"Easy--easy--look out for that 'anging wall--" he held the pitch torch against the roof of the tunnel and displayed a loose, jagged section of rock, dripping with seepage from the hills above.

"Just a step now--'ere it is." The outlines of a rusty "hoist", with its cable leading down into a slanting hole in the rock, showed dimly before them,--a massive, chunky, deserted thing in the shadows.

About it were clustered drills that were eaten by age and the dampness of the seepage; farther on a "skip", or shaft-car, lay on its side, half buried in mud and muck from the walls of the tunnel.

Here, too, the timbers were rotting; one after another, they had cracked and caved beneath the weight of the earth above, giving the tunnel an eerie aspect, uninviting, dangerous.
Harry peered ahead.
"It ain't as bad as it looks," came after a moment's survey.

"It's only right 'ere at the beginning that it's caved.