d rise steadily. The walls of the shaft glided past me. Up, up
I went. The bit of blue sky grew bigger, bigger. There was a star
shining there. I watched it. I heard the creak, creak of the windlass
crank. Somehow it seemed to have a sinister sound. It seemed to say:
"Have a care, have a care, have a care." I was now ten feet from the
top. The bucket was rocking a little, so I put out my hand and grasped
the lowest rung of the ladder to steady myself.

Then, at that instant, it seemed the weight of the bucket pressing up
against my feet was suddenly removed, and my arm was nigh jerked out of
its socket. There I was hanging desperately on the lowest rung of the
ladder, while, with a crash that made my heart sick, the bucket dashed
to the bottom. At last, I realised, the Worm had had his fit.

Quickly I gripped with both hands. With a great effort I raised myself
rung by rung on the ladder. I was panic-stricken, faint with fear; but
some instinct had made me hold on desperately. Dizzily I hung all
a-shudder, half-sobbing. A minute seemed like a year.

Ah! there was the face of Dooley looking down on me. He saw me clinging
there. He was anxiously shouting to me to come up. Mastering an
overpowering nausea I raised myself. At last I felt his strong arm
around me, and here I swear it on a stack of Bibles that brutish Slav
seemed to me like one of God's own angels.

I was on firm ground once more. The Worm was lying stiff and rigid.
Without a word the stalwart Slav took him on his brawny shoulder. The
creek was downhill but fifty yards. Ere we reached it the Worm had
begun to show signs of reviving consciousness. When we got to the edge
of the icy water he was beginning to groan and open his eyes in a dazed
way.

"Leave me alone," he says to Rileyvich; "you Slavonian swine, lemme go."

Not so the Slav. Holding the wriggling, writhing little man in his
powerful arms he plunged him heels over head in the muddy current of the
creek.

"I guess I cure dose fits anyway," he said grimly.

Struggling, spluttering, blaspheming, the little man freed himself at
last and staggered ashore. He cursed Rileyvich most comprehensively. He
had not yet seen me, and I heard him wailing:

"Sure de boy's a stiff. Just me luck; I've lost me job."

CHAPTER X

"You'd better quit," said the Prodigal.

It was the evening of my mishap, and he had arrived unexpectedly from
town.

"Yes, I mean to," I answered. "I wouldn't go down th