As may be imagined, while Mr. Briggs was giving this explanation, the digging had been resumed with even more frenzied haste than before.
“Stick to it, boy! We’re coming!” shouted the diggers, and each time they uttered these and other encouraging shouts the tapping came back in reply.
Ned, half frantic with excitement, had seized upon a shovel and was digging with might and main. At last their shovels broke through the coal and penetrated into a hollow space beyond. The beams falling from above where the bunkers widened out had become wedged in the narrower part of the bunkers below. In this way a shield had providentially been interposed between Herc and the ponderous masses of coal above.
As the opening was widened out and Herc’s face appeared, Ned leaped into the bunker and dragged his chum out amidst the cheers of the men who had taken part in the rescue.
“Wow!” exclaimed Herc, “that was close quarters in there, all right. I thought I’d suffocate sure before you got to me.”
“How did it happen?” asked Ned, in a voice still shaky from his shock. “I thought you were beside me.”
“So I was, but I tripped in the darkness. I remember thinking, ‘Good-bye, everybody!’ as that coal came thundering down. When the noise stopped I didn’t know whether I was dead or not for a minute. Then, to my surprise, I found that I could move about. I reached up a short distance above and I felt some planks. Then I knew what had happened. They’d got wedged across where the bunker grew narrow at the bottom and my life was saved.
“But I was scared stiff that I’d die anyhow before you got to me, and that’s why I kept banging on the planks with my shovel to hurry you up.”
“Well, young man,” said Mr. Briggs, “go up on deck and fill your lungs with fresh air. You’ve been near enough to death to shake hands with him. I believe that you two boys must bear charmed lives. Strong, you may accompany your ship-mate on deck. Carry on, men.”
The work went forward as if nothing out of the way had taken place. On Uncle Sam’s big fighting ships men are expected to take narrow escapes much as a matter of course when there is work in hand.