Beside him was a young doctor, who had come prepared for a
possible disaster. Such conversation as the men carried on was in low
tones, for all felt the strain of the long minutes. The engineer's eye
was glued to his machinery, his hand constantly on the lever.
It must have been an hour before the bell rang sharply in the silence
and the lever swept back instantly. A dozen men started to their feet
and waited tensely. Next moment there was a wild, exultant cheer.
For Tregarth had stepped from the cage with a limp figure in his arms,
and after him Davis, his arm around the shoulder of a drenched,
staggering youth, who had a bleeding cut across his cheek. Through all
the grime that covered the wounded miner the pallor of exhaustion showed
itself.
But beaten and buffeted as the man had plainly been in his fight for
life, the clean, supple strength and the invincible courage of him still
shone in his eye and trod in his bearing. It was even now the salient
thing about him, though he had but come, alive and no more, from a
wrestle with death itself.
He sank to a bench, and looked around on his friends with shining eyes.
"'Twas nip and tuck, boys. The water caught us in the tunnel, and I
thought we were gone. It swept us right to the cage," he panted.
"She didn't sweep Tom there, boss; ye went back after un," corrected the
Cornishman.
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