“Use? I should hope so,” said Farquhar, straightening his shoulders and pushing back his fair hair. “What do you mean?”
“Me and my mates would be willing to work on any time if there was any chance of getting either of them out alive—”
“D’you mean to say you think there’s no chance?”
“We’re afraid not, sir,” said the first man; and a murmur of assent went up from the others, who had left work and clustered round. Farquhar’s brows came together, and he stared at them as though he could not understand their speech.
“You say there’s no chance? I say that’s nonsense. I’d never have thought that Englishmen would shirk.”
“We ain’t shirking,” said the spokesman, rather proudly. “I’d lay there isn’t one of us as wouldn’t be ready to work his hands off if there was any chanst at all; but there ain’t, not a mite. I seen a good many blow-ups in my time, and I say there’s no man could be living now after all that mess had fallen on him. If they wasn’t killed outright they’d have been stifled. Anybody as knows’ll say the same.”
Again the murmured assent followed his words.
Farquhar still stood staring, but his face changed, cleared, hardened. Fever was running riot in his veins, and he was not wholly master of his words, else he would not have laid such a charge against them; for he knew it was not true. They had worked till they were spent; the pose of their figures as they waited showed it more plainly than words. And against that mass of granite all their toil seemed futile. Of what use to continue?
“You’re quite right, and I beg your pardon, men. Knock off to-night, then; we’ll take a fresh spell at it to-morrow, for I mean my friends to have Christian burial. I shall see that all you’ve done to-day is not forgotten.”
As he had first begun work, so now he was first to leave off; he leaned his pick against a stone and turned homeward. In ten minutes the deserted quarry was left to the dews and the night.