nce of terror, I turned and ran toward the main tunnel.
I tried to utter a warning shout as I ran, but my stiffened lips gave
forth no sound. Happily, as I reached the main tunnel, the light at
the foot of the shaft was in direct range with my vision, and between
the shaft and myself I plainly saw a man hastening toward it. He was
wearing a light gray coat. A quick glance toward the spot where I had
left father and Joe showed nothing but darkness. They had both left.
The hoisting cage was down, and, as I raced toward it, the man in the
gray coat scrambled in. Even in my terror and excitement I was
conscious of an unreasonable, desolate sense of desertion when I saw
that. Yet, underneath it all a lingering fragment of common sense told
me that father would believe me, by this, safe above; he had told me
to go--and I had not obeyed him.

Behind me, as I ran, arose a shrill and terrible chorus, a crashing of
timbers, yells and shrieks of men, the terrific braying of the
Andalusian mules, and above all, a new sound; the mighty voice, the
swelling roar of imprisoned waters taking possession of the channels
that man had inadvertently prepared for them. I reached the hoisting
cage so nearly too late that it had already started on its upward
journey, when, seeing me, one of its occupants reached down, caught
both my upstretched hands and swung me up to a place by his side. It
chanced, providentially, that the cage was at the bottom of the shaft
when the inrush of waters came, and it had been held there for a
brief, dangerous moment while the men nearest the shaft fled to its
protection. It rose slowly upward, not too soon, for in an incredibly
short time an inky flood rolled beneath it; rolled beneath, but seemed
to keep pace with it as it arose. The water was coming up the shaft.

CHAPTER III

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