It was Conway's voice. He recognized it. He had often heard that voice coming from the breast of Mike's chamber, in kindly greeting.
Quick as thought he turned on his heel and started back. He flew around the curve like a shadow.
"Wait!" he cried, "wait a minute; I'm a-comin'!"
At the foot of the shaft there was a pile of blazing sticks, but there was no carriage there, nor were there any men. He stumbled into the very flames in his eagerness, and called wildly up the dark opening:
"Wait! come back! oh, wait!"
But the whirring, thumping noise of a falling body was the only answer that came to him, and he darted back in time to escape destruction from a huge flaming piece of timber that struck the floor of the mine with a great noise, and sent out a perfect shower of sparks.
But they might send the carriage down again if he rang for it.
He ran across and seized the handle of the bell wire and pulled it with all his might. The wire gave way somewhere above him and came coiling down upon his head. He threw it from him and turned again toward the opening of the shaft. Then the carriage did descend. It came down the shaft for the last time in its brief existence, came like a thunderbolt, struck the floor of the mine with a great shock and—collapsed. It was just a mass of fragments covered by an iron roof—that was all. On top of it fell a storm of blazing sticks and timbers, filling up the space at the foot, piling a mass of wreckage high into the narrow confines of the shaft.
Ralph retreated to the footman's bench, and sat there looking vaguely at the burning heap and listening to the crash of falling bodies, and the deep roar of the flames that coursed upward out of sight. He could hardly realize the danger of his situation, it had all come upon him so suddenly. He knew, however, that he was probably the only human being in the mine, that the only way of escape was by the shaft, and that that was blocked.
But he did not doubt for a moment that he would be rescued in time. They would come down and get him, he knew, as soon as the shaft could be cleared out. The crashing still continued, but it was not so loud now, indicating, probably, that the burning wreckage had reached to a great height in the shaft.