Chase The Wind

Book 2: Retallick Saga

by E.V. Thompson

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Josh Retallick, hardy son of a respected Cornish family, and the wild Miriam, daughter of a drink-sodden copper miner, explore together the secret places and wild creatures of Bodmin Moor, unaware that fate will soon sweep them apart. Yet destiny brings them together again and again through hard and bitter years when the forces of property and power fight to crush the sturdy mining folk who refuse, come what may, to see their spirit broken . . .

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Sphere

Print pages: 479

Sample

Ninety fathoms below grass, in the darkness at the bottom of the main vertical shaft of Wheal Sharptor copper mine, Joshua Retallick stepped from the ladder on to the ore-strewn floor. He took a couple of shaky steps, his legs trembling from the climb down.

Above him, so far up that the clean, star-studded sky could not be seen, was a small rough-square hole. Through this was hoisted the copper ore that would make one man rich and send fifty more to a premature grave.

Josh moved to one side as boots scraped on the wooden rungs above him. The night shift was coming on duty. As each man stepped to the floor he would flex his arms, easing the muscles in his shoulders. Muscles knotted by the fear of falling that made a man grip each rung just a little too tightly.

The miners passed through the openings into the tunnels that sloped gently away from the main shaft. They stooped, automatically but unnecessarily, used to smaller tunnels than these. Once inside they paused to light the yellow candles that each man relied upon to give him light by which to work and warning of foul air.

Josh followed one of the miners along the tunnel where he knew his father was working. At first, the tunnel was narrow, with water oozing from walls shored up in a haphazard here-and-there manner. Then, suddenly and dramatically, it opened out into a huge vault, eighty feet wide and thirty high. Here there had been a seam of near-pure copper. Now it was a rock-walled emptiness – the ore long since fed into the belly of a Swansea smelting-house and disgorged as blocks of gleaming metal, each tinged with the colour of the furnace, to be shipped in tall-rigged vessels to a world eager for high-grade Cornish copper.

In the vast chamber clouds of dust hung on the heavy air. The shadows of the new arrivals flickered and were distorted, moulded by the smoking flames from two candles standing in niches in the rough-hewn wall.

A dirty sweating figure, stripped to the waist, appeared from a small tunnel, pushing a laden wheelbarrow ahead of him. Seeing the new arrivals he rested the wheelbarrow, added another streak of dirt to his face with the back of his hand and called back down the tunnel from which he had emerged.

‘Time to wrap it up, Ben. Night shift are here.’

The call was taken up by unseen men in other tunnels, ‘Knock it off! Night men are here!’

Men cramped in unnatural postures gratefully eased their way back from exploratory borings and headed towards the main shaft to begin the long climb to air and home, to comparative comfort and company, where there was not a million tons of rock and earth packed above them.

The miner who had first signalled the arrival of the relief shift grinned at Josh. ‘’Tis a bit late to be coming down to help us. Has Preacher Thackeray given up trying to learn you? Does he think you should be working below ground wi’ us?’

‘No.’ Josh grinned. ‘There’s a meeting of the Benefit Union at the chapel tonight. Lessons ended early.’

‘I wouldn’t mention anything about it to your dad. He’s not too happy wi’ talk about Thackeray’s “Union”.’

Budge Pearn towelled his body with his rough-spun shirt before pulling the crumpled garment over his head and tucking the end inside his trousers. At eighteen he was four years older than Josh. His mother had died in childbirth. When his father was killed in a mining accident Budge was seven years old and had been taken into the Retallick household.

‘When are you coming up to see Jenny and the baby?’ He pronounced it as ‘bebby’. ‘She’s right handsome now. Plenty of hair, too.’

‘I know. Jenny brought Gwen down home today. That reminds me. You’d better not be late home. Mum gave Jenny some boiling bacon for your supper.’

‘I’ll be up on the moor before your dad sets foot on the ladder.’ Budge pocketed the stubs of half a dozen candles. ‘Give my love to your mum.’ Then with a cheery wave he was gone.

Further along the tunnel, Ben Retallick welcomed the arrival of the night shift with grateful relief. At thirty-five years of age he was reckoned an ‘old man’ by mining standards. It was an era when a miner who had seen his fortieth birthday below ground was something of a rarity.

Climbing over a heap of newly dug ore he crawled backwards along a tunnel scarcely three feet high and only as wide as his shoulders. It would be widened eventually – the copper seam was quite broad here – but he had been burrowing his way forward in an attempt to determine its direction and value.

Ben Retallick had been working in Cornish mines since he was ten years of age and was one of the most experienced miners on Wheal Sharptor. He had worked two-men shallow streamings on the high moor and the great labyrinths that extended beneath the sea in the far west of the county. He might well have been a captain for one of those tin mines had not Theophilus Strike asked him to come and work as a tribute worker on the newly discovered copper seams of the Wheal Sharptor. This meant that Ben Retallick would become a free-lance miner, contracting on a piece-work basis for the right to remove the ore for the mine-owner at so much per ton. This was why it was so important to know the direction and value of a seam of ore.

It was said that Ben Retallick could follow a rich seam even when it leap-frogged a twelve-foot barrier of granite. He would not be deluded by a tempting stretch of momentarily rich ore which petered out within a few yards.

Outside, in the wide tunnel, Ben Retallick stood upright slowly. The cramped muscles had knotted his limbs into a crouched position, and it was a painful adjustment. The damp from the walls of a mine worked its way into a man’s joints and caused them to swell.

He looked up to see the sympathy on Josh’s face and grimaced. ‘A boy shouldn’t see his father when he’s fighting the cramps, Josh. What are you doing down here?’

Josh shrugged and tried to sound nonchalant. ‘My lesson finished early. I thought I’d come down to meet you.’

Ben Retallick saw the half-filled wheelbarrow and the long-handled shovel cast hastily aside and frowned. Budge Pearn had been in a hurry to finish work. It was time he learned that a man always emptied his own wheelbarrow below ground. Then Ben smiled at his own thoughts. Budge had plenty of time to learn. With a pretty wife and baby daughter waiting for him at home there was more reason for a young man to be on the surface than trundling barrow-loads of another man’s ore down here for three pounds a month.

‘Come on, son. Let’s go up top and taste some fresh air.’

At the foot of the ladder there was a great deal of good-natured banter and jostling between the men working another seam. Ben put a hand on Josh’s shoulder and stood back from it. At the end of a shift he had neither the energy of the youngsters nor patience with them.

Another man also lacked patience. Heavy-browed, dark-eyed and scowling, Moses Trago elbowed his irritable way through to the ladder. Broad-shouldered and brutal, he cared for no man’s opinion, using his fists in arguments where other men would use words. Behind him, walking in his brother’s shadow, the quieter John Trago loomed just as large.

The arrival of the two men put an end to the outburst of good humour and Ben and Josh shuffled forward with the other miners.

This was the part of mining that Ben found more difficult with each passing day. From ninety fathoms down there were five hundred and forty ladder-rungs to be climbed before a man’s head rose from the hole in the ground. Ben knew the number. There had been a time when he would count them. But no more. These days he gritted his teeth, kept his face turned downwards and climbed numbly. Occasionally the man above him might be climbing too slowly, or would slip because of his own weakness and step upon Ben’s fingers. Then he would feel an unreasonable fury – almost a black rage – against the unseen miner. The feeling would sustain him, drive him on until he stumbled out on to earth that was open to the sky.

Once on the ladders all talking ceased. A man would regret each mouthful of wasted air when he arrived, lungs roaring for oxygen, at the top of the shaft.

Josh was aware of this and he climbed steadily and carefully ahead of his father.

Never a pleasant experience, tonight the climb suddenly became a frightening nightmare. Josh and Ben were on the fourth ladder, almost fifty feet from the bottom of the shaft when there was a blood-freezing scream from high above them and the confused shouts of men.

Josh had no idea what was happening, but it was an experience that Ben had known many times before. His ‘’Ware below!’ rang out and he used the same breath to clamber up to share a rung with Josh. ‘Swing behind the ladder,’ he hissed. When Josh obeyed him hurriedly, Ben Retallick closed his arms about his son and held him tight against the ladder with arms and knees. His back pressed against the uneven rock of the shaft.

Most times a falling man would mercifully smash his head against the side of the shaft and know no more. This one was not so fortunate. The scream had died to a low inhuman sound in his throat as he flailed past Josh and his father, but he remained conscious until the moment he crashed on to the floor of the shaft. Josh would remember the sound of it for as long as he lived. His hands about the ladder gripped so tightly that his nails drew blood from his palms.

For two full seconds there was silence. It was broken by the clattering of boots as the men on the lower ladders scrambled back down.

‘Ben! Ben Retallick!’ The cry went up as Josh followed his father down.

‘I’m here. Who was it who fell?’

‘Budge Pearn.’

‘Oh my God! His poor maid.’

Josh heard the agonised whisper from his father as his own legs threatened to buckle beneath him. The miner dropped to the floor of the shaft where flickering candle-light added to the gruesome scene, then turned back to shield Josh from it. He was only partly successful.

‘Wait for me at the fifty-fathom level, Josh,’ he said.

Josh could only nod his agreement. He was not sure whether the lump in his throat would make him cry or be sick.

Ben put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Go on up. There’s nothing you can do here.’

Josh turned and climbed blindly, the lump still lodged in his windpipe. Budge Pearn had been as a big brother to him.

Behind him, Ben looked down at the smashed body. Miraculously, there was not a mark on Budge’s face. Reaching down he closed the lids on fear-filled eyes. ‘Poor maid!’ he repeated. Though only a few weeks past her seventeenth birthday, Jenny Pearn was now a widow with a baby to support. Like Budge she was an orphan, her father having died in an identical accident. Ben looked down at the body and thought of the young wasted life. He felt suddenly old and tired. The boy had so much to live for.

Tom Shovell, the shift captain, swung off the ladder and bent down over the body. Then he looked sympathetically at Ben. ‘You get on home. We’ll do what’s necessary here. Budge will go up in the ore-sling.’

Ben nodded numbly.

‘We’ll take him on to the chapel from there. I’d be obliged if you would take it on yourself to tell Jenny. You – or Jesse.’ Jesse was Ben’s wife. ‘I needn’t tell you how sorry I am, Ben. He was a well-liked lad.’

‘There’s little comfort in that for poor Jenny.’

Ben Retallick began the climb to the surface once more. At the fifty-fathom level Josh joined him and they completed the climb in silence.

There was a chill east wind blowing on the moor. Normally Ben would have shivered and hurried along the path to his cottage when the breath had returned to him. Tonight there was no speed in his legs. The small group of miners clustered around the top of the shaft murmured their sympathy, but that was all. They saved their questions for those who came to the surface behind him.

It was early March and quite dark as they took the path that wound over the shoulder of the tor towards the small cluster of slate and granite cottages huddled against the wind in a shallow depression on the east-facing slope. As they walked they could hear the heavy hollow thudding of the great pumping engine at the Wheal Phoenix in the valley beyond the cottages. Once, there was a red glow which flared up behind church-like windows as one of the furnace doors was swung open.

‘How … how do you think it happened?’ Josh asked, speaking for the first time since they had both stood by the shattered body in the shaft.

‘I expect Budge was in a hurry. Probably trod on a loose rung. It’s an easy thing to do. I’ve seen it happen too often.’

‘But why to Budge?’

He had to make it sound fierce or his voice would have betrayed him.

‘I don’t know the answer to that.’ Ben put an understanding arm across his son’s shoulders. ‘Why do so many men die in the mines? You’re the one getting the schooling. Think of some way to save miners’ lives and you’ll be blessed by every mother and wife in Cornwall.’

He stopped talking as they heard the sound of someone running and stumbling along the path towards them. The footsteps were too light to belong to a man.

‘Who’s there?’ Ben called.

‘Ben! Is that you?’

‘Jesse! What are you doing out here?’

‘Oh, Ben! Thank God you’re safe! Thank God!’ She clung to him, shaking violently. ‘They told me there’d been an accident. That you’d fallen.’ She buried her face in his rough shirt, grasping the material tight with her fingers.

‘Who told you that?’ Ben put his hand beneath her chin and lifted her head.

‘Moses Trago. I left everything and ran. Your dinner! It will be ruined.’

‘Moses Trago is quicker to carry bad news than to offer help.’ Ben Retallick was angry. Moses Trago must have heard his name being called and assumed that it was he who had fallen.

‘Then there was an accident. What happened? Was anyone hurt?’

‘It was Budge, Mum.’

Ben felt Jesse stiffen in his arms as Josh spoke. ‘He fell from the ladder.’

‘He’s dead, then.’ It was a statement of fact rather than a question.

‘Yes,’ said Ben gently. ‘Jenny hasn’t been told yet. I was going to see her myself but it might be better if you did it.’

Jesse was silent for so long that Ben thought she might not feel capable of breaking the news to Budge’s wife. Then she burst out, ‘Why? Why did it have to happen to Budge? The two of them had found so much happiness together. Oh! Poor Budge! Poor Jenny!’

‘It was an accident, Jesse. They happen.’

‘It’s that damned mine. Worn ladders, frayed ropes …!’

‘Enough now, Jesse. It gives us our living.’

‘Try to tell that to Budge – God rest his soul.’ She sobbed once. A long uneven breath. But she slipped from Ben’s arms when he tried to comfort her.

‘I’ll go to Jenny now. Before she hears the news from someone else.’ She paused alongside Josh. ‘If you ever become a miner, Joshua Retallick, I’ll never forgive you.’

She moved away along the path, and her voice came to them from the darkness.

‘Ben?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not forgetting to thank God it wasn’t you.’

As she hurried away Ben said, ‘One day you’ll be looking for a wife, Josh. If you find one who is half the woman your mother is you’ll be a lucky man.’

His own parents would have disputed that when he first told them he was going to marry her. They were staunch Methodists and had brought Ben up in the same faith. Jesse shared the same religion – up to a certain point. But she possessed an impetuosity, a disconcerting habit of saying exactly what she thought when the thought came to her. It was not kindly accepted by her elders. It did not happen so often now; the years had mellowed her. But once in a while she would say, or do, something to remind Ben of the girl she had been when he married her. Wilful and stubborn his parents may have thought her, but Ben loved her for it and had never sought to change her.

In the kitchen of the small granite cottage Josh swung the cooking-pot off the fire while Ben eased his boots off. Small, but spotless, the kitchen served as dining- and living-room. There was one other downstairs room where all the ‘best’ possessions were housed. It was kept for special occasions and the formal visits of people outside their immediate circle of friends.

Josh ladled stew into two bowls, and they sat at the table eating in silence. Josh was thinking of having more when the door banged open and Jesse Retallick bundled inside a thin pale girl who looked hardly old enough to be the mother of the kicking, wailing infant she clutched to her. Jesse kept an arm about Jenny and took her straight through into the ‘best’ room.

A minute later she was back in the doorway. ‘Josh. Upstairs and move your things into our room. Make yourself up a bed on the floor. Jenny will be moving into yours. Ben, bring some fire into the other room.’

She went back to look after Jenny, and two chairs scraped back as Ben and Josh moved to carry out Jesse’s orders.

As Ben was filling a bucket with live coals from the kitchen stove, Jesse came back into the room and deposited a pile of baby-clothes on a chair.

‘Hurry and get in there with her, Ben,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t started crying yet. When it comes it will be all the worse for the waiting.’

When Ben took the coals in, Jenny was seated on the faded horse-hair sofa that had been a wedding-present from his father. Dry-eyed and taut, she was not even aware of his presence and continued to stare vacantly in front of her.

He poured the coals into the fire-place and piled wood on top of it before standing up and looking down at the pathetic young widow. He wanted to say something to her, give her some words of comfort; but she was as cold as rock, totally withdrawn from the world of the living.

‘Is that fire going?’ Jesse swept into the room and, picking up the baby, placed her on the floor in the corner of the room. ‘Leave us now, Ben.’ She moved to the sofa where Jenny was sitting unseeing. With a last pained look at the girl, Ben returned to the kitchen.

Josh made his bed – an untidy heap in a corner of his parents’ bedroom – and climbed into it, pulling the blanket up to his chin. He was lying there, his face turned away from the door, when his father came into the darkened room. Ben saw the glitter of tears on his cheek.

He said nothing but walked to the window and looked down into the valley where Henwood village lay. There was light shining from the large windows of the chapel, and he guessed the body of Budge Pearn had arrived there.

Then he heard the sound from the room downstairs. It startled him before he realised fully what it was. Starting as a low moan it quickly swelled and expanded until it burst out as a sob. Then Jenny began crying noisily. Painful as it was to listen to, Ben yet felt a sense of relief. Now Jenny was a young girl who had lost her man. A widow with a small child. Someone with whom to feel sympathy and for Jesse to comfort. Before, she had been unapproachable, locked away in a place where no other human could join her or share her pain.

Ben went downstairs, put on his boots and coat, and let himself out of the house to walk to the village.

Despite the darkness and the chill east wind a great many villagers were gathered about the entrance to the chapel. The insularity of the small moorland communities had been changed by the influx of miners from other parts of Cornwall – and even from beyond the Tamar. But a fatal accident, like any other deviation from the norm of everyday life, was an event to be shared by all.

There were enquiries from all sides about Jenny as Ben strode to the chapel door. Some stemmed from mere curiosity, but most from genuine concern for her. The women in the crowd knew that tomorrow, or the next day, it might be their turn. The mines were notorious widow-makers. Accidents were all too frequent. Even when a man thought he had won, and gave up the life of a miner, he discovered that the mine had passed on a fatal legacy to him. He had spent years toiling in air sometimes so foul it would scarcely support life, breathing in dust for the whole of a shift. Then the sudden change of temperature at the end of a shift when his labouring lungs exchanged the heat of the mine for the chill of a winter night. They all took their toll of him. Few ex-miners survived to spin yarns of their exploits to their grandchildren.

The inside of the small chapel was clean and starkly bereft of ostentation. Ben was surprised to see the preacher inside, distributing hymn- and prayer-books thinly along the benches.

The Reverend Wrightwick Roberts was not a resident preacher. He rode the North Hill Methodist circuit. Methodism was still a young religion, dependent entirely upon the Sunday collections for its income. Only the larger mining communities like St Cleer, where Josh went for his lessons, could afford to support a resident preacher.

The North Hill circuit minister was himself an ex-miner and his shoulders were almost as broad as Moses Trago’s, but when he spoke his voice was strangely soft coming from such a big man.

‘It’s a night for grieving, Ben. The Lord’s ways are beyond the understanding of mortals.’ He nodded towards a closed door at the far end of the chapel. ‘Budge is through there. Mary Crabbe is with him.’

Mary Crabbe had been taking charge of births and deaths in the district since before Ben was born. He nodded his acknowledgement. ‘It’s been a sad day, Wrightwick.’

The preacher doled out the last of the prayer-books. ‘Every mine accident brings sadness to someone. How is Jenny taking it?’

Ben sat down on the end of a bench. ‘Hard. But Jesse is looking after her.’ He suddenly felt old, and the preacher saw it in the sag of his shoulders. ‘Josh is taking it badly too. They were like brothers.’

‘And you, Ben?’ The preacher asked the question softly. Ben and Jesse had looked upon Budge Pearn as another son.

‘Yes, and me.’ It was as much as he would ever say on the subject and more than any other man would hear from him.

‘You’ll see to things, Wrightwick? Take the service for him? I’ll be paying.’

‘And what about the men on the mine? Don’t they collect for such happenings?’

‘Sharptor isn’t the Caradon – or even Wheal Phoenix. We are still small. I want whatever is collected to go to Jenny. It won’t be much. A few guineas aren’t going to go far with a baby to feed and clothe.’

‘Then what about Theophilus Strike? Won’t he give anything?’

Ben managed a faint smile. ‘That sounded like young Preacher Thackeray talking. Theophilus Strike pays wages, Wrightwick. Jenny will collect whatever was due to Budge – and a guinea or two besides.’

Wrightwick Roberts frowned at the mention of William Thackeray. The fiery young St Cleer preacher was fast establishing a reputation as a miners’ champion, and the younger men flocked to hear his sermons on Sundays, packing the large St Cleer chapel to capacity.

‘Why do you let Josh stay at Thackeray’s school, Ben? He’s not a good influence.’

Ben shrugged. ‘His lessons are cheap – and good. Josh has learned to read the Bible and can work out sums that leave me with my jaw hanging. Is that bad, Wrightwick?’

‘No. But that isn’t what I am talking about. Thackeray teaches things that you won’t find in any schoolbook. He feeds his ideas to young miners who know no better. Telling them to band into a “union” and demand more money is dangerous talk, Ben. It shouldn’t come from a man who serves God.’

‘All I’ve heard is rumours. None of them from Josh,’ said Ben, standing up. ‘But I do know the boy is learning things I would dearly love to have been taught. I am grateful to Preacher Thackeray for that. Josh will have a chance in life, Wrightwick. He won’t have to go down a mine because he knows nothing else. And he won’t end up on a table in your chapel with Mary Crabbe straightening his broken limbs.’

He stopped and drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll be away now before I say more than I should.’

‘We’ve been friends too long for me to take offence,’ said the preacher. ‘And I’ll walk up with you. I’d like to see Jenny.’

He held open the door and followed Ben outside. There were only a few of the older women still waiting and they bobbed their heads at the preacher.

The two men walked side by side along the street and on to the twin-rutted track that climbed towards the mine, passing close to the Retallick cottage.

Ben’s tiredness was telling on him now, and the preacher slowed his pace to stay with him.

‘How many years have you been mining now, Ben?’

‘Most of my life, it seems. I’ve been underground since I was ten.’

‘It’s the underground part that takes it out of a man,’ said Wrightwick Roberts. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you thought about a surface job?’

Ben snorted. ‘For what? A woman’s pay?’

Wrightwick Roberts knew better than to pursue the matter. For Ben to give up working below ground would be an admission of defeat, an acknowledgement that he was too old to beat the ladders. But it was always the ladders that scored the final victory.

‘How about an engine? Is the Sharptor going to get one?’

‘I don’t know. Only Strike can answer that. If it means spending money the answer is “No”. Besides, we won’t need one for a year or two.’

‘What’s money got to do with it? With the mine and its shop Theophilus Strike is making more money than he knows how to spend.’

‘Likely you’re right,’ replied Ben. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ They had arrived at the cottage. Ben opened the door, and both men went inside.

‘How is she?’ asked Wrightwick Roberts as Ben sat down gratefully.

Jesse had been bustling about the kitchen when they arrived and she said, ‘As well as any woman who has just lost her man. And when she begins to get over it she’ll begin to worry about the future for herself and the baby. She’s no home because the cottage belongs to the mine and she’s no family to turn to.’

‘She has us,’ said Ben. ‘She can move in here. I hope you didn’t wait to hear it from me to tell her.’

‘No, I didn’t. But it’s nice to hear you say it.’

Wrightwick Roberts left the kitchen, and as Ben leaned back in his chair, relaxing a little, an unintelligible murmur started up in the other downstairs room.

‘It will be strange having a baby about the house again.’

‘Budge would be happy to know we are looking after the pair of them,’ said Jesse. There was a break in her voice. Ben reached across to where she was standing by the table and took her hand.

The inquest on Budge Pearn was a brief perfunctory affair. It was held in the chapel, and the coroner was feeling the cold. It was his second inquest into the death of a miner that day and there were two more that afternoon.

He was experienced in dealing with mine fatalities, the previous year having supplied him with seventy-four – twenty-two of them the result of a single disaster.

Such fatalities were no longer of interest to even the most morbid, and the newspapers gave them only a passing paragraph. This being so, the coroner wasted no time in accepting the facts as they were presented to him. He recorded a verdict that one Budge Pearn, miner, had met with an accidental death whilst leaving his place of employment, namely the Wheal Sharptor. Then, there being no local gentry in the mining village of Henwood, the coroner immediately set off in his trap to lunch at Linkinhorne vicarage.

Budge Pearn was buried that same afternoon, on a day as grey as the occasion. The persistent easterly wind helped tears flow the more easily for the women and made casual mourners restless to return to their firesides.

But Wrightwick Roberts was not a preacher to cut corners at a man’s funeral. Budge Pearn went on his way to the hereafter with as good a reference as any man could receive. In the same sermon the preacher damned a mine that allowed a man to fall to his death and then failed to send a representative to his funeral.

In all fairness, Theophilus Strike had delegated someone. His senior mine captain had been told to go, but Herman Schmidt could think of better ways to spend an afternoon than standing on a windswept hillside, listening to a sermon in a language he barely understood in praise of one of the workers he regarded as little better than animals.

Instead, Schmidt was shut inside his house in the nearby town of Liskeard. He was already in a state of alcoholic stupor. He was in the habit of spending much less time at the Wheal Sharptor than Theophilus Strike was aware of, but Schmidt’s knowledge of mining had been learned with a Germanic thoroughness.

There was little that any man in Cornwall could tell him about copper-mining.

Once a week Herman Schmidt carried out a full inspection of the mine, and it was a day the miners had come to dread. If he found the slightest thing that was not to his liking, there would be miners seeking work elsewhere on the following day. There was very little that escaped his attention and, if his hangover was worse than usual, he was quite capable of inventing a reason for dismissing a man.

From his weekly visit the mine captain was able to compile his reports and direct the operations that kept Wheal Sharptor a profit-making mine.

Captain Herman Schmidt was a brilliant mine captain. He was also a foreigner, an at