"Mebby Bob him run away," suggested the Pole.
"No, Ignatz; he is not that kind. He is here somewhere and something has happened to him or we should have seen him somewhere about. He was standing on the edge of the pit at the time it exploded."
"I see him a minute before. He put too much water on," added the boy, with a shake of the head. "Bad, bad! Somebody tell him do that."
Rush attached no especial significance to the suggestion at the moment. Later on, the words of the faithful Pole came back to him fraught with meaning.
"He must have been thrown up into the air. Perhaps he is down in the pit there buried under the slag now," said Rush, a sudden, startled expression flashing into his eyes.
Brodsky instinctively glanced upwards.
"Look! Look!" cried the Pole, dancing up and down and pointing excitedly up above their heads into the thin cloud of smoke that hovered over them.
Steve looked. His heart sank within him as he did so and his head began to whirl dizzily.