Suddenly an idea struck me! If I could climb up the shaft I might get above the worst of the blast. I put my back against the face of the shaft and my feet against the other and tried to work up that way. It answered at first. I had got a few feet above the level of the drive when I slipped and came down with a thud on the floor of the shaft.
I heard the saplings crack, but the noise was almost drowned by the awful hissing of the fuses. As I scrambled to my feet a sapling broke under me and my leg went through the floor. With an inspiration, I thought of the well beneath! Still that awful hissing! I knew I had only a few seconds now between me and utter annihilation. I tore away at the saplings like a mad man. My God! how hard they had been jammed down. I saw the water below me; the bright light from the top of the shaft was reflected in it.
Was it my fancy? Did I see "Dago's" face reflected there, or was it my own?
The water was about ten feet down below me. There was no time to hesitate. The only chance of safety lay that way. I made one wild plunge, and as I fell I heard the splitting, hurtling, thundering roar of the blasts as they both went off above me. Then I knew no more.
They told me it was days afterwards when I woke up. I was lying in my humpy, conscious of great pain. My head was all bound up, my left arm was strapped to a piece of wood, and I felt awful.
"Dago's" girl was sitting on a wood heap in the big chimney of the bumpy heating something over the fire.
She came up presently beside me and saw I was awake. Dimly the remembrance of something happening in the mine dawned on me.
"What has happened?" I murmured, feebly. She bent down over me. "Hush, you mustn't talk."
