e skip disclosed his devilish purpose in time for
Peveril to spring and catch with outstretched arms one of its
supporting bars. With a mighty effort he drew himself up, and, in
spite of Connell's furious attempts to prevent him, gained its
interior.

At that moment something went wrong with the hoisting machinery, the
upward movement was arrested, and the bucket hung motionless not more
than ten feet above the deadly mine. In the awfulness of their common
danger, the men forgot their enmity and gazed at each other with
horror-stricken eyes. Then, with a groan of despair, Mike Connell sank
limply to the bottom of the skip.

CHAPTER IX

WINNING A FRIEND BY SHEER PLUCK

Peveril's lamp had been extinguished during his struggle to force an
entrance into the skip, while that in Mike Connell's hat went out as
he sank helpless from terror and crouched at the other's feet. So the
blackness that shrouded them as with a pall was only faintly illumined
by the fitful flashing of the fuses that hissed like so many fiery
serpents beneath them. Their red eyes gleamed spitefully through the
gloom, and for an instant Peveril, leaning over the side of the skip,
gazed at them in fascinated helplessness.

Then he leaped down among them and began to tear them from their
connection with the devilish forces that only awaited a signal to
burst forth and destroy him. The fiery serpents bit at him as he flung
them, to writhe in impotent rage, where they could do no harm; but he
heeded not the pain, and after a little they expired, one by one,
hissing spitefully to the last.

Some of them had already burned so low that he could not pluck them
forth, and was forced to stamp out their venomous lives with the
constant knowledge that, should a single spark escape this imperfect
method of extinguishment, he would still be lost. So fiercely did he
labor that in less than one minute the last visible spark from a score
of fuses had glimmered out, and he stood in absolute darkness. But he
must wait for a full minute more before he could be certain that none
had escaped him, to creep viciously down through the loose tamping and
still reach the hidden dynamite. It was a period of the same helpless
anxiety that immediately precedes the hearing of a sentence that may
be either one of death or acquittal. While it lasted Peveril was
bathed in a cold perspiration, his brain reeled, and his limbs
trembled until he was obliged to lean against the s