According to the usual method, the upper platform was brought to the level of the ground, to receive its freight, before the cage was raised the necessary seven feet, to allow Mr. Everett and the young people to step on the lower floor. Then they slowly sank away from the light, down, down, while Allie clutched Ned's protecting hand, and tried in vain to enjoy her novel ride. At length they came to a halt at a broad, square station, and the two decks of the cage were quickly unloaded.
"This is the nine-hundred level," Mr. Everett told them, as they stood grouped about him. "We have three more below,—they're one hundred feet apart, you know,—and we're still sinking the shaft. The cage in that next compartment is given up to the men who are doing the sinking."
"It's a rich vein, then, I take it," said Dr. Brownlee.
"A fine one, better than we supposed when we bought it. It dips down sharply to the east, and we cross it at the five-hundred, so we don't have to work so far in any one direction to strike it. You see, we run a cross-cut straight out from the shaft, till we hit the vein; then we turn both ways and run along through it; so, at every level, our workings are like a great T, with the stem growing larger with every hundred feet we go down."
"And this is how deep?" asked Louise.
"Nine hundred," repeated her father, while he hastily snatched Marjorie out of the path of an ore car, which came thundering down the cross-cut and turned abruptly into the station.
"It's a solemn thing to feel that you are nine hundred feet from the light," observed Mrs. Pennypoker, as she gathered her skirts more closely about her.
"Yes," responded the Reverend Gabriel, waving his right hand, lamp and all; "it reminds one of the mighty power of the earthquake, when it stoops to trample on a worm."
Then they were silent, as they followed Mr. Everett through the long gallery, pausing now and then near one of the electric lights that dotted the corridor, to listen to his off-hand explanations of the work below ground. Dr. Brownlee appeared to be especially interested in the subject.
"How do you get the ore on the cage?" he asked. "Do you run it on, car and all, or do you unload it?"