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"Yes, you shall go with me presently, if you wish it." A fresh corve was fitted, and the gear put in order. The viewer stepped in, there were two other volunteers. Dick followed. Each person had a safety lamp in his hand. They went down very slowly, for it was probable that the shaft itself might be injured.
For as long before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two hundred years ago an annual rental of L5 was substituted for the heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered up till the '45.
Instead of the old corve or basket, an iron safety-cage had been introduced, sliding up and down on steel bars, resembling indeed a perpendicular rail-road. Wonderfully changed was the appearance of the mine itself.
They had not got far when a stream of water, which had burst out of the side, came pouring down on them, and almost filled the corve. The rushing sound, and the force with which the water fell, deafened and confused them. Still they persevered. Hot air, and noxious vapours, and steam, and smoke came rushing up. They went down through it all. Some of their fellow-creatures might be below.
There were rows of small wagons or trucks on them, and as the huge arms lifted up a corve, or basket, it was emptied into the wagon till they were filled, and then away they started, some of them without engines, down an inclined plane towards the river.
The corve, or basket, by which the men went up and down the shaft, had been knocked to pieces, and even the machinery over the pit had been injured. Of all those working below it was believed that not one could have escaped. Dick's heart sickened when he heard this. His father, his eldest brother, and his friend, David Adams, were all below.
The position was so obviously suited for a sentry post that it was probably entrenched in prehistoric times. Two small streams, the Byle brook and the Steeple brook, run northwards on each side of the mount, uniting just below it to form the Corve River.
Samuel drew a breath of the pure morning air, and gazed round at the blue sky and glorious sun, as he stepped off into the corve, in which, with many others, he was to descend the shaft. Bill Hagger, who had completely recovered from his accident, and was now a hewer, was among his companions. Bill, unhappily, was not among those who willingly listened to the missionary.
In a commanding voice Stephenson ordered the engineman to lower him down the shaft in the corve. There was peril, it might be death, before him, but he must go. He was soon at the bottom, and in the midst of the men, who were paralysed by the danger which threatened the lives of all in the pit.
It was about three yards square, and was to be about four feet six inches back under the bed of coal, he began by hewing away about two feet six inches from the ground and working upwards, cutting out the coal with his pick, shovelling it into a large corve or basket which stood at hand ready for the reception of the lumps.
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