“I thought I heard a kind of a tapping sound,” rejoined the man who had first spoken.
“It’ll be the spirit of the poor lad,” remarked an old sailor who was one of the diggers.
“Nonsense,” spoke Mr. Briggs sharply, stepping forward. “What did you say you heard, Adams?”
“I thought I heard a tapping sound, sir; but I couldn’t be sure. Yes; there it is again! Hark!”
They listened with strained ears. If there was really tapping going on within the bunker it could only mean one thing, and that was that Herc was alive!
The next instant they thrilled with excitement. Slowly and not very loudly amid the manifold noises all about, there came the distinct sound of a regular tap-tap—tap-tap-tap!
Mr. Briggs, ordinarily self-contained and reserved, gave a jubilant shout.
“It is the one hope that I held on to in the face of everything!” he cried. “The boy is alive.”
“But how—how could he have avoided being crushed to death when the coal fell in?” demanded Ned.
“When that coal was loaded, as is customary, certain board partitions were put in at intervals to keep it from shifting. When I heard that the coal had caved in on you, I made up my mind at once that it was one of these partitions that had been undermined and had given way. My faint hope that by a miracle Taylor might have been saved, was based on a desperate belief that by some marvelous chance the boards might have fallen in such a way as to keep the coal above them from crushing Taylor’s body.”