Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

That these two men whom the accident of fortune had placed in actual ownership of the mine should interfere with him had roused first his rage, and now his determination to placate them, to hoodwink them. He showed a good-natured tolerance of their ignorance, and an indefatigable patience in explanation.

“That’s it; now you’re catching on fine,” he encouraged them, as they grasped some elemental principle of mining. He led them over a good deal of ground during these explanations. He piloted them with a rough carefulness which even included young Carrington. The boy’s being there at all amused him rather than otherwise. But Trevanion was guarding young Carrington with as wary an eye as he was watching Richards.

Mr. Wade decided that for the first time Richards was appearing to advantage.

Aboveground his crudities of manner might be repellent; here he was in his native element, shrewd, practical and zealous.

Mr. Wade began to feel that Trevanion the Taciturn was quite as likely to prove the villain of the piece.

To be sure, it appeared that they had embarked on a tremendous undertaking. Mr. Wade felt that the mine was larger than he had supposed, but, as Richards said, they might as well understand it thoroughly. On this Mr. Wade, with legs that threatened to drop from his hip sockets, plodded on.

Young Carrington turned white more than once, but shut his teeth and went on defiantly; and Hastings owned to himself that he was desperately tired. Trevanion was as unwearied as Cornish patience, but Richards was not trying to tired out Trevanion – physically.

It lacked five minutes of the noon hour when they saw the cage ahead of them, waiting at this, the seventh and lowest, working level of the mine.

Below, as Richard told them, was the development level, to which the cage did not descend.

“We can’t go down now,” he said, looking at his watch. “They’re just going to blast, and it will take an hour afterward for the smoke to clear. We’ll go up and have our dinner, and come down again this afternoon to finish up, eh?”

Lunch, up on the earth’s surface, with sunshine and first grade air. The words were as welcome to Mr. Wade as though an archangel had spoken them.

Young Carrington, too, shared his feeling; shared, too, though unknowingly, Mr. Wade’s calculation that his legs would just about carry him to the cage.

Richards, with an inward grin, assured himself that those two, at least, would attempt no afternoon expedition.

This farce of investigation would soon be ended. It would be quite safe to urge them to come down again. They had had quite enough. He looked forward with amused anticipation to making the suggestion after lunch.

Trevanion hesitated about declaring an intention to remain without the others through the noon hour. No, he would see young Carrington safely out of it first; then —

They were almost at the cage now.

Richards was showing them the bell at the side of the shaft, the signal to the engineer to hoist the cage.

“All the men but one get in,” he explained. “He touches the bell and races across to get in the cage. The engineer allows him so many seconds to make it. No, you can’t stop it after it starts.”

Mr. Wade, who had arrived at that stage when he recked not how the cage went up, as long as it went, continued an unlistening way to that haven.

There was a detonation from the development level.

“Blast,” said Richards, to young Carrington’s look. “They’re in rather dangerous ground, and so we have them leave it until just before the noon hour, in case – ”

A man shot up from the ladder-way. Another. And another. The ladder-hole spouted them out like a volcano.

They ran toward the cage panic-stricken, sweeping Mr. Wade into it before them. With an instant comprehension of the disaster that placed them all in a common peril, Richards turned swiftly to the others.

“Get in!” he shouted. “They’ve struck water!”

He caught Hastings by the arm, and rammed his way through the press like a great machine.

“You – fools! There’s plenty of time!” he railed at his men.

Trevanion, guarding young Carrington with his right arm, thrust his mighty bulk through the struggling mass just behind Richards.

They were almost at the cage door when a terrorized Finn fought his way past them, striking out blindly at everything in reach.

One elbow thrust sent young Carrington spinning from Trevanion’s protecting arm to the ground, and the next instant the Finn dropped his full weight between Richards and Hastings, and leaped past them into the cage.

He shouted triumphantly to his fellows. It was jargon to Mr. Wade. But Richards knew, and raged, and the other miners knew, and rejoiced, that he had given the signal to hoist. Trevanion was lifting young Carrington in his arms.

Richards stepped into the cage, with an oath.

“Come!” he said, fiercely, to Hastings, jamming a few inches of space free in the cage with his bulk. “Room for one. You haven’t a second to lose!” he shouted.

Hastings put his hands in his pockets, coolly.

“I stay with my guests,” he said. And with his first word, the cage started upward.

As he turned toward the others, Trevanion, one arm round young Carrington, caught hold of his sleeve.

“We maun run for it!” he shouted.

For out of the great black hole beneath them rose the water, spreading across the bottom of the shaft.

From above, and suddenly faint, they could hear Mr. Wade calling that they must stop, that they must go back for his nephew, and his voice was the voice of a very old man. Trevanion instinctively led them running back into the drift. Young Carrington wrenched himself free. “I’m all right,” he said. “Took the breath out of me for a minute. I won’t hinder.”

Back of them the water followed silently, gaining gradually up the grade of the drift.

“Not time to make that first rise – the one we came down,” Trevanion said, as they sped along. “Ought to be another – here it is!”

He swerved into a black air shaft, but swept them back into the drift the next instant.

“No ladder. Stripped!” he said, laconically, and on they hurried again.

The water was a thin encroaching line thirty feet back now. Now the rise in the level hid it from sight.

And finally another rise. Stripped.

And on again.

Young Carrington was getting tired. Even peril was losing its spur. He stumbled a little.

Trevanion caught him round the waist, lifting him along with a strong gentleness; looking at him with curiously wondering eyes, but eyes that never lost their look of fealty.

“Why are the ladders gone?” young Carrington asked, and he kept his voice resolutely free from fear.

“Economy,” said Trevanion, briefly. “Wanted to use them somewhere else. We’ll find one after a bit.” Which might or might not be so.

“And if we don’t?” said Hastings, swinging alongside.

“They’ll send the cage to the level above, and your men will be hallooing all over the place for us,” Trevanion told him. He thought with a certain grim humor that Richards would not make any wild exertion to save him. Hastings’ presence was their best hope, if the ladders failed.

“If it should take them a long time to find us?” It was young Carrington now.

“Water may stop altogether,” Trevanion stated. “Depends on the size of the vug. Anyway, it rises slower the more ground it covers. We’ll have time enough.” But no one could tell that.

Disappointment. Hope. Then the end of the drift stared them in the face – rock and dirt as a final blast had left it.

But “Here’s our raise,” said Trevanion, bluffly, turning off.

And the raise was ladderless: a vertical opening, whose hard rock walls were too slippery for even a Cornishman to climb. Trapped!

They looked at the place where the ladder should have been, as though it must, perforce, appear. Young Carrington ran a finger rapidly round inside his collar, as though it had grown suddenly tight. The air seemed close. Then he pulled himself together sharply. Say what you will, blood will tell.

“And now what?” he asked Trevanion, cheerfully.

Hastings’ eyes were looking the same question.

“Wait,” said Trevanion, stoically.

To wait, inactive: it is the real test of courage.

With any kind of activity, hope plays an obligato; but when there is no struggle to be made, fears tries a tremolo first on one heartstring and then another.

“You should have gone with the others,” said young Carrington to Hastings, reproachfully.

“Never!” said Hastings, decidedly. “There’s that drop of comfort in the whole thing, anyway.

“How do you suppose I should feel,” he flashed, “if I were safe on the surface, and you were here? I should feel as though I had decoyed you into it.” He turned to Trevanion. “Can’t the pumps get the water under control?” he demanded.

“If you had enough of ’em,” said Trevanion. “That’s another place where Richards economized. The Star’ll pump it out for you after a while.”

“Richards will have his day of reckoning if I get out of this,” said Hastings, furiously.

“Does he know that?” asked Trevanion, dryly.

And Hastings saw the point. So did young Carrington. The cards were Richards’ now, to play as he chose. Hastings turned to his friends.

“Ned,” he said, “I’m mighty sorry. Sorry I interfered at all. I’d give my life to have you and Trevanion safe on the surface.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said the lad, quickly.

Trevanion’s eyes watched him curiously.

“I want to talk with you about Elenore,” Hastings went on, quietly. “I suppose you know that I love Elenore, Ned?”

Trevanion stepped back a few paces, but he listened intently.

“Do you?” said the lad, simply.

“Do I?” said Hastings, impetuously. “The hardest thing I ever did was to leave her without telling her I loved her. But you can’t ask a girl like that to wait indefinitely, you know. Then, when I found out where I was coming, it seemed as though it might have been meant, after all. And I wanted to patch up the trouble between the mines, so that I’d have at least a fair chance.”

“And then?” said young Carrington, softly.

“Then,” said Hastings, recklessly, “I hoped – I was daft enough to dream – that she might not think it a hardship to come back to the little place where she was born – to her father – to me. To me! And when I talked of building a bungalow, I thought what it would mean to bring my wife home to it.”

There was silence. Then Hastings shrugged his shoulders.

“I may not have the chance to tell Elenore,” he said, bruskly, half-ashamed of the emotion he had displayed. “It’s not quite the same thing to tell you, old man. I’m afraid there’s small chance of our ever being brothers-in-law, but you wouldn’t have objected to me as a brother, would you?”

“Whatever Elenore wished, I should have wished,” the lad said, calmly.

Hastings laughed a short, impatient laugh.

“I suppose we’re all egoists,” he said. “But I don’t mind confessing to you that it would be easier to face the music if I knew what Elenore did wish – whether she cared.”

There was silence again. Trevanion’s figure in the background grew tense. Then the lad laughed lightly.

“You hadn’t asked her, you know,” he said, “and Elenore isn’t the kind of a girl to wear her heart on her sleeve. But I know Elenore pretty well, and I think she cared – really.”

Hastings flung his arm in front of his face with a gesture that was almost boyish.

“Elenore!” he whispered to the cold comfort of his coat sleeve. For virile youth loves strongly, humanly.

Young Carrington’s eyes watched him with a wonderful light. Even the flickering candlelight showed Trevanion that.

Then Hastings rammed his hands in his pockets and drew a deep breath.

“Thank Heaven, she’s on the other side of the ocean! It will be easier for her, after all. Harder to realize,” he said, fervently.

Young Carrington drew a quick breath, a breath of relief. “I thought you’d feel that way,” he said, quietly.

Trevanion stepped out into the drift.

“I want to speak with you a bit,” he nodded to young Carrington.

The lad followed him. Hastings, left alone, gave himself up to thoughts of Elenore. The other side of the rock wall, young Carrington faced Trevanion, and knew that he knew. Every detail of their surroundings stood out in the light of that, with sudden distinctness. The great timbers that walled in the drift, the flickering light of the candles in their caps – all seemed but the setting for Trevanion’s eyes. The hand he laid on young Carrington’s arm was almost reverential in its touch.

“I’ve held you in my arms to-day twice,” he said, hurriedly. “I don’t understand why it’s you, but it’s all right.” He looked at young Carrington as one of Jeanne d’Arc’s soldiers might have looked.

Young Carrington faced him very quietly.

“I thought ’twas queer, the way you held the child that time,” Trevanion went on. “And you ride just as you did as a youngster. Will he come back now if – ” he demanded.

Young Carrington nodded gently. “Yes, and he’s a splendid fellow.” If the young voice broke for a second, that was all. “He’ll help dad to bear it. It was best for me to come. Best, above all, if this was to happen.” The voice was steady now. “I’m sorry you know, but it would have been safe with you, anyway.”

It was that same confident charm that had conquered Trevanion at the outset.

“You won’t tell him?” he questioned, jerking his head toward the raise.

Young Carrington’s head shook a slow negative.

“Not unless at the very last I turn weak and womanish;” and there was a whimsical touch in the last word.

Then the young figure straightened up with a quick decision.

“And I really think, Trevanion” – young Carrington’s voice was light now – “that I shall make a nice, plucky, manly finish.”

Trevanion, following back into the raise, would have cut his heart out to save that buoyant young life, but his devotion was the pure fealty of a serf for his sovereign.

They played at bravery after that, each abetting the other.

Young Carrington coaxed Trevanion into telling them mining stories, wheedled Hastings into all kinds of reminiscences of his boyhood, assumed their ultimate escape so confidently that Hastings thought it a genuine hopefulness.

Not so Trevanion. He knew what the spring was that moved young Carrington to play up to a buoyant part. And he helped, with anecdotes of wonderful rescues, of escapes just in the nick of time.

He was in the midst of one of the best of these when a little lapping sound stopped him.

A thin little line of water pulsed gently into the entrance of the raise.

CHAPTER VI

Mr. Wade had shouted his fruitless commands, in the ascending cage, all the way to the surface, raging at Richards and his management, and unconvinced, in spite of a united and profane assurance, of his inability to stop the cage and go back; furious at him for having installed such a defective system, and threatening him with dismissal at the earliest possible moment.

His nephew and his nephew’s friend left to danger, while these brutes were being brought to the surface! He had never suffered such helpless frenzy in all his neatly adjusted life.

At the surface the cage cleared with magical suddenness. Mr. Wade, breathless with rage, was fairly dragged out by Richards, and in so short a time as a signal may be given and obeyed, the cage had again started downward.

Mr. Wade leaned back against the timbers of the shaft house, with the exhaustion of relief.

But it was a relief that Richards did not share. This particular kind of disaster was so frequently recurrent that he knew its possibilities all too well. And he raged that it should have come just now. It was such a routine danger that he had not thought of it as a special menace in taking them down. Casualty, with Mr. Wade involved or witnessing, had been furthest from his thoughts or desires.

“How long before they will be up?”’ Mr. Wade asked, faintly.

Richards, tensely alert, made no answer. The cage had reached the bottom of the shaft now. He waited a minute – two – three. There was no sign from below. He himself gave the signal to hoist.

“Are they coming?” demanded Mr. Wade.

Richards shook his head. “I can’t say, sir,” he said, “but they’ve had plenty of time. Either they got in the cage and forgot to give the signal” – and with Trevanion below this was an unlikely contingency – “or – ” he hesitated.

“Or?” said Mr. Wade, sharply.

“Or the water has cut them off,” Richards finished.

“Then – ” said Mr. Wade, faintly.

“Reach ’em from the level above,” Richards answered. But he thought of certain contingencies – thought of a good many important things.

There was a crowd of miners now, watching for the cage to appear. The jargon of Finnish comment sounded to Mr. Wade like the buzzing of bees. Then the cage came in sight. Empty and dripping wet.

The next second everything was action, and Richards its mainspring. His orders pelted down like hailstones. Men, tools, paraphernalia, filled the cage. Other men went racing off on surface errands.

Mr. Wade, paralyzed by his complete ignorance of conditions or remedies, seemed crushed under the consciousness of casualty. Richards caught him by the arm and shook him into attention.

“We’ll bring them up, if they are alive,” he shouted to him, as though he were deaf.

Then he stepped into the cage, and down it went again. Mr. Wade leaned back against the wall, motionless, his eyes fixed on the hole where it had disappeared.

But over all the little town the news was spreading like wildfire.

* * * * *

John Carrington had spent a horrible morning. When the trap came back, and the stable boy Ike, who was driving, announced that Mr. Ned had sent him home, John Carrington promptly demanded why.

“I dunno,” said the boy. “He said, ‘That’s all,’ so I come.”

It couldn’t be possible that Ned had gone down the Tray-Spot! Ned, who had never shown the slightest eagerness to go down the Star. But what – And why —

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