"You were let down by a rope?"
"Yes; they took it away with them."
Jack remembered the coil of wire-rope he had noticed at the entrance to the mine. It had no doubt been formerly used for hauling the trucks.
"Wait a few minutes, Father. I'm going to see what I can do."
"Blow the candle out; there isn't much of it left."
Again the scene was in darkness. Jack hurried back along the passage, and found Hi Lo at the entrance. Together they retraced their steps to the spot where the coil of wire lay. As Jack feared, it was too heavy to carry; it proved too thick to break. Wasting no time here, he sent Hi Lo in one direction while he went in another to search for any stray rope that would be long enough for his purpose. He came to a tumble-down hut which from its contents he guessed had been the foreman's tool-house. Rummaging about among its rubbish, he found a chain some ten yards long, rusty, but quite strong enough to bear a man's weight. In a corner stood a broken sledge-hammer; and among a heap of bolts, clamps, and miscellaneous old iron he came upon several iron wedges such as are used for breaking hard ground and rock. With these they hurried back to the waterfall. Lighting the candle again, Jack, now in complete possession of his faculties, saw that the ledge on which his father and Count Walewski stood was at the base of a cavern. By the feeble glimmer he drove two of the wedges into the floor of the passage. Then he quickly attached one end of the chain to them and lowered the other end. In this Mr. Brown made a loop, which he tested.
"The Count first," he shouted.
The poor old nobleman, who was ten years his elder, and older than his years through the sufferings he had endured, sat in the loop and clung to the chain with his thin feeble hands. Hi Lo coiled the chain round the wedges to prevent an accident, and Jack, steadily hauling on the chain, brought the Count—a very light weight—to the edge of the precipice. Then he firmly secured the chain to the wedges, and, his hands being now free, lifted the Pole over the brink. The old man, broken down by his terrible experiences and exhausted from lack of food, was at first helpless; but when he had recovered from the terror of his ascent, all three hauled on the chain, and succeeded in drawing Mr. Brown up.
"Thank God!" he said, as he gripped Jack's hand.
The Count murmured a feeble but heartfelt "Amen!"