“My courage must be none,” said I, “if I would not go where you go, sir.”

He said no more, but signed to me to lift a heavy wooden corb with an iron loop across it, and sunk in a little pit of earth, a yard or so from the mouth of the shaft.  I raised it, and by his direction dropped it into the throat of the shaft, where it hung and shook from a great cross-beam laid at the level of the earth.  A very stout thick rope was fastened to the handle of the corb, and ran across a pulley hanging from the centre of the beam, and thence out of sight in the nether places.

“I will first descend,” he said; “your weight is too great for safety.  When the bucket comes up again, follow me, if your heart is good.”

Then he whistled down, with a quick sharp noise, and a whistle from below replied; and he clomb into the vehicle, and the rope ran through the pulley, and Uncle Ben went merrily down, and was out of sight, before I had time to think of him.

Now being left on the bank like that, and in full sight of the goodly heaven, I wrestled hard with my flesh and blood, about going down into the pit-hole.  And but for the pale shame of the thing, that a white-headed man should adventure so, and green youth doubt about it, never could I have made up my mind; for I do love air and heaven.  However, at last up came the bucket; and with a short sad prayer I went into whatever might happen.

My teeth would chatter, do all I could; but the strength of my arms was with me; and by them I held on the grimy rope, and so eased the foot of the corb, which threatened to go away fathoms under me.  Of course I should still have been safe enough, being like an egg in an egg-cup, too big to care for the bottom; still I wished that all should be done, in good order, without excitement.

The scoopings of the side grew black, and the patch of sky above more blue, as with many thoughts of Lorna, a long way underground I sank.  Then I was fetched up at the bottom with a jerk and rattle; and but for holding by the rope so, must have tumbled over.  Two great torches of bale-resin showed me all the darkness, one being held by Uncle Ben and the other by a short square man with a face which seemed well-known to me.

“Hail to the world of gold, John Ridd,” said Master Huckaback, smiling in the old dry manner; “bigger coward never came down the shaft, now did he, Carfax?”

“They be all alike,” said the short square man, “fust time as they doos it.”

“May I go to heaven,” I cried, “which is a thing quite out of sight”—­for I always have a vein of humour, too small to be followed by any one—­“if ever again of my own accord I go so far away from it!” Uncle Ben grinned less at this than at the way I knocked my shin in getting out of the bucket; and as for Master Carfax, he would not even deign to smile.  And he seemed to look upon my entrance as an interloping.