“White, get back on the job,” directed the speaker, who Wilson later learned was the fire-boss.
“You brought him down with you,” he added, to the boy.
The man spoken to began creeping up the water-covered slope dragging a pick, and Wilson turned to look about him. The eleven men in the party, not including the man on the slope, were crowded together on the level floor of what evidently was the lower fault of the lead. From the darkness beyond came the sound of water trickling to a lower level.
“Are all here, and no one hurt?” he asked.
“Hoover and Young, and everybody, and not one scratched,” responded the fire-boss. “You were the one nearest hurt.
“You were a mighty plucky youngster,” he added, “to come through that water up there.”
Wilson interrupted a chorus of hearty assent. “What happened to Hoover and Young at the pipe?” he inquired. “That mystified everybody outside.”
“They both caught it coming down, but Hoover lost his hold trying to change hands for tapping, and Young dropped the knife he was knocking with, and slipped fishing for it,” the fire-boss explained.
Meantime at the entrance to the mine, a half hour having passed without a knocking on the pipe to announce the arrival inside of the young operator, anxiety began to be felt for his safety also. When another half hour had passed, and there was still no response to frequent tappings of inquiry, the mine-boss, Bartlett, began to stride up and down before the blocked entrance. “I shouldn’t have allowed him to go in,” he muttered repeatedly. “He was only a boy.”
When at length Muskoka Jones reappeared on the scene, and with him the operator from Ledges, Bartlett met them with a gloomy face. At that very moment, however, there was a shout from the men gathered about the pumping-pipe. “He’s knocking!” cried a voice.