AT THE MOUTH OF THE SHAFT
Rutledge was standing by the windlass as the cage drew slowly up into
the light. The men sprang out, not forgetting to lift me out with
them, and the superintendent craned his neck, looking down into the
black hole from which we had ascended. "Keep back!" he shouted, as
some of the men crowded about him. "Keep back; the water is coming up
the shaft. We'll soon have a spouting geyser, at this rate. How many
of you are there?" He glanced over the group and answered his own
question, in an awed voice: "Seven--and the girl--God help us! Only
seven!"
I had been so blinded by the fierce white glare of sunlight, following
on the darkness of the shaft, and so dazed by the awful nature of the
calamity that had befallen us that at first I comprehended almost
nothing. The events of the day recorded themselves automatically upon
my mind, to be clearly recalled afterward. In a numb, dazed way I saw
a man in a light gray coat creep stiffly from the cage, last of all,
and, as he staggered away up the dump, I took a step toward him,
looked in his face, and recoiled with a wild, heart-broken cry.
The wearer of the coat was old Joe. Facing around, I looked on the
rescued men, my heart beginning to beat in slow, suffocating
throbs--my father was not among them.
For a moment I was quite beside myself. Like one gone suddenly mad, I
sprang at the negro, and, seizing his arm, shook it furiously, crying:
"Father, father--where is my father? What have you done with my
father?"
The old man began to whimper, "I ain' done nuffin'! I wish't I had! I
wish't hit was me dat done gone to respec' dat ole Watkin's Lateral,
den I'd 'a' been drownded, an' he wouldn't!"
"Watkin's Lateral?" echoed one of the men who had so narrowly
escaped. "Was Gordon in there? That's where the water burst through
first. I thought that some one might have gone in there to test the
walls, and they'd given way."
"You are probably right, Johnson. Not but what the walls would have
caved in, just the same, whether they were struck or not."
Little heed as I paid, at the moment, to what was going on or being
said, yet it all impressed itself upon my mind, to be recalled
afterward, and afterward I knew that this last observation of Mr.
Rutledge's was intended to exonerate father from any charge of
carelessness in going into that place at just that time. But every
employee of the Gray Eagle knew that Watkin's Lateral--a long,
diagonal passage, with which the main tunnel was connected by a number
of side extensions--was a treacherous place in which to work at all
times, and must, of necessity, have been trebly so this morning.
Loosing my frenzied hold of old Joe, I crouched to the ground, while
Joe sank down on the dump, covering his face with his gnarled old
hands. "He made me tuck an' put on his coat, he did, an' tole me fur
t' start fur home; I was dat racked wid de misery in my back!" he
moaned.
The men were again clustering about the shaft. I got up and went and
stood beside them. A hollow roar came up from the depths into which we
gazed. The black water had risen, and risen, until, touched by a ray
of sunlight, it threw back at us a sinister, mocking gleam, as the eye
of a demon might. And father was down there in that black grave! That
was my one coherent thought as, after the first wild look, I suddenly
grasped one of the ropes of the cage that still swung above the
shaft's mouth, and swung myself aboard. My reckless hand was on the
starting lever when Mr. Rutledge, with a cry, and a spring as quick as
my own had been, landed beside me. He snatched my hand from the lever.
"Are you mad?" he asked, sternly, "What are you going to do?"
"I am going down to my father; I am going to bring him up!" I cried
wildly.
As though the words had held a charm to break the spell of silence,
they were followed by a babel of groans, of outcries and entreaties.
It seemed that all the surface population of Crusoe were already on
the spot; all, and especially the women, were wild to go to the rescue
of the doomed men below. Doomed! Ah, they were past that now--all of
them--all! It was this solemn thought that suddenly calmed me, that
made me yield quietly to Rutledge's guiding hand as he drew me from
the cage. "There are men here," he said. "Stand back, all of you
women." He took his place in the cage again; then he looked around on
the assembled men.
"Dick," he said, signalling out a square-built Scotch miner, "stand
beside the hoist, and do exactly as I tell you."
"I wull that!" returned the miner, taking the station indicated.
"I'm going down as far as the water will allow," Rutledge explained.
"Who comes with me?" A dozen men volunteered instantly. Rutledge
selected two who stepped into the cage beside him.
"There may be fire-damp--gas," the Scotchman said, warningly.
"I know; there is, probably; I'll look out for that. Lower away!"
Rutledge had lighted one of the miner's candles which was suspended by
a cord from a crack in the bottom of the cage. We above leaned over
that dreadful well and watched the tiny flicker of light as the cage
swung down and down toward the sinister eye that came steadily up as
it went down. The tiny flame burned bravely for a space, then it went
out as suddenly as if snuffed out by invisible fingers while the water
below moved and sparkled as it might have done if the owner of the
demoniac eye had laughed. "Choke damp!" said the Scotch miner
succinctly, and began hoisting up.
I was crouching on the ground with my face hidden on Joe's shoulder
when the cage came up again. The men sprang out silently, and the hush
on the waiting throng seemed to deepen.
"We will set the pumps at work as soon as it can be done; that is the
only thing left for us to do," I heard Rutledge say, and his voice
sounded far away to my reeling senses as it might have sounded had I
heard it in some dreadful vision of the night. Then he came and knelt
down beside me; he took my hands in a close grasp. "Go home, Leslie,"
he said, "go home and do not come back. We will do all that can be
done."
Not many hours thereafter the pumps were at work, lifting the water
out of the mine--a Herculean task, but not so long a one, or so
hopeless, as had been anticipated by many. Soon fresh mounds of earth
began to appear in the lonely little hillside cemetery; mounds beneath
which the rescued bodies of the drowned miners were reverently laid.
Among them was one where father lay peacefully sleeping by mother's
side, and leaving him there at rest, we turned sadly away to take up
again the dreary routine of our every-day life.