It was then that we had decided to inspect the furthest and deepest section of the diggings. Accompanied by two or three workmen and an official of the company, we made our way tortuously through galleries that seemed miles long, and penetrated the dim, dank descent hundreds of feet beneath the desert floor. As we groped and fumbled silently downward, I was in far from a cheerful mood, for that weird, mysterious feeling of peril was still with me, the feeling of walking into a trap! Besides, as if to lend a basis of reason to my forebodings, what was that sudden faint trembling of the earth that I seemed to feel every now and then, that occasional rude jarring of the gallery floor, as if from the concussion of a distant explosion?—or was it only my imagination?
"Did you feel that?" I demanded of Clay, upon being shaken by the severest of the tremors. But he merely snapped, "Feel what?" and the pale light of the torches did not reveal the workings of his features.
"Seemed like an earthquake to me!" I muttered, as the ground beneath my feet once more gave a slight, almost imperceptible fluttering.
"Earthquake? Nonsense!" flung back Clay. "How could it be? We're way out of the earthquake belt, aren't we?"
I mumbled in the affirmative, but was not reassured.
Nevertheless, we said no more about the matter, and a few minutes later we had reached the lower limits of the mine. Forgetting my fears, I had pushed on with Clay ahead of our companions and was just turning my flashlight on an ore-producing ledge at the bottom of the gallery ... when suddenly there occurred that event which only too completely justified my alarm.
Like many of life's crises, it was all over in a minute. Yet it seemed infinitely prolonged, seemed packed with the experience of hours, of days, almost of years. I can still relive the dagger-shaft of terror that shot through me when the earth, without warning, gave a quick convulsive lurch, like the deck of a vessel in a storm at sea; I can still hear the sharp frightened exclamation from the throat of Clay and the startled shouts of our companions from down the tunnel. Once more I listen to the crunching, grinding, and groaning of the earth and the low rumbling from far subterranean depths; I am again pitched headlong to the floor as the ground beneath us heaves and threshes; I catch the panic-gleam in the eyes of my companion as he tries vainly to clutch a projecting spike of rock; then for an instant, as the commotion momentarily subsides, I almost succeed in regaining my feet, only to be hurled down again with a fury that leaves me bruised and bleeding.
As I strive for the second time to pick myself up, my ears ring with a tumult as of an avalanche. With terrorizing force, the crash and thunder of falling rock breaks upon my stunned senses; the roof of the gallery has collapsed, and Clay and I are cut-off from our companions in a chamber only a few yards across, at the extreme end of the tunnel!
Prisoners, both of us! By the wavering rays of a flashlight, we see ourselves entombed in a stone-walled cell deep underground! But even as this realization sweeps across our minds, still greater dread overwhelms us. Our world again sways like a drunken sailor, there is a fresh roaring in our ears, a huge rock is dislodged and crashes down from the roof with a howl of demoniac menace, and then, at our very feet, the tortured earth groans and opens, and a huge black fissure spreads out beneath us!
Desperately, like mountain climbers on a crumbling precipice, we strive to maintain our balance on the narrow floor of our prison. But we are as helpless as babes. We see the fissure widening, spreading out like the pitchy jaws of doom; we know that, in an instant, we will no longer have a foothold; then, at the moment of supreme horror, the light in Clay's flashlight flickers and goes out, and we are plunged into utter darkness....