Something caught and lifted him through the air at a frightful rate of speed. Steve had been caught by the ore skip, and was being borne to the surface nearly two thousand feet above. The lad had by this time lost consciousness, for the shock when the skip caught him had been a heavy one. It seemed as if it must have broken every bone in his body.
On roared the skip with its human burden. The car shot out into the daylight, then darted up the fifty-foot shaft that towered above the opening to the mine.
Reaching the top, its burden of ore was dumped into a waiting tram car on the trestle, after which the skip dived down into the depths again.
The dump-man on the trestle caught sight of something that was not ore falling into his car. Instead of starting the car along the trestle, he sprang up on the side board.
"I wonder what that was? It looked like a human being!" he exclaimed. Then his eyes caught sight of a piece of clothing. The man tugged at the cloth, but it did not give way.
"It's a man!" he shouted, clambering over on the car and beginning to dig frantically with his hands. "Stop the skips, stop them quick!"
But his warning came too late. A skip load of ore was dumped down on the loaded car, most of it sliding off to the ground fifty feet below. Enough remained, however, to bury the dump-man and the man he was trying to drag out.
But the dump-man was full of grit. He fought desperately and in a moment succeeded in pushing off the ore that held the body down. He was now working with frantic haste to get the other man out, knowing full well that the unfortunate one would be suffocated if he already were not dead.
By this time other men, attracted by the dump-man's cries, were scaling the trestle at a dozen different places. Among them was the superintendent himself, who, on his way to the dry house to put on his miner's suit preparatory to going below ground on his usual daily round, had heard the cry for help up on the trestle. The superintendent, despite his size, got to the top of the trestle ahead of any of the others and started on a run for the scene.
"What's the trouble, Collins?" he shouted.