‘Why didn’t you fools make off into the Bush and give us a chance, instead of giving her a lead here?’ asked Dave.
Jim and Kullers began to wish they had done so.
Mrs Middleton began to throw stones down the shaft—it was Pinter’s—and they, even the oldest and most anxious, began to grin in spite of themselves, for they knew she couldn’t hurt them from the surface, and that, though she had been a working digger herself, she couldn’t fill both shafts before the fumes of liquor overtook her.
‘I wonder which shaf’ she’ll come down,’ asked Kullers in a tone befitting the place and occasion.
‘You’d better go and watch your shaft, Pinter,’ said Dave, ‘and Jim and I’ll watch mine.’
‘I—I won’t,’ said Pinter hurriedly. ‘I’m—I’m a modest man.’
Then they heard a clang in the direction of Pinter’s shaft.
‘She’s thrown her bottle down,’ said Dave.
Jim crawled along the drive a piece, urged by curiosity, and returned hurriedly.
‘She’s broke the pitchfork off short, to use in the drive, and I believe she’s coming down.’