"Stop it! I'll do the trick. Where are the tools, though? I haven't a saw in my kit."
"I know where there is one. I sneaked it from the boss timber-man yesterday after we had our talk. I hid it behind the lagging about half way down the drift there. Come with me; I'll get it for you."
"Be careful," warned Spooner, peering around a bend in the drift at the two boys in the far end. From that distance he could see only their bobbing candles. "All clear. Hurry!"
Marvin reached to the top of the lagging at a certain point, and when his hand came away it held a saw.
"Here it is. Hurry, now!"
Spooner tucked the saw under his coat. This done, he moved along the drift away from the place where the boys were sitting, until he came to a slanting partition.
"There is a ladder inside. You know how to climb down it," whispered Marvin, as he cautiously opened a door in the partition. The interior was so dark that the men could see nothing. There was a sudden rush and some unseen object tore by them in the blackness. It was an ore skip, with its load of iron ore thundering to the surface. Its force was so great as to extinguish the candles of the two miners. Marvin quickly relighted them.
"Now get in and be lively. You will have to get away before the afternoon shift starts in, or you may get something down on your head."
"You go down and stay on guard. If there is any danger, if anything turns up, stamp three times on the floor when there is no skip going by. Otherwise I shall not hear it."