Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

“We maun run for it!” he shouted.

For out of the great black hole beneath them rose the water, spreading across the bottom of the shaft.

From above, and suddenly faint, they could hear Mr. Wade calling that they must stop, that they must go back for his nephew, and his voice was the voice of a very old man. Trevanion instinctively led them running back into the drift. Young Carrington wrenched himself free. “I’m all right,” he said. “Took the breath out of me for a minute. I won’t hinder.”

Back of them the water followed silently, gaining gradually up the grade of the drift.

“Not time to make that first rise – the one we came down,” Trevanion said, as they sped along. “Ought to be another – here it is!”

He swerved into a black air shaft, but swept them back into the drift the next instant.

“No ladder. Stripped!” he said, laconically, and on they hurried again.

The water was a thin encroaching line thirty feet back now. Now the rise in the level hid it from sight.

And finally another rise. Stripped.

And on again.

Young Carrington was getting tired. Even peril was losing its spur. He stumbled a little.

Trevanion caught him round the waist, lifting him along with a strong gentleness; looking at him with curiously wondering eyes, but eyes that never lost their look of fealty.

“Why are the ladders gone?” young Carrington asked, and he kept his voice resolutely free from fear.

“Economy,” said Trevanion, briefly. “Wanted to use them somewhere else. We’ll find one after a bit.” Which might or might not be so.

“And if we don’t?” said Hastings, swinging alongside.

“They’ll send the cage to the level above, and your men will be hallooing all over the place for us,” Trevanion told him. He thought with a certain grim humor that Richards would not make any wild exertion to save him. Hastings’ presence was their best hope, if the ladders failed.

“If it should take them a long time to find us?” It was young Carrington now.

“Water may stop altogether,” Trevanion stated. “Depends on the size of the vug. Anyway, it rises slower the more ground it covers. We’ll have time enough.” But no one could tell that.

Disappointment. Hope. Then the end of the drift stared them in the face – rock and dirt as a final blast had left it.

But “Here’s our raise,” said Trevanion, bluffly, turning off.

And the raise was ladderless: a vertical opening, whose hard rock walls were too slippery for even a Cornishman to climb. Trapped!

They looked at the place where the ladder should have been, as though it must, perforce, appear. Young Carrington ran a finger rapidly round inside his collar, as though it had grown suddenly tight. The air seemed close. Then he pulled himself together sharply. Say what you will, blood will tell.

“And now what?” he asked Trevanion, cheerfully.

Hastings’ eyes were looking the same question.

“Wait,” said Trevanion, stoically.

To wait, inactive: it is the real test of courage.

With any kind of activity, hope plays an obligato; but when there is no struggle to be made, fears tries a tremolo first on one heartstring and then another.

“You should have gone with the others,” said young Carrington to Hastings, reproachfully.

“Never!” said Hastings, decidedly. “There’s that drop of comfort in the whole thing, anyway.

“How do you suppose I should feel,” he flashed, “if I were safe on the surface, and you were here? I should feel as though I had decoyed you into it.” He turned to Trevanion. “Can’t the pumps get the water under control?” he demanded.

“If you had enough of ’em,” said Trevanion. “That’s another place where Richards economized. The Star’ll pump it out for you after a while.”

“Richards will have his day of reckoning if I get out of this,” said Hastings, furiously.

“Does he know that?” asked Trevanion, dryly.

And Hastings saw the point. So did young Carrington. The cards were Richards’ now, to play as he chose. Hastings turned to his friends.

“Ned,” he said, “I’m mighty sorry. Sorry I interfered at all. I’d give my life to have you and Trevanion safe on the surface.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said the lad, quickly.

Trevanion’s eyes watched him curiously.

“I want to talk with you about Elenore,” Hastings went on, quietly. “I suppose you know that I love Elenore, Ned?”

Trevanion stepped back a few paces, but he listened intently.

“Do you?” said the lad, simply.

“Do I?” said Hastings, impetuously. “The hardest thing I ever did was to leave her without telling her I loved her. But you can’t ask a girl like that to wait indefinitely, you know. Then, when I found out where I was coming, it seemed as though it might have been meant, after all. And I wanted to patch up the trouble between the mines, so that I’d have at least a fair chance.”

“And then?” said young Carrington, softly.

“Then,” said Hastings, recklessly, “I hoped – I was daft enough to dream – that she might not think it a hardship to come back to the little place where she was born – to her father – to me. To me! And when I talked of building a bungalow, I thought what it would mean to bring my wife home to it.”

There was silence. Then Hastings shrugged his shoulders.

“I may not have the chance to tell Elenore,” he said, bruskly, half-ashamed of the emotion he had displayed. “It’s not quite the same thing to tell you, old man. I’m afraid there’s small chance of our ever being brothers-in-law, but you wouldn’t have objected to me as a brother, would you?”

“Whatever Elenore wished, I should have wished,” the lad said, calmly.

Hastings laughed a short, impatient laugh.

“I suppose we’re all egoists,” he said. “But I don’t mind confessing to you that it would be easier to face the music if I knew what Elenore did wish – whether she cared.”

There was silence again. Trevanion’s figure in the background grew tense. Then the lad laughed lightly.

“You hadn’t asked her, you know,” he said, “and Elenore isn’t the kind of a girl to wear her heart on her sleeve. But I know Elenore pretty well, and I think she cared – really.”