“It did. We found you half buried in the muck. What under heaven were you doing in here?”
“I came to tell you,” she said simply. “Where are the men?”
“They are all down at the slide, and Regnier is with them. They are trying to find out how effectually we are buried. You are sure you’re not hurt?”
“A little bruised and shaken up, of course, but that is nothing. Will the men be able to dig us out?”
With any other woman he knew as the questioner, David Vallory might have temporized. But he knew Virginia Grillage’s quality and the steel-true fineness of it.
“We shall not be able to dig out from this side,” he said soberly. “We are not equipped for it.”
She shuddered.
“This darkness is very horrible, isn’t it? And the air—it seems so close.”
David did not tell her that there was the best of reasons for the closeness of the air; that the ventilating conduit, and the smaller pipe-line which supplied the air pressure for the drills, were crushed under the avalanche, leaving them in a sealed pocket in the heart of Qojogo.
“You mustn’t let it grip you too hard,” he said, meaning to hearten her if he could. “By this time every camp on the line will have heard the news, and there will be no lack of help.”