“I’ll do as much as any of you!” growled old Tim, with the will, if not the quality, of youth in his voice. “Will one of you girls take care of my rings?” and stripping them from his fingers, he laid them carefully in the outstretched hands of Arly. There was a good handful of them.
The men crawled in from outside, but they stayed in the front compartment. The air was growing a trifle close, and they breathed heavily.
“Good-bye Girl,” called the gaily funereal voice of Ted Teasdale. “Husband is going to work.”
“Put on your gloves,” Lucile reminded him.
“Greggory,” called Allison.
“Here,” responded the careless fat man. “How did you find it?”
“Loose,” reported Allison, and there was a sound suspiciously like grunting, as Greggory crawled through the narrow opening.
Another interminable wait, while the air grew more stifling. There was no further levity after Lincoln and the motorman and McCarthy had come back; for the condition was becoming serious. Some air must undoubtedly be finding its way to the car through the loose débris, but the carbonic acid gas exhaled from a dozen pairs of lungs was beginning to pocket, and the opening ahead, though steadily pushing forward, displayed no signs of lessening solidity.
They established shorter shifts now; a quarter of an hour. The men came silently in and out, and as silently worked, and as silently rested, while the girls carried that heavy burden of women’s hardest labour; waiting!
Greggory was the first to give out, then the injured motorman. When their turns came, they had not the strength nor the air in their lungs. Strong McCarthy was the next to join them.