McClintock vaulted over the edge of the cage and dropped into it.
A big Ayrshire mucker shouted at the superintendent. “An’ when did ye divorce your wife an’ twa weans, boss?”
“I’ve got to go, Sandy. It’s my job,” the mine boss called back. “That’s all. No room for more. Jam that gate shut.”
The engineer moved a lever and the bucket dropped into the darkness. Every few seconds there was a flash of light as the cage passed a station. Except for that the darkness was dense.
Hugh heard someone beside him say, “I hear Dodson’s caught in a drift.”
Carstairs, the superintendent, answered: “Yes. Dutch is with him. They went to look at that new vein we struck yesterday.”
No accident contains more terrible possibilities than a fire in a mine. Flame and gas pursue the trapped victims as they fly. Cut off from the shaft, buried hundreds of feet in the ground, the miners run the risk of being asphyxiated, burned, or blown up in an explosion of released gases.
The shaft, the drifts, the crosscuts, and the tunnels all act as flues to suck the flames into them. At Piodie, as at Virginia City, the danger was intensified by the great quantity of fuel with which these natural chimneys were lined. In the Katie Brackett whole forests were buried. Every drift and tunnel was braced with timbers. Scores of chutes, with vertical winzes, all made of wood, led from one level to another. The ore chambers were honeycombed with square sets of timber mortised together and wedged against the rock walls and roof. Upon each set floors of heavy planking were laid. In these were trap doors, through which steps ran leading from the lower level to the one above.
The fire was in the north drift. Carstairs led the men forward cautiously. Already their eyes were inflamed from the smoke that rolled out at them. As they moved forward heat waves struck them. The rock walls were so hot that the rescuers could with difficulty keep going.
Hugh was at the nozzle of the hose they were dragging. He kept a stream playing on the rock and the charred timber. Presently he fell back, overcome by the intense heat, and Carstairs took his place. Byers succeeded the superintendent at the apex of the attack.