if you can, and shove."

Squeezing past Rudolph in his niche, there struggled a convulsive bulk,
like some monstrous worm, too large for the bore, yet writhing. Bare
feet kicked him in violent rebellion, and a muscular knee jarred
squarely under his chin. He caught a pair of naked legs, and hugged
them dearly.

"Not too hard," called Heywood, with a breathless laugh. "Poor
devil--must think he ran foul of a genie."

Indeed, their prisoner had already given up the conflict, and lay under
them with limbs dissolved and quaking.

"Pass him along," chuckled his captor. "Make him go ahead of us."

Prodded into action, the man stirred limply, and crawled past them
toward the mine, while Heywood, at his heels, growled orders in the
vernacular with a voice of dismal ferocity. In this order they gained
the shaft, and wriggled up like ferrets into the night air. Rudolph,
standing as in a well, heard a volley of questions and a few timid
answers, before the returning legs of his comrade warned him to dodge
back into the tunnel.

Again the two men crept forward on their expedition; and this time the
leader talked without lowering his voice.

"That chap," he declared, "was fairly chattering with fright. Coolie, it
seems, who came back to find his betel-box. The rest are all outside
eating their rice. We have a clear track."

They stumbled on their powder-sacks, caught hold, and dragged them, at
first easily down the incline, then over a short level, then arduously
up a rising grade, till the work grew heavy and hot, and breath came
hard in the stifled burrow.

"Far enough," said Heywood, puffing. "Pile yours here."

Rudolph, however, was not only drenched with sweat, but fired by a new
spirit, a spirit of daring. He would try, down here in the bowels of the
earth, to emulate his friend.

"But let us reconnoitre," he objected. "It will bring us to the clay-pit
where I saw them digging. Let us go out to the end, and look."

"Well said, old mole!" Heywood snapped his fingers with delight. "I
never thought of that." By his tone, he was proud of the amendment.
"Come on, by all means. I say, I didn't really--I didn't _want_ poor old
Gilly down here, you know."

They crawled on, with more speed but no less caution, up the strait
little gallery, which now rose between smooth, soft walls of clay.
Suddenly, as the incline once more became a level, they saw a glimmering
square of dusky red, like the fluttering of a weak flame th