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Quickly, and before quarter of the distance to the adit mouth was traversed, it gurgled up to his waist, swept him off his legs, and hurled him against projecting rocks.
"So disrespectful as he was, too and to the likes of you! Well! I've known Eli Tregarthen forty year, and if any man had come and told me " "The worst is, we have wasted an afternoon," said Sir Cæsar, easily. "But since we are here, with half-an-hour to spare before sunset, what do you say to showing me the adit?" "The adit, sir?"
Here the water, which in other parts of the adit flowed along the bottom, ran down the walls and spirted in fine streams from the almost invisible crevices of the rock, thus betraying at once the proximity and the power of the pent-up water. "What think'ee now, my son?" asked an elderly man who stood at Maggot's elbow.
But he only possessed the half-knowledge of the working miner, and whilst shunning the plague-stricken quarry, adopted the more laborious method of making an adit to strike the deposit. He succeeded, to perish miserably in the hour when he saw himself a millionaire. Was this a portent of the fate about to overtake the latest comers? Jenks, of course, stood up.
He made a noise that echoed through the adit and, worse than all, the pistol shot out of his hand. He felt for but could not find it, and for a few moments lay still with tingling nerves. Daly must have heard him and was, no doubt, crouching in the dark, ready to shoot. He tried again to find the pistol, and then with an effort pulled himself together.
Indeed, Saunders and Devine were never sure how they contrived to keep pace with him; but they did it for the credit of their manhood, which would not allow them to be beaten by a Britisher. At nights their hands and backs were distressfully sore, but the adit they drove crept on steadily along the dip of the lode.
This was all I could learn: but I am disposed to believe, that the main stream of the Bahar el Abiud cannot have its source in the same latitude with that of the Adit, because it commenced its rise, at least, this year, about twenty days sooner than did the Adit, and the different color of its waters proves that it flows through a tract differing in quality of soil from that through which passes the Adit.
Half an hour's strenuous and cautious worming, and a thin trickle of light glimmered ahead. He turned and worked his way back at once. There was no slit opposite the one he had tried, but presently, half-way up the well, he made out an opening like the mouth of a small adit. His back had been to it as he came down, and so he had missed it.
After witnessing this process, we visited the mine itself, which outcropped near the apex of the hill, about a thousand feet above the furnaces. It was then, and is now, a most valuable mine. The adit of the mine was at the apex of the hill, which drooped off to the north.
In the course of driving an adit in one of the lead-mines, in the year 1770, the workmen were struck by the hollow sound given forth by the rock, and, on investigation, they found an immense grotto or fissure, of which the entrance was so much blocked up by ice that they had much difficulty in sliding down by means of ropes.
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