They abandoned their arrangement of two-hour stints, and all worked together just as hard as they knew how.
Going into the interior chamber of the mine, they first dug a drain through the cross-cut, and then, as fast as they tore down the rock in enlarging their own tunnel outward, it was heaped up in the cross-cut; for they wished to block that up completely. By Friday night this barrier was almost built.
All were stiff and sore when they arose at daybreak on Saturday morning, but each knew they could not afford to spare themselves, and that this one day’s hardship might be repaid tenfold.
Before noon they tapped the main fountain, and brought its stream, which would have measured a foot wide and a foot deep, into their new drain.
When this great point had been gained, they felt that the worst was over, and by night they had finished barricading the cross-cut. They were obliged that evening, when their day’s work was done, to worm their way out to daylight through the narrow, ragged, insecure, and still dripping waterway which threaded the Last Chance, but was by no means a tunnel in any proper sense of the word, nor a safe place for a man to work in.
Lennox, who was of slighter build, and at the same time of more enthusiastic temperament than his associates, was entirely used up when he reached daylight, and could only fall down and lie still. Fortunately for him, however, Sandy and Max had strength enough left to cook supper.
While they were eating supper, and before darkness had come, the three young miners were startled by a loud hallo, and on running to the door saw Morris sitting on horseback at the foot of the dump.
“Can I ride up?” he called out.
“No, leave your nag down there. I’ll show you later how to get him around behind the cabin, where there is some pasture.”
So Morris drew the bridle reins over his horse’s head and let them hang down from the bit, knowing that by this sign the horse would understand that he was to stay where he was until his rider returned. Then he scrambled up the rough side of the dump, saying, as he reached the top and shook hands with Max: