Chapter Eleven.
A coward blow.
The two men who had been fighting hard to reach Dallas, the sound of whose strokes seemed nearer than ever, rushed to their companion, who had begun chafing the buried man’s face and temples, with the result that Abel raised his head again and looked wildly round.
“I thought he was a goner, my sons,” whispered the big fellow. “Go on back to your chap; I’ll manage here.”
The two men, who were excited by their task, rushed back again, and their companion moistened Abel’s lips.
The man began to work his pick again with wonderful rapidity, enlarging the hole, and every now and then giving a furtive glance at the prisoner and another in the direction where his companions were tearing out the icy snow.
The great drops stood on the big Cornishman’s face as he toiled away, enlarging the hole down beside Abel Wray, and all the time he kept up a cheery rattle of talk about how useful a tool a pick was, and how the lad he was helping—and whom he kept on calling “my son”—ought to have brought one of the same kind for the gold working to come; but the look in his big grey eyes looked darker and more sombre as he saw a grey aspect darkening the countenance of the prisoner—the air he had seen before in the faces of men whom he had helped to rescue after a fall of roof in one of the home mines.
“He’ll be a goner before I get him out if I don’t mind,” he said to himself, and the pick rattled, and the icy snow flashed as he struck here and there, only ceasing now and then to stoop and throw out some big lump which he had detached.