“Will they succeed?” she queried.
“I promised, last night, to talk straight to you. If the slide is made up entirely of broken rock in small pieces, as it seems to be from our side, it should be comparatively easy to drive through it. But if the mass happens to contain large bowlders——”
“Then they will drill and blast them,” she put in quickly.
“Yes; but it may prove to be a long job; and I must be plain again. Every move they make seems to bring down more of the stuff from above. The water is not rising much, but the air is growing worse every hour.”
“All of which means that you think we should be prepared for the worst?”
“Yes; always continuing to hope for the best, of course. Are you very hungry?”
“Not yet. But you must be.”
“I can stand it better than the workmen. They have had nothing since they came in yesterday at ten o’clock. Very few of them carry a dinner bucket on an eight-hour shift.”
“How are they enduring it?”
“Each after his kind. Three of the Welshmen wanted to sing a while ago, but I wouldn’t let them. I knew it would waken you, and I thought you ought to sleep as long as you could.”