The hole in the mountain was perhaps four feet square. Ten feet in front of it the engineer paused, and pointed to the ground. Up out of the earth came two wires, which led away from the mouth of the cavern.
"Those wires go down to the explosives," he explained. "They're battery wires half a mile long. But we don't attach the battery until the final moment, as you saw last night. There might be an accident."
He bent his tall body and entered the mouth of the cavern, leading his wife by the hand. Observing that Joanne had seen this attention on the contractor's part, Aldous held out his own hand, and Joanne accepted it. For perhaps twenty feet they followed the Blacktons with lowered heads. They seemed to have entered a black, cold pit, sloping slightly downward, and only faintly could they see Blackton when he straightened.
His voice came strange and sepulchral:
"You can stand up now. We're in the chamber. Don't move or you might stumble over something. There ought to be a lantern here."
He struck a match, and as he moved slowly toward a wall of blackness, searching for the lantern, he called back encouragingly through the gloom:
"You folks are now standing right over ten tons of dynamite, and there's another five tons of black powder——"
A little shriek from Peggy Blackton stopped him, and his match went out.
"What in heaven's name is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "Peggy——"
"Why in heaven's name do you light a match then, with us standing over all those tons of dynamite?" demanded Peggy. "Paul Blackton, you're——"