Chapter 16 – The Boy II

Make my way down there? Clamber down that slanted tunnel to the Marrak boy? But with the boy bleeding I must go there. I crammed the large torch back into the pocket on the side of the backpack, but left it switched on. Its light shone nearly upward but the beam was broad enough to give a general illumination to my eyes, as the smaller torch on the helmet projected straight ahead.

I examined the footprints made by Frank and the child had at least moved across imbedded rocky knobs to the ruined man-engine. It was distance of fifteen feet or more, to the metal structure. Creeping closer to the edge of the drop-off, I saw the structure was made of flat metal bars riveted or bolted together in a lattice arrangement. Long bars extended the length of the relic and smaller ones were attached both horizontal and diagonal, so it could be used as a sort of ladder.

The Latin phrase iacta ālea est* came to mind. Casting the dies indeed.

Gingerly following the footprints of the boy, I gained the derelict man-engine in five long strides and got my feet and hands firmly latched onto the rusted metal. The castoff gloves were tattered and had a few holes, but they protected my hands from most sharp rust blisters for the most part.

The occasional metal platforms were a challenge as I descended, but I was able to get past them. I tried not to think of the yawning abyss behind and below me. These mines went down a long way, all dug by men driving cold steel chisels and drills with sledgehammers, and then blasted with black powder, all for tin or copper.

Hard men worked in mines such as this, and God alone knew how many had been killed or crippled or had suffered permanent health effects from the harsh working conditions. And in the 1700's and 1800's tuberculosis was rife, along with malnutrition and smallpox. The famous (or infamous) Cornish pasties were invented to feed the men as they partook meals at the working face, so they were an invention from the mines still used today.

The metal bars gave me plenty of purchase, as I made my way deeper into Hades. At any moment I almost expected Geryon**, from Dante's Inferno, to be appear out of the gloom.

Whatever possessed the child to come this way? All on a dare, the stupid boy. Yet what acts of peer pressure had we all succumbed to as we tried to fit in? Was fitting in worth it?

Peter Cronk told me and Louisa, "You have to let them tease you, so you fit in." Was it worth it? Is any of it? Why can't the loners be permitted to be loners? But upon reflection, there were not enough lonely mountaintops, windswept moors, or solitary fortresses to shelter all of us.

Did I want to be a loner all my life? Louisa, dear Louisa, if only… we could have seen a way forward to be together, and not just because she returned to the village pregnant with our child.

Concentrating on my climbing task, there was still part of my thinking which focused on Louisa and the child to be. No, it was a child already, unborn; weeks away from delivery. How could I depart for London and abandon her in Portwenn?

Yet, Martin, I reminded myself, she wanted to go it alone; take care of things by herself. A woman did not have to be married to have a baby; she had reminded me. So that die was cast as well. I'd marry her if she'd let me do so.

Granted it was only a five-hour train trip from Bodmin Station up to Town but even leaving the village on a Friday and returning from London on a Sunday, would be exhausting with an infant and all the bags of baby gear. I would have to make as many trips as I could back to the village in the early months to assist her, no matter the time spent.

Was that what you really want to do, Martin? Is it? But being a surgeon was my destiny. Surgery was the only thing I was good at, or ever would be. Treating earaches and lurkie was a total waste of my skills.

A piece of metal broke off in my hand as I leaned back. Impulsively I cast it away and then it went clattering away into the dark. Automatically I counted the seconds until the noise stopped.

After six seconds the faint noise stopped. My calculation told me that would be nearly 600 hundred feet! Good God. But the shaft was slanted at over forty-five degrees. So that would be, uhm, divide by the square root of two! I gulped for that result was about four hundred, or more.

I hastened my pace to get to Frank before the enormity of what I was attempting overwhelmed me, so I resolved to stop calculating depths.

A quick glance showed me to be just feet away from the side passageway that Frank was perched in for a light shone steadily out of the hole in the rocky face.

As I stepped off the wrecked man-engine and onto solid rock my knees were shaking from exertion and nerves. I looked upwards and gulped as I realized the effort it would take to get out of here with an injured boy.

The side tunnel was small, but I could span the opening with my arms, and it was tall enough to stand in. A few feet inside I saw Frank Marrak sitting there looking at me sheepishly. He was dusty and disheveled, but his face was bright in my lights.

"Lo Doc," he said as he cradled his left arm.

"Hello." I sat down, slung the pack off my back and turned to Frank. "Let me see." A handy rock was as good table as any to support the larger torch. It its light I began the examination of my patient after taking off the gloves and sluicing them off with water from my water bottle.

He gingerly held out his left arm. "I fell and hurt my elbow. And I sliced my palm on a sharp rock. Wrapped it best I could." He had wrapped a handkerchief around that hand.

"Hm." The wrapping of the hand was not badly done, but it was bloody. "Did you strike your head on anything?

"Nope."

His eyes looked clear and he was attentive. I ran a hand across his head and found no bumps. That much was good.

"Used my teeth to tighten the knot," he told me proudly.

I gently touched his swollen elbow and he winced. I tried to bend the joint and he screwed his face up in pain. I didn't think it was broken. Twisted most likely. There was no telltale grate of broken bone ends under my hands.

I set his arm onto his lap and then dug into the pack. The first aid kit came out and the splint. "Let's look at that hand." I untied the bandage and sucked in a breath.

The gash went straight across the palm and was deep enough that I could see a tendon. Red droplets actively dribbled down his fingers and pattered onto the dusty floor. Hot gorge rose to my throat, so I scuttled back to the slanted shaft and heaved up my lunch.

I wiped my mouth and went back to the boy.

"Sorry Doc," Frank said to me.

"I'll bandage this." I opened a gauze pad, a long roll of gauze, and antiseptic cream. In a thrice the damage was covered. "That will need stitches," I told him. "But this is neither the time nor place."

He nodded. "Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean…." His voice broke.

I looked beyond Frank into the tunnel. "How far did you go back there?"

He muttered, "Not too far. But I found a rock." He pointed to a dark rock by his foot. "It's got a plenty of copper in it," he said brightly.

I grunted and waved a hand at him. "Was this outing worth this?"

The boy looked at me with miserable expression. "No," he sighed. "But I only wanted… to… uhm," he shrugged. "You know."

I took up the splint and plunged his arm into it then blew it up by mouth. "This will stabilize your elbow." The straps on it went around his body to hold it immobile against his chest. "How's that feel?"

"Better."

"Now how to get you out of here?"

"Somebody else coming to help as well?"

"Eventually, I suppose. But I don't like the looks of that hand. That will take proper medical care to put right." I stood. "How much do you weigh? Four stone?"

"About."

I shone the large torch down the tunnel away from the shaft. "What's back that way?"

"More of the same. Rocks, broken timbers, and…"

"And what, exactly?"

"I dunnoh, but Doc? I saw funny lights shining back there."

Likely reflection from remnants of copper ore on walls and floor. "But no way out."

He shook his head. "Not that I could tell. I went back there a little way before I fell. But I found that decent sized chunk of ore and then I… tripped."

"Yes." I looked back up the slanted shaft and towards freedom. He'd not be able to manage very well climbing up with only feet, one hand and one arm useful.

I returned to me patient and emptied the pack out on the ground and examined what I had. The automobile tow strap looked useful, and the backpack itself might lend itself as a harness of some sort.

"Do you have any other injuries? Knees and hips fine?"

He shook his head. "I just want to go home."

"Right. Now… stand up and let's see what we can do about that."

Author's Notes:

* "The die is cast." Supposedly said by Julius Caesar before he crossed the Rubicon (a river in Italy) on his way to engage in civil war with the Republic of Rome. His actions would catapult him to fame and the center of power of what became the Roman Empire.

** Geryon was a flying half-man half-beast in Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem of an imaginary journey through Hell. Geryon carried Dante down from the seventh to the eighth circle of Hell.