Read Online The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam - Free Book Online

shone it at the roof, picked out small glitters and spangles like frosted cobwebs.
    â€œIs it real silver?”
    â€œI’d say so.”
    â€œAlready? But we can’t be that far down inside?”
    â€œThe mines over Alston you can see the silver from the very pit-head. Just by looking through the bars of the grille-thing at the entrance. We went at our school. For history.”
    â€œCan we get some? Why did they leave it?”
    â€œNot worth picking out, this lot. The stuff worth having is deep down. Miles down. They used to take folks down there for jaunts in the old days. All dolled-up folks. Rich folks. Used to go down for kicks, wrapped in fancy dustsheets to see the poor miners slaving away. Used to travel down in the little wagons. Sat on little benches, screaming and hugging each other like in a ghost train.”
    â€œWhy can’t we go down?”
    â€œDon’t be soft. It’s not maintained now. It’s probably all fell in further off. We’d get down there and there’d be a shift and we be gonners. I’se not daft.”
    â€œWhat’s a shift?”
    â€œIt’s what you get round here. Limestone. Ask yon James. It’ll be in his book. It was a shift when my grandad flattened his leg. In Light Trees Home Field. It just suddenly rippled about and threw him down. Like someone moving about under blankets—some giant—he said. Rocks all came tumbling. They call them earthquakes in Japan. Hey—look. Here we are.”
    Walking one behind the other, one hand to the tunnel wall and the torch jerking here and there, Bell’s foot had come up against something that wasn’t rock.
    â€œHere’s the rails. Feel.”
    â€œThey’re not wood. They clank.”
    â€œThey didn’t
stay
wood. That was in old ancient times. This mine was in business not that long since. It only stopped when Grandad was a lad. It got too expensive and there was a war and that. Look.”
    The torch shone on the back of a little wagon. It was attached to another, and another. A little string of them.
    Propped against the side of one was a fine large pick and a spade.
    â€œJust left here. Just
left
. Look here—”
    There were cans and buckets and a couple of spidery, rusty lanterns and two or three tin mugs.
    â€œMy—they must have left in a hurry. Fancy leaving all this when they was all poor and going to be out of jobs. What was that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNoise like a sort of a shower.”
    â€œI didn’t hear.”
    â€œA sort of rumble. Oh!”
    From behind them down the tunnel there came a long swishing noise. A sort of sigh, then silence.
    â€œIt sounded like water or something,” said Harry.
    â€œNo. It’ll not be water. It’s dry enough.”
    â€œI heard your grandad say ‘The drier on top’—”
    â€œAye, I know, ‘the wetter below’. But that’s the underground rivers. There’s no rivers down here. It’s a ship-shape mine. It’s dry as dry. Look.” He shone the torch along the slope of the floor, which was dry, though in the two runnels the rails were set in was a thick gluey white liquid like condensed milk.
    â€œI don’t like look of yon,” said Harry. Before Bell could correct the yon, there came from down the tunnel a very long and hostile swish and hiss—a sound like a great serpent stirring towards them from the bottom of the mine. Then a thundering long rumble, and a puff of something. They clung to the wagon, and their eyes and noses stung and they began to cough. After what seemed a long time the air cleared, and there was complete silence.
    â€œWhat was it Bell?”
    â€œWe’d best go see.”
    They walked the little way back again to the hole they had dropped through, feeling the wall as it curved round and slightly down, and came to where they had started out. A solid barrier of earth and rocks completely