He vowed that such a thought had not entered his head. He had been asleep; that was all.
"Very good!" said the foreman. "You may go, and it's fifty cents off your wage list that your sleep out of season has cost you."
Discipline at the mine had to be of the strictest. Any laxity, and the laziest man was bound to start an epidemic of laziness.
Don Ferdinando set off for the Vega, eight hundred feet sheer below the mine. It was a ticklish zigzag, just to the left of the transporting machinery, with twenty places in which a slip would mean death.
Domecq was working down below, lading the stuff into bullock-carts.
Alfred Cayley disappeared into one of the upper galleries, to see how they were panning out.
The snow mountains and the afternoon sun looked down upon a very pleasing scene of industry—blue-jacketed workers and heaps of ore; and upon Jim Cayley also, who had enjoyed his dinner so thoroughly that he didn't think so much as before about his rejected information.
But now again the Cuban kiddy drifted towards him, making for the zigzag.
Jim hailed him.
"Can't stop, Don Jimmy!" said Toro. But when he was some yards down, he beckoned to Jim, who quickly joined him.