“How many in here?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“Where are the others?”
“Dead,” came the answer. “Cut off by fire damp before we reached the crosscut.”
“All of you able to travel?”
“Yes.”
Hugh heard the sound of footsteps stumbling toward him. Men came abreast of him and went past. He counted them—eleven. Then he stooped and picked up the body at his feet. In another minute he was staggering into the drift with his burden.
The fire fighters fell back past the charred timbers and the hot rocks of the wall.
“You’re through, boys,” Carstairs said. “I’ll send a fresh crew in to blast down the mouth of the drift and build a bulkhead against the fire. Then we’ll close the shaft and let ’er die down for lack of air.”
The first thing Hugh did when he reached the foot of the shaft was to find the revolver he had hidden beneath a car; the next was to look over the rescued men for the one he wanted. He found him, standing beside Robert Dodson close to the cage. The mine owner was sobbing with the strain he had undergone. His nerve had gone. The big hulking figure at his back was Sam Dutch.