To their vast relief, in a few minutes the bag began to move upward once more.
“Thank goodness!” Florence ejaculated. “Which one of us had better go up next? I’d like to, but if you——”
Jo Ann’s impulse was to speak up, “Let me go,” but, instead, she replied, “You go on. I have a flashlight, and you haven’t.”
Several minutes later, with mingled feelings of relief and fear, she watched Florence being pulled up till she was above the reach of the flashlight’s beam. All was eerie blackness now. The shadows began to take on weird ghostlike shapes. Was that a man crouching over there? The smuggler?
An involuntary shudder shivered through her body. She must not let her imagination run riot this way. She steadied her lower lip to prevent its trembling.
At last the bag loomed into view, and after an anxious wait she got inside it. Slowly—painfully slowly she began to ascend.
When she was about halfway up, the cable suddenly spun around, knocking the bag against the rocky side of the shaft. She felt a stinging sensation in her right arm as it struck the rocks. Clutching her flashlight more tightly and cringing with pain, she lifted her arm to protect her light. It was too late. The flashlight had been broken—badly smashed.
In another moment she had forgotten about her injured arm and broken flashlight in a more serious trouble. The bag was stuck—not moving either up or down. She stifled a shriek that was threatening to escape her lips. No wonder Peggy had cried out. And it was worse this time. There was utter darkness below. No one to call up comfortingly from the bottom of the shaft. No one at the top either. Both girls were probably hovering over Manuel now, if he—— Had they found by now that he really was dead?
She must shut out that terrifying picture from her mind. It seemed, though, to be outlined against the darkness in a glaring light that refused to be blotted out. How long would she have to hang this way in midair, seeing this horrible picture?
“Better to hang suspended than to be dashed to the bottom on those rocks,” she told herself. “Peg was in the same plight, and now she’s up safely. But then she was stuck only two or three minutes, and you’ve been here ten or fifteen at least,” she reminded herself discouragedly.