Once
the water attained this height it would flow away towards the shaft, and
do the young man no harm. Dick feared Harry was dead; but he did not
reason, he only obeyed the instinct that possessed him and that also bade
him avoid the incoming shift. If the men found him there he would have to
tell all, and her father had done it--her father! A swift panic seized
Dick; he snatched up his candle and ran back the way he had come. It was
hours, he imagined, since he lay listening to Rogers and Shine above the
quarry, and he wondered that the night-shift men were not below long ere
this. He reached the balance shaft without having seen a man, and climbed
swiftly to the upper level. His race was continued along these workings
to the jump-up. Once in the Red Hand drive he was safe from discovery,
but the feverish activity still possessed him. How he climbed that
fearful flight of ladders up the black wet shaft he never knew. He
remembered nothing of the agony of the toil the day after, when all
seemed like a dream.
He made his way into the Mount of Gold drive again. An impulse moved him
to block the opening connecting the two drives with loose reef, and the
same impulse led him to hide the skin bag containing the gold away under
the dirt in the shaft of the Mount of Gold. The excitement that had
driven him to the rescue of Harry Hardy sustained him till he had crawled
out into the quarry; then his strength all went out of him, and left him
sick and wretched.
Pages:
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177