Davis thought a moment.
"I'll go down the shaft and wait at the foot of it. There'll be something doing soon. Keep your eye peeled for signals, Smith, and when you git the bell to raise, shoot her up sudden. If the water's coming, we'll be in a hurry, and don't you forget it. Want to come down with me, Tregarth?"
"I do that, sir." The man stepped into the cage and grinned. "We'll bring the byes back all right. Bet un we do, lads."
The cage shot down, and the New Mexican sat on a bench to wait its return. Beside him was a young doctor, who had come prepared for a possible disaster. Such conversation as the men carried on was in low tones, for all felt the strain of the long minutes. The engineer's eye was glued to his machinery, his hand constantly on the lever.
It must have been an hour before the bell rang sharply in the silence and the lever swept back instantly. A dozen men started to their feet and waited tensely. Next moment there was a wild, exultant cheer.
For Tregarth had stepped from the cage with a limp figure in his arms, and after him Davis, his arm around the shoulder of a drenched, staggering youth, who had a bleeding cut across his cheek. Through all the grime that covered the wounded miner the pallor of exhaustion showed itself.
But beaten and buffeted as the man had plainly been in his fight for life, the clean, supple strength and the invincible courage of him still shone in his eye and trod in his bearing. It was even now the salient thing about him, though he had but come, alive and no more, from a wrestle with death itself.
He sank to a bench, and looked around on his friends with shining eyes.
"'Twas nip and tuck, boys. The water caught us in the tunnel, and I thought we were gone. It swept us right to the cage," he panted.
"She didn't sweep Tom there, boss; ye went back after un," corrected the Cornishman.
"Anyhow, we made it in the nick o' time. Tom all right, Doctor?"
The doctor looked up from his examination.
"No bones broken. He seems sound. If there are no internal injuries it will be a matter of only a day or two in bed."
"Good. That's the way to talk. You got to make him good as new, Doctor. You ought to have seen the way he stayed by that drill when the water was pouring through the cracks in the granite. Have him taken to the hospital, and send the bill to me."