From the moment Richards had seen the three men left on the seventh level he had seen several other things clearly.
One was that it would be no longer possible to parry the question of pumping apparatus with Mr. Wade.
Another was that the only thing which could make the possibility of his continuing as manager of the Tray-Spot worth a straw was the quick, well-planned rescue of the three men. In the reaction of relief from casualty, resourcefulness now might plead for him.
And the last was that if Trevanion did not have time to get them up the first raise, they were caught in some one of those other raises, from which he had had the ladders removed only the week before.
Everything depended on the progress the three had been able to make, and the rapidity with which the water was coming.
When the cage dropped to the sixth level, Richards knew from its solitude that they had not been able to make the first raise, and Richards’ men understood that they were to do their best.
They ran to the second, calling down as they uncovered it: no answer. And the third: to hear only the hollow reverberation of their own voices; to see by the light of a falling candle the glint of water in the bottom. And the fourth: Richards himself, hurrying along in advance of his men toward the final raise to the south, acknowledged that this was a last and very slender hope.
As he hallooed down the raise the answering cry came back as swiftly to his ears as the sight of the three twinkling lights to his eyes. If the candle in his cap was a star of safety to them, those three lights were relief to him.
With swift brevity he ordered the ladders, then called down: “We’ll have you up, all right.”
And up the blackness came Hastings’ voice: “Hurry, for God’s sake; it’s ankle deep!”