The orange glow of the safety lamp fell on rugged stone walls rushing past at a prodigious speed. They rose up about three meters, forming a vaulted ceiling above our heads. Both in front of and behind us, the tunnel disappeared into seemingly endless darkness, not giving away any of its secrets about where it would lead. For the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care very much, as long as it brought us away from hostile men with guns. What I did care about was the ice-cold wind in my face, making my sweat-drenched clothes feel as if they would freeze any second.
My teeth began to chatter.
All right, maybe I cared a little bit.
‘Come.’ Suddenly, Mr Ambrose was beside me, nodding towards the rear of the cart. ‘Get into the container. It will shield you from the wind.’
He was right. The metal was cold to sit on, but it was a relief to have the biting wind out of my face. And there was an old sack in the metal container. The material was rough, but warm, and we huddled together, pulling it around us.
‘Where do you suppose the tunnel leads?’ I asked, after a while.
‘As I said before, I smelled sea-air from down there. I still catch a whiff of it now and again. Also, the tunnel is going down, and we started at the centre on the island, inside a mountain. This all would support my theory that the tunnel leads to the coast.’
As the last words left his mouth, the scene around us suddenly changed. Where before there had only been the stone walls of the tunnel rushing past, there now gaped a black opening. For just a moment I glimpsed another tunnel, and another set of rails splitting off from the ones we were riding on and heading down the other way. It was gone as quickly as it had come.
I hesitated for a moment.
‘And how do you know that that wasn’t the way which leads to the coast?’ I asked, my voice unusually timid.
‘I don't.’ His voice wasn’t timid at all. It was as cool and composed as a cucumber on ice. ‘But since this car does not have brakes and is going too fast for us to change direction, it is of little consequence. Cheese?’
‘Excuse me, Sir?’
‘I asked you whether you want some cheese.’ He held out a piece of something yellowish towards me. ‘Or bread. There are some emergency rations in the container in which I found the lamp.’
Again, I hesitated. We were supposed to be in a desperate rush to escape our enemies. That hardly seemed the right time to be eating cheese. But then, I had worked harder today than ever before in my life, and a chocolate croissant wasn’t much to go on.
‘Some bread, please, Sir.’
‘Here.’
He handed me a neatly cut-off piece, and took another for himself. We sat in the semi-darkness and ate in silence. The bread was dark and coarse, but I didn’t really mind. It was hearty and gave me new energy.
Only after a while did I notice that Mr Ambrose was watching me. In the shadowy half-light, the planes of his perfect, stony face stood out more sharply than ever. The look in his dark eyes as he watched me nibbling on a piece of cheese made my skin tingle.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘What is what, Mr Linton?’
‘Why are you looking at me like that? And don’t you dare deny it, because you are looking at me, and not like you normally look at me.’
‘Indeed?’ He cocked his head. ‘How do I normally look at you?’
‘Like you want to strangle me and ship my body to Antarctica. And don’t try to distract me! I want to know why you were staring at me!’
Silence.
‘Why were you staring at me? Please, Sir?’
‘Well…’ His cool voice was hesitant, his eyes calculating. ‘You don't seem to mind the bread much. Most ladie- most people like you would have turned their nose up at brown bread.’
My lips twitched. ‘Most ladies? Was that what you were going to say?’
Silence.
I shrugged. ‘Most ladies would have turned up their nose at being shot at, too.’
‘I imagine so, Mr Linton.’
Was the scant light playing tricks on me? Yes, that had to be it! How else could it be that I thought one corner of Mr Ambrose’s mouth turned up into a quarter-smile, for just a second?
‘I’m used to tough food, Sir. I live with my uncle, and the only thing he ever puts on the table are potatoes, bread and cheese.’
‘Sounds like a sensible man, your uncle.’
‘He’s one of the greatest misers in the world. You’d like him.’
Again I saw that trick of the light, that play of the safety lamp’s illumination on Mr Ambrose’s face that made it almost seem as if he were smiling. Quickly, I looked away.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘this is not at all how I imagined a mine cart chase.’
‘How did you imagine it, Mr Linton?’
‘I don't know. More exciting. Less… cheesy.’ Ponderously, I took another bite. The cheese really tasted quite good, once you got used to it. Those French really had a culinary talent.
‘Well, I think I can promise you some excitement soon enough,’ Mr Ambrose told me, drily. ‘Once we reach the end of the tunnel, we have to manage to get on a ship before they catch up with us. If we don't get to one in time…’
His voice trailed off. But I didn’t need him to finish the sentence. I knew.
We lapsed into silence for a while. I was busy with eating, and Mr Ambrose, who only took an occasional bite now and then, seemed to be very busy staring at the tunnel floor, as if the stone whizzing by told a fascinating story.
‘I was right,’ he said, suddenly. ‘This tunnel leads to the sea. We are not that far away from the exit anymore.’
Startled, I looked up.
‘How do you know?’
‘Do you see this? And this?’ He pointed at the floor, and I barely managed to catch a blurry glimpse of a small stone before we rushed past.
‘What about it? Looked just like a pebble to me.’
The cool look he gave me made me shut my mouth.
‘This “pebble” was quartzite - not the same type of stone as the mountain around us. Such pebbles are only found on beaches. They must have been accidentally carried up by soldiers who passed this way from further down, because up at the mountain there was not a single quartzite anywhere in sight.’
He sounded as if he had spent his life burrowing through all kinds of different rock and knew all of them by name. I wanted to open my mouth to argue, but then I remembered the ease with which he had pushed the mining cart, his familiarity with the functioning of a draisine, and I shut my mouth again. Somehow, I was suddenly certain he knew what he was talking about. If you looked at his chiselled granite face, you simply had to believe that he knew all there was to know about stone.