At that instant the mysterious premonition that always gives warning of human presence caused the young man to turn his head. Although he was too late to avoid the impending blow, it was deflected by his movement, and instead of stunning him it merely caused him to stagger and drop his lamp. He also partially warded off a closely following second blow, and then his own terrible fist was planted with crashing force full on his assailant's jaw.
The man uttered a scream of agony, covered his face with his hands, and started to run. At this moment the other two car-pushers appeared on the scene, and with fierce cries began a furious attack upon the young man whom they had sworn either to kill or drive from the mine. At this time the battleground was only dimly illumined by the flickering light of the miner who was thus far sole spectator of the contest. Peveril fought in dogged silence, but his assailants uttered shrill cries in an unknown tongue. Attracted by these, other lights began to appear from both directions, and all at once Mark Trefethen's gruff tones were heard demanding to know what was going on.
At this sound Peveril uttered a joyful shout, while at the same moment the light in Mike Connell's hat was extinguished.
Recognizing his protégé's voice, the timber boss sprang to his side, and within another minute the two car-pushers would have been annihilated had not the coming of a second car given them a reinforcement of three more half-naked savages.
Thus beset and outnumbered by more than two to one, Trefethen thought it no shame to call for aid, and, uplifting his mighty voice, he sent rolling and echoing through the rock-bound galleries the rallying cry of the Cornishmen:
"One and all for Cornwall! One and all!"
CHAPTER VII
CORNWALL TO THE RESCUE
"One and all!" The rallying-cry of the most clannish county in England. The one in which, from Land's End to Plymouth Sound, every family claims some degree of cousinship with every other, until, at home and abroad, "Cousin Richard" is the name proudly borne by all Cornishmen.
"One and all!" As the startling cry rang through the black underground depths it was heard and answered, caught up and repeated, until it penetrated the remotest corners of the far-reaching level. At its sound the men of Cornwall, working in stope or drift, breast or cross-cut, dropped their tools and sprang to obey its summons. By twos and threes they ran, shouting the magic words that Cornish tongues have carried around the world. They met in eager groups, each demanding to know who had first given the alarm and its cause. As none could answer, and the shouts still came from far away, they swept on, in ever-increasing numbers and with growing anxiety, for the call of Cornwall is never given save in an emergency.
In the meantime the fight between two and five rages with unabated fury; the two, with their backs to a wall, putting up the splendid defence of trained boxers against the fierce but untaught rush of mere brutes. Science, however, labored under the disadvantage of fighting in a gloom that was almost darkness, for Mark Trefethen's lamp had been extinguished at the outset, and the only one still burning was on a car standing at a distance from them.
Of a sudden the timber boss heard a groan at his side, and found himself fighting alone. His comrade had sunk limply to the ground, and an exultant yell from the others proclaimed their knowledge that they had no longer to fear his telling blows. As they were about to rush in and complete their victory, the battle-cry of Cornwall, accompanied by the flash of many lights, came rolling down the gallery.
Help was close at hand. If Mark Trefethen could hold out for another minute he would be surrounded by friends. With an answering shout of "One and all!" he sprang to meet his assailants, and, realizing their danger, they fled before him. At the same instant the lamp on their car disappeared, and in the utter darkness that followed Trefethen could only grope his way back to Peveril's side.
A moment later the flaring lights of the Cornish miners disclosed the old man, with face battered and bleeding, standing grimly undaunted beside the motionless form of the newest comer to the mine. The latter lay unconscious, with an ugly wound on the side of his head, from which blood was flowing freely. It had been made by a fragment of copper rock, evidently taken from the loaded car close at hand, and flung from that direction. Several other similar pieces were picked up near where the two men had defended themselves, and, now that Trefethen had time for reflection, he recalled having heard these crash against the wall behind him.
Who had flung them was a mystery, as was the cause of the attack on Peveril. Even the identity of his assailants seemed likely to remain unrevealed, for these had slipped away in the darkness, and though the rescuing party searched the level like a swarm of angry hornets, they could not discover a man bearing on his person any signs of the recent fray.
In the gloom shrouding the scene of conflict, Mark Trefethen had not been able to recognize those with whom he fought, but only knew them to be foreigners and car-pushers. It afterwards transpired that a number of these had, on that evening, made their way to a shaft a mile distant, and so gained the surface. One of them was reported to have had his head tied up as the result of an accident, but no one had recognized him.
While certain of the Cornishmen searched the mine, Trefethen and others bore the still unconscious form of Richard Peveril to the plat, and sounded the alarm signal of five bells. Nothing so startles a mining community as to have this signal come from underground. It may mean death and disaster. It surely means that there are injured men to be brought up to the surface, and the time elapsing before their arrival is always filled with deepest anxiety.
It was so in the present case, and when the cage containing the two battered miners, one of whom had also every appearance of being dead, emerged from the shaft, a throng of spectators was waiting to greet it.
These learned with a great sigh of relief that there had been no accident, but merely a fight, in which the men just brought up were supposed to be the only ones injured. Their revulsion of feeling led many of the spectators to treat the whole affair as a joke, especially as the only person seriously hurt was a stranger.
"It's always new-comers as stirs up shindies," growled a miner who, having reached the surface a few minutes earlier, formed one of the expectant group. "They ought not to be let underground, I say."
"How about Trefethen?" asked a voice. "He's no new-comer."
"Oh, Mark's a quarrelsome old cuss, who's always meddling where he has no call."
"You lie, Mike Connell, and you know it. My father never fights without good cause," cried Tom Trefethen, who had arrived just in time to resent the slurring remark.
"I'll teach you, you young whelp!" shouted the miner, springing furiously forward; but Tom leaped aside, leaving the other to be confronted by several burly Cornishmen, in whose ears was still ringing the cry of "One and all!"
"Lad's right, Maister Connell," said one of these. "If 'ee doan't believe it, come along and get proof."
But the Irishman, muttering something about not caring to fight all Cornwall, turned abruptly and walked away.
Tom Trefethen, not yet knowing that Peveril had been hurt, also hurried away to find his father, who, having left his young friend in the hands of the mine surgeon, had gone to change his clothing. At the same time poor Peveril lay in a small room of the shaft-house, having the gash in his head sewn up. Several spectators regarded the operation curiously, and among them was a gentleman, addressed by the doctor as Mr. Owen, whom none of the others remembered to have seen before, but who seemed to take a great interest in the still unconscious sufferer.
"Do you consider it a serious case, doctor?" he asked.
"No. Not at all serious. These miners are a tough lot, and not easily done for, as you'll find out before you have seen as much of them as I have. This one will probably be out and at work again in a day or two. I'm always having such little jobs on my hands, the results of accident, mostly, though this, I believe, is a case of fighting, something very uncommon in our mine, I can assure you. Splendid physique, hasn't he? Savage-looking face, though. Hate to trust myself alone with him. I understand old Mark Trefethen had a hard tussle before he brought him to terms."
"What was the trouble?"
"I don't know, exactly. Insubordination, I suppose; but old Mark don't put up with any nonsense."
"Do you know this fellow's name, or anything about him?"
"Um yes. I have learned something, but not much. His name is Peril Richard Peril. Odd name, isn't it? He's a new-comer, and, like yourself, has just entered the company's employ. Rather a contrast in your positions, though. Illustrates the difference between one brought up and educated as a gentleman, and one destined from the first for the other thing, eh? It is all poppycock to say that education can make a gentleman; don't you think so? In the present case, for instance, I doubt if even Oxford could make a gentleman of this fellow. His whole expression is a protest against such a supposition. But now he's coming to all right, and I'm glad of it, for I have an engagement at the club, and don't want to spend much more time with him."
Poor Peveril, whose begrimed and blood-streaked face was not calculated to prepossess one in his favor, began just then to have a realizing sense that he was still alive, and the doctor, bending over him, said:
"There now, my man, you are doing nicely, and by taking care of yourself you will be about again in a day or two. You had a close call, though, and it's a warning to behave yourself in the future; for I can assure you that one given to fighting or disobedience of orders is not allowed to linger in these parts. I must leave you now, but will call again this evening to see how you are getting along. What is your address?"
"He lives along of us, sir," answered Tom Trefethen, who had just entered the room; "and if you think it's safe to move him, we'll take him right home."
"Certainly you can move him; in fact, he could walk if there was no other way; but it will be as well to take him in a carriage. Let me see, your name is Trefethen, is it not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well; put your boarder to bed as soon as you get him home, keep him quiet, give him only cooling drinks, and I'll call round after a while. Now I must hurry along."
The stranger, who walked away with the self-important young doctor, was none other than Peveril's Oxford classmate "Dig" Owen who, having obtained a position in the Eastern office of the White Pine Mining Company, had been advised to visit the mine and learn something of its practical working before assuming his new duties. He had just arrived when the rumor of an accident caused him to hurry to the shaft-mouth. There he was thunderstruck at recognizing in one of the two men brought up from the depths his recent college-mate and rival. In the excitement of the moment he had very nearly betrayed the fact of their acquaintance, but managed to restrain himself, and was afterwards careful to keep out of Peveril's sight, foreseeing a great advantage to himself by so doing.
That same evening he sat in the comfortable writing-room of the club-house at which poor Peveril had gazed with envious eyes and composed a long epistle to Rose Bonnifay, in which he mentioned that he had just run across their mutual friend, Dick Peveril, working as a day-laborer in a copper-mine.
"This" [he continued] "is doubtless the mine in which he claimed to be interested, and under the circumstances one can hardly blame the poor fellow for putting it in that way. At the same time, I consider it only fair that you should know the real facts in the case.
"His misfortunes seem also to have affected his disposition, for on the very day of my arrival he was engaged in a most disgraceful fight with some of his low associates, by whom he was severely and justly punished. Of course I could not afford to recognize him, and so took pains to have him kept in ignorance of my presence. Is it not sad that a fellow of such promise should in so short a time have fallen so low?
"Within a few days I shall return to the East, where my own prospects are of the brightest," etc.
"There," said Mr. Owen to himself, as he sealed and addressed this letter. "If that don't effectually squelch Mr. Richard Peveril's aspirations in a certain direction, then I'm no judge of human nature."
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE NEW SHAFT
When the mine-surgeon visited his patient that evening he found only Mrs. Trefethen, sitting on the porch and awaiting him, "her men-folk," as she informed him, "being on the trail of they murderers."
"Which, if they ain't so many Cainses this night, hit bain't their fault, as I sez to Miss Penny the moment I sees that pore lamb brought into the 'ouse just like 'e was struck down the same as a flower of the field that bloweth where hit listeth; and she sez to me for me and Miss Penny was wishing at that blessed minute, like hit were providential she sez "
"It is certainly very kind of you to take such an interest in a stranger," ruthlessly interrupted the doctor; "but may I inquire how my patient is getting along?"
"You may indeed, sir, and may the good Lord preserve you from a like harm, which hit make my blood boil to think of my pore Mark's hescape, him being what you might call owdacious to that degree. He were telling me has'ow 'One and hall' was everythink that saved 'im, and they rocks pattering same has 'ailstones hall the time. Law, sir!"