I did not catch the last word, and had no notion what it was, but I instantly assured him that I would rather see it than anything in the whole mine.
His face fell.
"Really—" he began.
"Of course we'll see it," said the captain; "we want to see everything."
The manager's face fell lower.
"All right," said he, briefly, "come on!"
We had gone about twenty steps when I, who was close behind him, suddenly missed him. He was gone.
Had he fallen into a dump hole? Had he gone to atoms in a blast? I blinked into the shadows, standing motionless, but could see no sign of him.
Then his voice shouted from above me—"Come on!"
I looked up. In front of me a narrow iron ladder led upward as straight as any flag-pole, and almost as high. Where it went, and why it went, mattered not. The only thing that impressed me was that the manager, halfway up this ladder, had commanded me to "come on."