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.Tiny, bright, remote, caught in a narrow opening like the slot in the observatory dome: an oblong full of stars in blackness.He got up, forgetting about the candle, and began to run towards the stars.They moved, dancing, like the stars in the telescope field when the clockwork mechanism shuddered or when his eyes were very tired.They danced, and brightened.He came among them, and they spoke to him.The flames cast queer shadows on the blackened faces and brought queer lights out of the bright, living eyes.“Here, then, who’s that? Hanno?”“What were you doing up that old drift, mate?”“Hey, who is that?”“Who the devil, stop him—”“Hey, mate! Hold on!”He ran blind into the dark, back the way he had come.The lights followed him and he chased his own faint, huge shadow down the tunnel.When the shadow was swallowed by the old dark and the old silence came again he still stumbled on, stooping and groping so that he was oftenest on all fours or on his feet and one hand.At last he dropped down and lay huddled against the wall, his chest full of fire.Silence, dark.He found the candle end in the tin holder in his pocket, lighted it with the flint and steel, and by its glow found the vertical shaft not fifty feet from where he had stopped.He made his way back up to his camp.There he slept; woke and ate, and drank the last of his water; meant to get up and go seeking water again; fell asleep, or into a doze or daze, in which he dreamed of a voice speaking to him.“There you are.All right.Don’t startle.I’ll do you no harm.I said it wasn’t no knocker.Who ever heard of a knocker as tall as a man? Or who ever seen one, for that matter.They’re what you don’t see, mates, I said.And what we did see was a man, count on it.So what’s he doing in the mine, said they, and what if he’s a ghost, one of the lads that was caught when the house of water broke in the old south adit, maybe, come walking? Well then, I said, I’ll go see that.I never seen a ghost yet, for all I heard of them.I don’t care to see what’s not meant to be seen, like the knocker folk, but what harm to see Temon’s face again, or old Trip, haven’t I seen ’em in dreams, just the same, in the ends, working away with their faces sweating same as life? Why not? So I come along.But you’re no ghost, no miner.A deserter you might be, or a thief.Or are you out of your wits, is that it, poor man? Don’t fear.Hide if you like.What’s it to me? There’s room down here for you and me.Why are you hiding from the light of the sun?”“The soldiers.”“I thought so.”When the old man nodded, the candle bound to his forehead set light leaping over the roof of the stope.He squatted about ten feet from Guennar, his hands hanging between his knees.A bunch of candles and his pick, a short-handled, finely shaped tool, hung from his belt.His face and body, beneath the restless star of the candle, were rough shadows, earth-colored.“Let me stay here.”“Stay and welcome! Do I own the mine? Where did you come in, eh, the old drift above the river? That was luck to find that, and luck you turned this way in the crosscut, and didn’t go east instead.Eastward this level goes on to the caves.There’s great caves there; did you know it? Nobody knows but the miners.They opened up the caves before I was born, following the old lode that lay along here sunward.I seen the caves once, my dad took me, you should see this once, he says.See the world underneath the world.A room there was no end to.A cavern as deep as the sky, and a black stream falling into it, falling and falling till the light of the candle failed and couldn’t follow it, and still the water was falling on down into the pit.The sound of it came up like a whisper without an end, out of the dark.And on beyond that there’s other caves, and below.No end to them, maybe.Who knows? Cave under cave, and glittering with the barren crystal.It’s all barren stone, there.And all worked out here, years ago.It’s a safe enough hole you chose, mate, if you hadn’t come stumbling in on us.What was you after? Food? A human face?”“Water.”“No lack of that.Come on, I’ll show you.Beneath here in the lower level there’s all too many springs.You turned the wrong direction.I used to work down there, with the damned cold water up to my knees, before the vein ran out.A long time ago.Come on.”The old miner left him in his camp, after showing him where the spring rose and warning him not to follow down the watercourse, for the timbering would be rotted and a step or sound might bring the earth down.Down there all the timbers were covered with a deep glittering white fur, saltpeter perhaps, or a fungus: it was very strange, above the oily water.When he was alone again Guennar thought he had dreamed that white tunnel full of black water, and the visit of the miner.When he saw a flicker of light far down the tunnel, he crouched behind the quartz buttress with a great wedge of granite in his hand: for all his fear and anger and grief had come down to one thing here in the darkness, a determination that no man would lay hand on him.A blind determination, blunt and heavy as a broken stone, heavy in his soul.It was only the old man coming, with a hunk of dry cheese for him.He sat with the astronomer, and talked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]