hundred metres, or it could be eight hundred metres. Let’s settle on two to five.”
Dad jiggled the maps a little to reposition them then pointed at the location of the powder mill on the naval map. “Here” he said. “You can see that the navy has marked the ‘abandoned factory’ as being further east – by say two or three hundred metres – when compared to Rohan’s map. If we accept that the navy map is the more accurate of the two, then Rohan’s map is incorrect in its location of the Powder Mill.” Dad paused and looked up. “Could it be possible that the entry to the tunnel is also incorrectly shown on Rohan’s Map. We shouldn’t see this as criticism of Rohan by the way. It may have been done deliberately, in case the map fell into the wrong hands.”
“I’m thinkin’ ye may be right Andrew” said Barney. “If ye be lookin’ at the naval map ye kin see all those toe-poe-graphic lines. They be showing the landfall, ye know, the hills and gullies and sech like, and they be showing the height o’ the land as it falls away te the sea. Ye kin see here that it falls right sharp from the old mill down te the Smugglers Cove. And we know the tunnel be goin’ in that direction. And as we know water will always be runnin’ down hill, followin’ the easy path so te say. I think if we were te follow the water then we’d be findin’ the entry te the tunnel. Right quick I’m thinkin’.”
“And we’ve heard the water running underground near the mill” Max’s voice was excited. “So the tunnel must be nearby.”
“Maybe not” said Dad. “Barney’s correct to point out the height lines. See here how the lines fall away to the east of the mill and form a shallow valley that runs towards Smugglers Cove. Then they rise again up over the top of Long Nose Point before they hit the cliffs overlooking the Shallows and the Maw. So any run off we can hear is heading first into the shallow dip to the east of the mill and then directly south towards Smugglers Cove.” He paused and peered closely at the maps. So did everyone else. Where was the tunnel entry? Dad tapped the map again with his finger. “And then you see where a split in the tunnel is marked, just to make things a little more difficult. You know, I have a feeling that it’s not just the naval map that’s inaccurate. I think both maps might be wrong about the location of the mill.”
Barney moved his finger to a spot just below the sharp jink in the topographic height lines that showed the start of the shallow valley. It was about three hundred metres south east of the mill. If the scale was correct. “I think we start here” he said. “I’m thinkin’ it be maybe fifty
or maybe a hunnert feet lower than where we’re standing, but close by the fall o’ the land and the run o’ the water.”
Dad looked at Barney. “But wouldn’t they have wanted something easy to access. They wouldn’t have wanted to carry barrels of powder for hundred of yards across the rough ground.”
Barney grimaced and took off his hat. He rubbed his head. It was covered in white stubble. “That mebbe so. But then needs be I’m thinkin’. Maybe it was te keep it secret like, so the Revenooer couldn’t be findin’ it.” We all stared expectantly at Dad.
“But then again, if the maps aren’t accurate, the tunnel could be a lot closer than we think. But let’s get going. Let’s move our search over to the east a little. We’ll start near the mill, to be certain, then move steadily further down the slope.” Dad ran his finger over the section of the map that showed the head of the small valley. “Everywhere in this area. Both sides of the valley.”
The ground below the old powder mill was rough and broken, covered in thick scrub and dangerously slippery. We collected our gear and climbed gingerly over the wall, back into the rain and wind. There was a steep drop just below the
The Ghost of Smugglers Run Page 15
