of season has cost you."

Discipline at the mine had to be of the strictest. Any laxity, and the
laziest man was bound to start an epidemic of laziness.

Don Ferdinando set off for the Vega, eight hundred feet sheer below the
mine. It was a ticklish zigzag, just to the left of the transporting
machinery, with twenty places in which a slip would mean death.

Domecq was working down below, lading the stuff into bullock-carts.

Alfred Cayley disappeared into one of the upper galleries, to see how
they were panning out.

The snow mountains and the afternoon sun looked down upon a very
pleasing scene of industry--blue-jacketed workers and heaps of ore; and
upon Jim Cayley also, who had enjoyed his dinner so thoroughly that he
didn't think so much as before about his rejected information.

But now again the Cuban kiddy drifted towards him, making for the
zigzag.

Jim hailed him.

"Can't stop, Don Jimmy!" said Toro. But when he was some yards down, he
beckoned to Jim, who quickly joined him.

They conferred on the edge of a ghastly precipice.

"I'm off down to tell Domecq that it's going to be done at two-thirty
prompt," said Toro.

"What's going to be d--done?" asked Jimmy.

"What I told you about. They've cut the 'phone down to the 'llano' as a
start. But that's nothing. You just go and squat by the engine and see
what happens. Guess they'll not mind you."

To tell the truth, Jim was a trifle dazed. He didn't grapple the ins and
outs of a conspiracy of Spanish miners just for the sake of a holiday.
And as Toro couldn't wait (it was close on half-past two), Jim thought
he might as well act on his advice. He liked to see the big buckets of
ore swinging off into space from the mine level and making their fearful
journey at a thrilling angle, down, down until, as mere specks, they
reached the transport and washing department of the mine in the Vega.
Two empty buckets came up as two full ones went down, travelling with a
certain sublimity along the double rope of woven wire.

Jim sat down at a distance. He saw one cargo get right off--no more.

Then he noticed that the men engaged at the engine were confabulating.
He saw a gleam of instruments. Also he saw another full bucket hitched
on and sent down at the run. And then he saw the men furtively at work
at something.

Suddenly the cable snapped, flew out, yards high!

Jim saw this--and something more. Looking instantly towards the Vega he
saw the return bucke