Two hundred feet distant a windlass took shape in the obscurity. He reached it, and the black opening of the shaft to the lower level was at his feet. Looking, he found the rope the mine boss had spoken of. It was secured to one of the windlass supports, and disappeared into the depths on the opposite side of the pit. Directly below was the shattered wreck of the ladder.
Leaning over, Wilson shouted, “Hello! Hello!” The words crashed and echoed in the shaft and about him, but there was no reply. Once more he shouted, then resolutely suppressing his instinctive shrinking, he made his way about to the rope, carefully lowered himself, and began descending hand under hand.
Wilson had not gone far when with apprehension he found the rope becoming wet and slippery with drip from the rocks above. Despite a tightened grip his hands began to slip. In alarm he wound his feet about the rope. Still he slipped. To dry a hand on his sleeve, he freed it. Instantly with a cry he found himself shooting downward. He clutched with hands, feet and knees, but onward he plunged. In the light of his lamp the jagged broken timbers of the shoring shot up by him. He would be dashed to pieces.
But desperately he fought, and at last got the rope clamped against the corner of a heel, and the speed was retarded. A moment after he landed with an impact that broke his hold on the rope and sent him in a heap on his back.
Rising, Wilson thankfully discovered he had escaped injury other than a few bruises, and gazed about him. At first sight he appeared to be in the bottom of a well filled with broken water-soaked timbers and gray, dripping rock. He knew there must be an exit, however, and set about looking for it, at the same time listening and watching shrinkingly for signs of anyone buried in the heap of stone and timber. Not a sound save the monotonous drip of seeping water was to be heard, however, and presently behind a shield of planking he located the black mouth of a small opening.
Dropping to his knees, he crawled through, and stood upright in a downward sloping gallery similar to that above—the “lower level.”
Once more he shouted. “Hello! Hello!” The clashing echoes died away without response, and he started forward.
Scarcely had he taken a half dozen steps when without warning his feet shot from under him and he went down on his back with a crash, barely saving his head with his hands. The smooth hard rock was as slippery as ice from the water flowing over it. Wondering if this icy declivity had anything to do with the failure of Hoover and Young to return, Wilson arose and went on more cautiously.
As he proceeded the walking became more and more treacherous. Several times he again went down, saving himself by sinking onto his outstretched hands.
On rising from one of these falls Wilson discovered something which sent him ahead with new concern. A few yards farther he halted with an exclamation on the brink of a yellow stretch of water that met the gallery roof twenty feet beyond him.