The support beneath the lad seemed to drop from under him. With a rush and a roar, a grinding and crunching the steel cage dropped from sight. Instantly everything was plunged in inky darkness.
"Do—do they always go like this?" asked the young miner of a man standing beside him.
"This isn't going much. He has slow speed on this morning because the cage has a bigger load than usual. Afraid, are you?"
"No, I am not afraid. I was wondering what would happen if the man forgot to shut off his power when we reached the bottom."
The miner laughed.
"We'd punch a hole in the bottom of the shaft," he said.
"How deep is the shaft, sir?"
"Two thousand feet to the bottom—fifty feet less than that to the last working level. The bottom level is used to drain off the water from the other levels. From there big steam pumps pump the water to the surface."
The two could scarcely hear for noise.
"The Spooner contract is on the seventeenth level, is it not?"