She waited and listened. All was still. The situation for a young, timid girl was extremely nerve-trying. A short time previously Kasba’s natural disinclination to scenes of violence would probably have caused her to rush frantically away and precipitate herself in her father’s hut to indulge in a fit of hysterical weeping, but now the uncertainty of her father’s and Roy’s fate chained her to the spot.
“Where were they? Perhaps beneath those logs!” The thought was horrible. When contemplating that huge pile all hope faded from her mind. The mere possibility of their being in the house when the explosion took place caused her heart to stand still, her blood to run cold. For it seemed an impossibility that they could have escaped being crushed to death beneath the falling logs, even if they had in some miraculous manner escaped injury by the explosion. Perhaps they now lay pinned to the earth, mangled and bleeding; and struggling with the convulsive sobs the mere thought called forth, she bent over the débris. Frantically she strove to push aside the heavy timbers that she might discover what lay beneath them, fearing at any moment that her eyes would meet some ghastly remains of one of the two men she loved. Yet with unflagging energy she worked on. In her frantic haste she was dimly conscious that the Eskimo had followed her, was lifting and throwing aside the ponderous logs with surprising energy; evidently he had caught her idea. But despite the native’s prodigious efforts and her own desperate exertions the work proceeded at a snail’s pace. Kasba quickly realized that her own puny strength availed her nothing, and a despairing moan at her own impotency escaped her. Her head was whirling round and round and she felt faint and giddy.
At that precise moment, as if heaven had pitied her helplessness and answered her prayer, a slight, muffled groan smote her ears.
Kasba uttered a cry of joy, for she recognized it as the sound of a human voice, knew that someone was alive beneath the ruins. Gathering strength from hopes renewed, the girl tore more frantically at the logs, straining every muscle to draw them aside.
Suddenly the voice was heard again. It was speaking.
Instantly Kasba paused in her panic haste to listen.
“Kli-et-ee?” (Who is there?), it said.
“It is I, Kasba!” cried the greatly excited girl. “Who speaks?”
“Sahanderry!” returned the voice.
With a cry of disappointment Kasba fell back. In her anxiety she had quite forgotten Sahanderry. She had imagined it to be her father who spoke, and her heart had leaped within her for joy. But now that she discovered it was not her father but another, the revulsion of feeling was too much for the already distracted girl. But the thought came to her that a life was in deadly peril, that Sahanderry was entombed in that rude black pile and that immediate aid was necessary. Chiding herself for the delay and for her selfish regrets, she worked desperately to accomplish a rescue. The painfully disappointing incident, however, had sobered her. She now worked just as desperately, but with more system than before. By the aid of the Eskimo she quickly had a number of logs placed on one side. She then discovered that the house had not fallen completely, as she had at first believed, but that the walls farthest from the seat of the explosion, and a part of the roof attached, had not come wholly to the ground but were propped up by the other parts of the fallen building, forming a sheltering cavity, though threatening to fall with a crash at any minute. Beneath this dangerous but friendly shelter the groaning Sahanderry was discovered lying prone upon the ground. A timber pressed him to the earth and kept him from rising.