rock. "What a stupid I am!" he said to himself. "I am actually at the
end of my journey!--and there are the goblins coming back to fetch
their
things!" he added, as the red glimmer of their torches appeared at the
end of the long avenue that led up to the cave. In a moment he had
thrown himself on the floor, and wriggled backward through the hole.
The
floor on the other side was several feet lower, which made it easier to
get back. It was all he could do to lift the largest stone he had taken
out of the hole, but he did manage to shove it in again. He sat down on
the ore-heap and thought.
He was pretty sure that the latter plan of the goblins was to inundate
the mine by breaking outlets for the water accumulated in the natural
reservoirs of the mountain, as well as running through portions of it.
While the part hollowed by the miners remained shut off from that
inhabited by the goblins, they had had no opportunity of injuring
them
thus; but now that a passage was broken through, and the goblins' part
proved the higher in the mountain, it was clear to Curdie that the mine
could be destroyed in an hour. Water was always the chief danger to
which the miners were exposed. They met with a little choke-damp
sometimes, but never with the explosive fire-damp so common in coal
Madhuri Noah
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