One Fathom Deeper
A coal mine’s vertical shaft in Gangwon. Each time the surveyor sounds the pit, the plumb line touches a bottom one fathom deeper than the day before.
- 3,401 characters
- ~7 min
Series
갱 아래의 다림줄
A coal mine deep in the Gangwon mountains, 1923. The surveyor's plumb line, sounding the shaft, begins one day to touch a depth it should never reach.
A coal mine’s vertical shaft in Gangwon. Each time the surveyor sounds the pit, the plumb line touches a bottom one fathom deeper than the day before.
The surveyor closes the Bureau register and tallies his own soundings. Cutting a line into the worn rock by the pit-mouth, he counts that the lines outnumber the surveyors ever posted.
The surveyor goes down into the shaft on the plumb line. The bottom does not wait for him, as it never did when sounded, and the line he cut into the rock leaves room for the next that will wear away.