Larry was the first to recover from the shock of paralyzing horror. Air was the first requisite for the imprisoned men ... if only the pipe which furnished the air for the drills was not broken——
But it was broken. A rock in the slide had fallen upon it, and it was snapped off short in the threads of a coupling. The compressor was still running, but the air was merely wasting through the broken pipe. Seeing this, Larry made a bolt for the telephone in the compressor shed, giving the alarm to the two machine tenders as he dashed in. It was the fireman who killed the telephone hope.
“Wire’s been dead for the last two hours!” he shouted. “Reckon a rock from the O. C. blasts got it somewhere.”
Larry was dismayed afresh, but not beaten.
“We’ve got to get air in to those men, some way or other!” he raved at Dick, who had followed him over to the compressor shed. “Four of us couldn’t begin to dig ’em out before they’ll choke to death!”
“But how?” Dick wailed.
It was then that Larry Donovan had a warming rush of thankfulness for the necessity which had forced him to earn his way through the Brewster High School by working nights in the railroad machine shop. He knew tools and machinery, and how to make use of both.
“Pipe!” he bawled at the compressor man; “got any inch pipe?”
“Plenty of it—pipe and tools,” was the heartening answer.
Taking command merely because there was no one else to take it, Larry quickly organized his force of three and buckled in with it himself. A length of pipe was dragged from the rack, and with a coupling and a plug loosely screwed in to stop the end of it, they ran with it to the blockading slide. By sheer man-strength they were able to ram it three or four feet into the clay, but no more.