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A strike of really rich ore would, he knew, send the Grenfell Consolidated up, and he had worked since morning in a state of tense anticipation, for the signs had been propitious. He contrived to sit still for some minutes, and then stood up resolutely. "You may wait as long as you like," he said. "I'm going back to the adit now."
When Thurston reached the mouth of the adit, he turned and looked down upon the poor climbing meadows under the great shoulder of the Fell. Beyond these, a few weatherbeaten buildings, forming a rude quadrangle pierced by one tall archway, stood beside a tarn that winked like polished steel. He sighed as his glance rested upon them.
As a matter of fact, a reef or lode mine is of almost as much immediate use to a poor man as a sewing-machine would be to a naked savage. He cannot get out the ore without sinking a shaft or driving an adit, which, in the general way, means the hiring of labor and the purchase of costly machines.
With the assistance of balancing weights, the immense arms of the engine lifted, with mathematical precision, two square timbers, the one spliced out to the length of a thousand, the other twelve hundred feet, which fell back again by their own weight: these were the pumping-rods, which lifted the water four hundred feet to the mouth of a tunnel, or adit, which carried it a mile and a quarter through the mountain, and discharged it in the creek above the stamping-mill.
He desired then and there to explore it, and having examined the entrance either because the adit itself is dark, or as a precaution in the gathering dusk, he sent Leggo back to the farmhouse to fetch a lantern.
"Guess you can buy new ones in Montreal," said the miner. "You can," agreed Weston, "when you have the money. The trouble is, I haven't. Saunders, I'm going back for those clothes." They went with him to the mouth of the adit and saw the shack outlined against a dazzling blaze.
In process of time, the miner works away all the lode down to the sea-level, and must sink the shaft deeper perhaps ten or twenty fathoms where new levels are driven horizontally "on the lode," and water accumulates which must be pumped up to the Adit level, whence it escapes to the sea.
There was nothing worthy of the name of a beach at the place, save a little piece of rugged ground near the adit mouth, which could be reached only by a zigzag path on the face of the almost perpendicular precipice. Arrived here, each man lighted a candle, wrapped the customary piece of wet clay round the middle of it, and entered the narrow tunnel.
Depth of Adit fifty fathoms m depth below Adit ninety fathoms. Pumps, whims, engines, etcetera, in good working order m little expense Landowners, Messrs. m Manager at the Mine, Captain Trembleforem m thirteen men, four females, and two boys m water wheels stamps m Managing Director, George Augustus Clearemout, Esquire, 99 New Gull Street, London m Secretary, John Muddle, Esquire ahem "
The three men would lower themselves by rope-ladders I reckon old Leggo had learnt the trick of it in by-gone days when the Free-traders used the adit and get down upon a strip of firm shingle at the inner end of the cave; and there Sam Leggo would hold the lantern while his father and Phil Cara blazed away.
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