Adventures in Many Lands, page 10 by Various Authors
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rt an epidemic of laziness.
Don Ferdinando set off for the Vega, eight hundred feet sheer below the mine. It was a ticklish zigzag, just to the left of the transporting machinery, with twenty places in which a slip would mean death.
Domecq was working down below, lading the stuff into bullock-carts.
Alfred Cayley disappeared into one of the upper galleries, to see how they were panning out.
The snow mountains and the afternoon sun looked down upon a very pleasing scene of industry--blue-jacketed workers and heaps of ore; and upon Jim Cayley also, who had enjoyed his dinner so thoroughly that he didn't think so much as before about his rejected information.
But now again the Cuban kiddy drifted towards him, making for the zigzag.
Jim hailed him.
"Can't stop, Don Jimmy!" said Toro. But when he was some yards down, he beckoned to Jim, who quickly joined him.
They conferred on the edge of a ghastly precipice.
"I'm off down to tell Domecq that it's going to be done at two-thirty prompt," said Toro.
"What's going to be d--done?" asked Jimmy.
"What I told you about. They've cut the 'phone down to the 'llano' as a start. But that's nothing. You just go and squat by the engine and see what happens. Guess they'll not mind you."
To tell the truth, Jim was a trifle dazed. He didn't grapple the ins and outs of a conspiracy of Spanish miners just for the sake of a holiday. And as Toro couldn't wait (it was close on half-past two), Jim thought he might as well act on his advice. He liked to see the big buckets of ore swinging off into space from the mine level and making their fearful journey at a thrilling angle, down, down until, as mere specks, they reached the transport and washing department of the mine in the Vega. Two empty buckets came up as two full ones went down, travelling with a certain sublimity along the double rope of woven wire.
Jim sat down at a distance. He saw one cargo get right off--no more.
Then he noticed th