THE ACID TEST
Jack Kilmeny opened his eyes to find himself in darkness utter and
complete except for a pinpoint of light gleaming from far above. His
head was whirling and throbbing painfully. Something warm and moist
dropped into his eyes, and when he put his hand up to investigate the
cause he knew it must be blood from a wound.
Faintly the sound of voices and of harsh laughter drifted down to him.
Presently this died away. The stillness was almost uncanny.
"Something laid me out, I reckon. Must have been a bad whack." His
finger found a ridge above the temple which had been plowed through the
thick curly hair. "Looks as though a glancing bullet hit me. Golden luck
it didn't finish the job."
He moved. A sharp pain shot through his lower right leg. Trying to rise,
he slipped down at once from a badly sprained ankle. Every muscle in his
body ached, as if he had been jarred by a hard fall.
"Better have a look around first," he told himself.
Groping in his pocket, he found a match case and struck a light. What he
saw made him shudder. From the ledge upon which he lay fell away a gulf,
the bottom of which could be only guessed. His eyes, becoming accustomed
to the darkness, made out that he was in some sort of shaft, thirty feet
or more below the surface. Rotten from age, the timberings had slipped
and become jammed. Upon some of these he was resting. The sprained
ankle, by preventing him from moving, had saved him from plunging down
the well.
He held out a silver dollar and dropped it. From the time the coin took
to strike Jack judged he was a hundred feet from the bottom.
The flare of a second match showed him a wall ladder leading down, but
unfortunately it did not extend above him except in rotting fragments.
What had happened he could guess. Supposing him to be dead, his enemies
had dropped the body down this deserted shaft. Not for a moment did he
doubt who they were. The voices had been unmistakably Cornish, and even
without that evidence he would have guessed Peale and his partner as the
guilty ones.
Since he could not go up he went down, moving warily so as not to jar
loose the timbers upon which he lay. Every rung of the ladder he tested
with great care before he put his weight upon it. Each step of the
journey down sent a throb of pain from the ricked ankle, even though he
rested his weight on his hands while he lowered himself. From the last
rung--it was by actual count the one hundred forty-third--he stepped to
the ground.
Another match showed him a drift running from the foot of the shaft.
Along this he dragged himself slowly, uncertain of direction but
determined to find out what possibility of escape his prison offered.
For two hundred yards the tunnel led forward and brought him up sharply
at an _impasse_. A cave-in blocked farther advance.
"Check," Jack told himself aloud grimly.
He knew now that his situation was a very serious one, for he had been
flung alive into a grave that offered only a slight prospect of escape.
He was without food, effectually cut off from the surface of the earth,
and none but those who had assaulted him knew that he was buried.
The alternatives that lay before him were plain. He might climb the
ladder again to the timber ledge and keep calling for help, or he might
attempt to dig a way over the cave-in with his hands and his
pocketknife, trusting that the tunnel led to another shaft. The former
was a chance pure and simple, and a slender one at that. It was not
likely that anybody would pass the mouth of a deserted shaft far up in
the hills at this season of the year. But it was quite within the
probabilities that the tunnel led to some of the workings of a live
property. Many miles of underground drifts were connected by
intercepting stopes of adjoining mines. If he could force a way through
the cave-in there might be safety beyond. To go moling into such a place
without timbering would be a dangerous business, but the crisis was one
that justified any risk.
He took stock of his assets. Fortunately he had bought at a lunch
counter a ham sandwich to stay his appetite during the night trip. This
was still in his pocket, badly mashed but still edible. Five cigars were
in the case he carried and upon his person all told he found eleven
matches. A little trickle of water ran through the tunnel and gave
assurance that he would not die of thirst. His pocketknife was a
serviceable one and he had plenty of physical strength.
Jack decided that he would eat half of the sandwich that day and reserve
the rest for the second one. His cigars were precious luxuries to be
indulged in once every twenty-four hours after he had knocked off work.
He attacked the cave-in with the cool energy that characterized him. Out
of a piece of board he fashioned a kind of shovel with his knife. Bits
of broken timbering lay at the foot of the shaft. These he dragged into
the tunnel for fuel to feed a small fire which he built to give light
for the work. All through the night and till noon the following day he
dug among the fallen rocks and dirt, cleaning this _débris_ away after
he had loosened it with his bare hands.
The impact of the fall when he had been thrown down the shaft had jarred
him greatly. With the slightest movement of the body his back and
shoulders ached, sending shoots of pain in protest to his brain. The
sprained ankle he had bound tightly in a wet handkerchief, but every
time his weight rested on that leg he had to grit his teeth. But it was
not in him to quit. He stuck to his job till he had done the shift set
himself.
At noon he crawled back to the foot of the shaft. He was fagged to
exhaustion. For half an hour he lay stretched on his back with every
muscle relaxed.
Presently he cut from his coat the pocket that contained the sandwich
and divided the mash of ham and bread into two parts. One of these he
ate. The other he returned to the coat.
Favoring his ricked ankle as best he could, Jack climbed the wall ladder
to the ledge upon which he had found himself lying the previous night.
Five minutes' examination of the walls showed him that there was no
chance to reach the top of the shaft unaided. He tested the jammed
timbers to make sure they were secure before he put his weight upon
them. During the next six hours he called aloud every few minutes to
attract the attention of anyone who might chance to be passing near.
Toward evening he treated himself to his first cigar, making the most
of the comfort that it gave him. When the stub grew short he held it on
the small blade of his knife so as not to miss a puff. What was left he
wrapped in a pocket handkerchief for later use.
As the stars began to come out in the little patch of blue sky he could
see just above his prison Jack lowered himself again to the foot of the
shaft. Here he lay down a second time and within five minutes had fallen
into a deep sleep.
About midnight he awakened and was aware at once of a ravenous hunger.
He was still resolute to win a way out, though the knowledge pressed on
him that his chances were slender at the best. Till morning he worked
without a moment's rest. The fever in his ankle and the pain of the
sprain had increased, but he could not afford to pay any attention to
them. Blood from his scarred, torn hands ran down his wrists. Every
muscle in his abused body ached. Still he stabbed with his knife into
the earth that filled the tunnel and still he pulled great rocks back
with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would
not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him
alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry a way out.
When his watch told him it was eight o'clock he staggered to the shaft
again and lay down on his back to rest. Before climbing to the platform
above he finished the sandwich. He was very hungry and could have eaten
enough for two men had he been given the opportunity. Again for hours he
called every few minutes at the top of his voice.
In his vest pocket were a pencil and a notebook used for keeping the
accounts of the highgraders with whom he did business. To pass the time
he set down the story of the crime which had brought him here and his
efforts to free himself.
After darkness fell he let himself down to the foot of the shaft and
slept. Either from hunger or from fever in his ankle he slept brokenly.
He was conscious of a little delirium in his waking spells, but the
coming of midnight found him master of himself, though a trifle
lightheaded.
It was impossible to work as steadily as he had done during the two
previous nights. Hunger and pain and toil were doing their best to wear
out his strength. His limbs moved laggardly. Once he fell asleep in the
midst of his labor. He dreamed of Moya, and after he awakened--as he
presently did with a start--she seemed so near that it would scarce have
surprised him if in the darkness his hands had come in contact with the
soft flesh of her vivid face. Nor did it strike him as at all odd that
it was Moya and not Joyce who was visiting him when he was in prison.
Sometimes she came to him as the little girl of the _Victorian_, but
more often the face he saw was the mocking one of the young woman, in
which gayety overran the tender sadness of the big, dusky eyes beneath
which tiny freckles had been sprinkled. More than once he clearly heard
her whisper courage to him.
Next day the notes in his diary were more fragmentary.
"Broke my rule and smoked two cigars to-day. Just finished my
fourth. Leaves one more. I drink a great deal. It helps me to
forget I'm hungry. Find a cigar goes farther if I smoke it in
sections. I chew the stubs while I'm working.
"Have tunneled in about seventeen feet. No sign that I'm near the
end of the cave-in. There's a lot of hell in being buried alive.
"Think I'm losing my voice from shouting so much when I'm in the
shaft. Gave it up to-day and let little Moya call for me. She's a
trump. Wish she'd stay here all the time and not keep coming and
going."
The jottings on the fourth day show the increase of the delirium.
Sometimes his mind appears to be quite clear, then it wanders to queer
fancies.
"Last cigar gone. Got sick from eating the stub. Violent retchings.
Kept falling asleep while working. Twenty-nine feet done--surely
reach the end to-morrow.... Another cave-in just after I crawled
out from my tunnel. All my work wiped out. Moya, the little devil,
laughed and said it served a highgrader right....
"Have telegraphed for help. Can't manage alone. Couldn't make it up
the shaft and had to give up the climb. Ordered a big breakfast at
the Silver Dollar--steak and mushrooms and hot cakes. The telegraph
wires run through pipe along floor of tunnel. Why don't the
operator stay on his job? I tap my signals and get no answer."
He began to talk to himself in a rambling sort of way. Sometimes he
would try to justify himself for highgrading in jerky half-coherent
phrases, sometimes he argued with Peale that he had better let him out.
But even in his delirious condition he stuck to his work in the tunnel,
though he was scarce able to drag himself about.
As the sickness grew on him, the lightheaded intervals became more
frequent. In one of these it occurred to him that he had struck high
grade ore and he filled his pockets with samples taken from the cave-in.
He spent a good deal of time explaining to Moya patiently over and over
again that the business of highgrading was justified by the conditions
under which the miners lived. There was no sequence to his thoughts.
They came in flashes without logical connection. It became, for
instance, a firm obsession that the pipe running through the tunnel was
a telegraph wire by means of which he could communicate with the outside
world if the operator would only stay on duty. But his interest in the
matter was intermittent.
It is suggestive of his condition that when Moya's answer came to his
seven taps he took it quite as a matter of course.
"The son of a Greaser is back on the job at last," he said aloud without
the least excitement. "Now, I'll get that breakfast I ordered."
He crawled back to the foot of the shaft in a childish, absurd
confidence that the food he craved would soon be sent down to him. While
he waited, Jack fell into light sleep where he lost himself in fancies
that voiced themselves in incoherent snatches of talk.