ke cleared he could see the
boy scrambling back along his gallery and the officer sprawled face
down across the earth-heap in the light of the fallen lamp.

The Subaltern smashed the lamp himself before he too turned and
plunged, floundering and slipping and stumbling, for his exit in an
agony of haste and apprehension. It was all right, he told himself a
dozen times; the officer was done for--the back of that head and a past
knowledge of a service revolver's work at close range told him that
plain enough; it would take a good many minutes for the boy to tell his
tale, and even then, if a party ventured back at once, it would take
many more minutes in the dark--and he was glad he thought to smash the
lamp--before they could find his charges or the wires. It was safe
enough, but--the tunnel had never seemed so long or the going so slow.
He banged against beams and supports, ploughed through sticky mud and
churning water, rasped his knuckles, and bruised knees and elbows in
his mad haste. It was safe enough, but--but--but--suppose there was no
response to his pressure on the switch; suppose there had been some
silly mistake in making the connections; suppose the battery wouldn't
work. There were a score of things to go wrong. Thank goodness he had
overhauled and examined everything himself; although that again would
only make it more appallingly awful if things didn't work. No time
now, no chance to go back and put things right. Perhaps he ought to
have stayed back there and made the contact. A quick end if it worked
right, and a last chance to refix it if it didn't; yes, he . . . but
here was the light ahead. He shouted 'Fire!' at the top of his voice,
still hurrying on and half cowering from the expected roar and shock of
the explosion. Nothing happened. He shouted again and again as loud
as his sobbing breath and labouring lungs would let him.
Still--nothing; and it began to sear his brain as a dreadful certainty
that he had failed, that his mine was a ghastly frost, that all the
labour gone to its making and the good lives spent on it were wasted.
He stumbled weakly out into the shaft, caught a glimpse of the
Corporal's set face staring at the tunnel mouth, and tried once more to
call out 'Fire!' But the Corporal was waiting for no word. He had
already got that, had heard the Subaltern's first shouts roll down the
tunnel, in fact was waiting with a finger on the exploding switch for
the moment the Subalter