At this the four members of the Club sprang to the shaft and demanded to be let down.
They were sternly ordered back by the superintendent.
"But," said Carlin, fiercely, "this man whom you have named is like a brother to us; if he is in danger we must go to his rescue."
The rest were quite as eager in their demands. Seeing how earnest they were, the superintendent said: "You are strangers to the mine. The whole working force from all the levels has been sent to the point of the accident. You would only be in the way."
But they still insisted, vehemently. Said Ashley: "Your men are working for money, and will take no risks; it is different with us."
"You do not know what you are doing in refusing us," said Harding; "that man's life is worth a thousand ordinary lives."
"Suppose your brother were in danger and some man stood in the way forbidding you to go to him, what would you think?" asked Carlin.
"Yees are superintindint and rule this mine," said Corrigan, "but you have no rule over min's lives, and this is a matter of the grandest life upon the lode, and yees have no right to refuse us."
"Very well," said the superintendent; "if you men can be of any possible use you shall be sent down."
On a bit of paper he wrote a brief note, tied it to the frame of the cage and sent it down. When the cage disappeared in the shaft, he turned to the men and explained that he had been upon the surface but a few minutes; that long before a drift had been run off from the main gallery at the twenty-one hundred-foot level some fifty feet through ground so hard that it had never required timbering. At the farther end soft ground had been encountered and a stringer of ore. Following this stringer a lateral drift had been run some fifty feet each way. This lateral drift was timbered when it was run. No ore of any value having been uncovered the work was abandoned, and since then the drift had been used as a storage place for powder and candles. That morning the foreman had gone into this drift with a surveyor to establish some point which the engineer required. To assist the surveyor the foreman had stuck his candlestick into a timber and had gone with the surveyor to one end of this lateral drift.