“Have you seen Bill?” Dick asked of the engineer, who stood at his levers, and waited for a signal.
“He’s below,” the engineer answered, throwing over an arm, and watching the cage ascend with a car of ore.
It trundled away, and Dick stepped into the cage. The man appeared irresolute, and embarrassed.
“He’ll be up pretty soon, I think,” he ventured.
“Well, I’ll not wait for him,” Dick said. “Lower away.”
The man still stood, irresolute.
“Let her go, I said,” Dick called sharply, his usual patience of temper having gone.
“But––but–––” halted the engineer. “Bill said to me, when he went down, says he: ‘You don’t let any one come below. Understand? I don’t care if it’s Townsend himself. Nobody 285 comes down. You hold the cage, because I’ll send the shift up, and ‘tend to the firing myself.’”
For an instant Dick was enraged by this stubbornness, and turned with a threat, and said: “Who’s running this mine? I don’t care what he said. You haven’t understood him. Lower away there, I say, and be quick about it!”
The rails and engine room slid away from him. The cage slipped downward on its oiled bearings, as if reluctant, and the light above faded away to a small pin-point below, and then died in obscurity, as if the world had been blotted out. Only the sense of falling told him that he was going down, down, to the seven-hundred-foot level, and then he remembered that he had no candle. The cage came to a halt, and he fumbled for the guard bar, lifted it, and stepped out.