Читать книгу Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905 - Various - Страница 6

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 —