"For God's sake, man, speak plainly!" said Jeckie. "Heard—what!"
Robinson glanced fearfully around him as he bent nearer to her. He spoke but one word, in a tense whisper.
"Water!"
Jeckie started back, and her drawn face grew white to the lips. She, too, spoke the word he had spoken, in a lower whisper than his.
"Water!"
Robinson edged his chair near to the table and tapped the edge with a forefinger on which there was both grime and blood.
"I tell you we heard it—me and Hargreaves," he said. "I say—no mistaking it. This explosion, now—it must have blown a pretty considerable hole into the lowest part of the shaft, where they've been at work this last week or two, and it's released—it may be a thin bed of quicksand that we didn't suspect, or water-logged sandstone or sand, or something of that sort, if you follow me, but there's the fact—water! It's running into the shaft at, I should say, the rate of thousands of gallons a minute; we could hear it fairly roaring down there. It's no use; it's there!"
"What'll happen?" asked Jeckie in a curiously hard voice.
"The shafts'll be flooded to the brim in twenty-four hours," answered Robinson. "To the brim!'
"You said shafts!" exclaimed Jeckie.