hrill cries of the men in the main bottom, as they came
hurrying from the other runways, and far back up the dark passage behind
them they could hear the roar of flames. They saw that they were
trapped. Behind them was the fire. Before them was the long, impossible
stretch to the main bottom, with the smoke thickening and falling lower
every second. So thick was the smoke that the light ahead winked out.
Death stood before them and behind them.

"Boys--" gasped Grant, "in here--let's get in one of these rooms and
wall it up."

The seven looked at him and he crawled to a room; sticking his head in
he found it murky. He tried another. The third room was fresh and cool,
and he called the men in.

Then all nine dragged one after another of the limp bodies into the room
and they began walling the door into the passage. There were two lights
on a dozen caps. Grant put out one lamp and they worked by the glimmer
of a single lamp. Gradually, but with a speed--slow as it had to
be--inspired by deadly terror, the wall went up. They daubed it with mud
that seemed to refresh itself from a pool that was hollowed in the
floor. After what seemed an age of swiftly accurate work, the wall was
waist high; the smoke bellied in, in a gust, and was suddenly sucked out
by an air current, and the men at the wall tapping some spring of
unknown energy bent frantically to their task. Three of the six men were
coming to life. They tried to rise and help. Two crawled forward, and
patted the mud in the bottom crevices. The fierce race with death called
out every man's reserves of body and soul.

Then, when the wall was breast high, some one heard a choking cry in the
passage. Grant was in the rear of the room, wrestling with a great rock,
and did not hear the cry; but Chopini was over the wall, and Dooley
followed him, and Evans followed him in an instant. They disappeared
down the passage, and when Grant returned, carrying the huge rock to the
speeding work at the wall, he heard a voice outside call:

"We've got 'em."

And then, after a silence, as the workmen hurried with the wall, there
came a call for help. Williams and Dennis Hogan followed Grant through
the hole now nearing the roof of the room, out into the passage. The air
was scorching. Some current was moving it rapidly. The second party came
upon the first struggling weakly with Dick Bowman and his son. Father
and son were unconscious and one of the rescuing party had fainted.
Aga