I saw her eyes widen as she realised what I meant. Then we were running side by side along the gallery. We reached the shaft that led up to the adit. I hesitated. But the desire to make height was overwhelming. I thrust her to the ladder. We climbed at a furious rate. Even so, she outstripped me. My limbs felt weighed down with a great weight. I'd been working steadily all day, and now this sudden demand on my strength. I felt so tired I thought I'd never make the top. The steady beat and thud of the pump coincided with the throbbing of the blood in my ears.
We made the top. At the same moment a voice shouted. A miner's lamp showed the great bob of the pump swinging rhythmically up and down. Then the lamp ducked under the bob and came running towards us. I have a fleeting recollection of old Manack's face, streaked with sweat and dirt and pallid with exertion. Then he brushed past us and another lamp appeared beyond the great bobbing beam of the pump. 'Stop him!' It was Captain Manack's voice.
His face was set and his eyes wild as he dashed past us after his father. I took Kitty by the arm and rushed her down the narrow cross-cut and out into the main adit. I could hear the sea slopping about in the adit cave, and behind me the pump beats thudded like the beating heart of the mine.
I turned up the adit towards the main shaft. Ahead of us the lamps of the two Manacks bobbed as they turned a bend. We followed. I couldn't hear the pump any longer. All I could hear was the heaving gasps that came from my mouth as I strained my last effort.
We rounded the bend. The lights had vanished. But a faint orange glow showed in the shaft that the old man used. We reached it and peered up. The lamps showed like glow-worms in the shaft. The old man was about forty feet above his son. Water glistened on the weed-grown rock. They were climbing at a furious rate. I thrust Kitty towards the ladders. She began to climb. I followed her.
I had barely set foot on the slimy rungs of the ladder when deep within the mine there was a muffled roar. It was far away, remote as the echo of a minor earthquake. I paused, listening for what I dreaded. A blast of air struck my face. It smelt stale and dank. It was like air that had been imprisoned long under ground. And then I heard it — a faint, rumbling roar. Another, lighter blast of air swept up the shaft behind us, bringing with it a choking cloud of dust. Deep in the mine the rumbling went on. It was like the rumblings of some giant's belly. It was crude and terrifying.
Something fell past me and hit the ground below with a splintering of wood. I glanced down. A length of ladder lay broken at the foot of the shaft, its rotten timbers shattered by the fall. High above us I saw the old man still climbing. But below his son had stopped. A great strip of laddering had been torn away.
And in that instant a sudden gush of dirty water spurted from the side of the shaft. I saw Captain Manack swept from his hold on the ladder, like a fly brushed off by a hose jet. Then the water hit me and I fell. A body crashed on top of me as my feet hit the ground. I fell, rolled over and fetched up with a terrific crack on my helmet against a rock wall.
Everything was black. The whole place was full of the sound of water pouring from a height. And behind that sound was the deeper, more distant rumbling of water tearing through the mine. Something heavy lay across my legs. It stirred. 'Jim?' It was Kitty's voice, strained to a shriek.
Are you all right?' I shouted.