low them. As they reached the water, Keith let
himself down into it. The water took him to about his waist and
was rising.

"It has not filled the drift yet," he said, and started ahead. He gave a
halloo; but there was no sound in answer, only the reverberation of his
voice. The other men called to him to wait and talk it over. The
strangeness of the situation appalled them. It might well have awed a
strong man; but Keith waded on. The older man plunged after him, the
younger clinging to the cage for a second in a panic. The lights were
out in a moment. Wading and plunging forward through the water, which
rose in places to his neck, and feeling his way by the sides of the
drift, Keith waded forward through the pitch-darkness. He stopped at
times to halloo; but there was no reply, only the strange hollow sound
of his own voice as it was thrown back on him, or died almost before
leaving his throat. He had almost made up his mind that further attempt
was useless and that he might as well turn back, when he thought he
heard a faint sound ahead. With another shout he plunged forward again,
and the next time he called he heard a cry of joy, and he pushed ahead
again, shouting to them to come to him.

Keith found most of the men huddled together on the first level, in a
state of panic. Some of them were whimpering and some were praying
fervently, whilst a few were silent, in a sort of dazed bewilderment.
All who were working in that part of the mine were there, they said,
except three men, Bill Bluffy and a man named Hennson and his boy, who
had been cut off in the far end of the gallery and who must have been
drowned immediately, they told Keith.

"They may not be," said Keith. "There is one point as high as this. I
shall go on and see."

The men endeavored to dissuade him. It was "a useless risk of life,"
they assured him; "the others must have been swept away immediately. The
water had come so sudden. Besides, the water was rising, and it might
even now be too late to get out." But Keith was firm, and ordering them
back in charge of the two men who had come in with him, he pushed on
alone. He knew that the water was still rising, though, he hoped,
slowly. He had no voice to shout now, but he prayed with all his might,
and that soothed and helped him. Presently the water was a little
shallower. It did not come so high up on him. He knew from this that he
must be reaching the upper level. Now and then he spoke Bluffy's an