into the Red Hand drive beneath, and then turned with familiar feet and
hastened towards the shaft. A few centres had been knocked out and thrown
across the pit as a staging, so that access to the ladder was possible,
but not with out some risk. The boy paused at nothing, reached the iron
rungs with a bound, and started down the perpendicular ladder. Down, down
he went for many minutes, his candle feebly illuminating a blurred patch
about his head. Above, through a bewildering space of darkness, the
grated opening at the surface shone like a faint star in another sphere;
below was solid blackness; about him the slime of the dripping timbers
sparkled in the candle's rays. Down, down, down! The journey might have
seemed interminable--a long pilgrimage into the earth's black
distances--had the boy had a mind for it, but he thought nothing of the
task; at length his feet struck the slabs over the well, and turning he
flashed his light into the cavernous depth of a big drive.

He plunged into the drive without a pause, and now the way was familiar
again. Voyages of discovery made during crib time when he officiated as
tool boy in the Silver Stream had often brought him up the jump-up into
the Red Hand drive. Down that jump-up he scrambled now, and stood in the
first level of the Silver Stream where the rich gutter had dipped away. A
short journey brought him to a balance shaft. Down this to the lower
level he travelled without any difficulty, and his journey was almost
completed. He was in the bottom drive hastening towards the face where
Rogers and Shine had left their victim. He could hear the far-off
throbbing of the plunger in the big Stream pumps as it drew the water
into the lifts, and above it all the strange murmur of a great mine, like
the voice of a distant sea.

Finding an empty truck the boy ran it before him on the rails. He was
experienced miner enough to know that one can only travel quickly in this
way in a wet drive full of ruts and pitfalls. Passing the 'S' drive,
where the robbers had done their work, Dick found Harry Hardy just as
Rogers had described him, on his back a few feet up the incline from the
hand-pump that served to drain the low-lying part of the drive. His arms
were thrown out, and his deadly pale face turned up, the chin pointing to
the roof. Upon his forehead were stains of blood, and he lay like a
corpse in the black water. The flood had risen above his ears, and the
boy knew he had come o