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Page 4
CHAPTER II
THE CALL OF THE PACK
It was somewhere near midnight when the boys sought their beds. Will
and George were soon asleep, but Tommy and Sandy had no notion of
passing their first night in the mine in slumber. Ten minutes after
the regular breathing of the two sleepers became audible, Tommy sat
up in his bed and deftly threw a pillow so as to strike Sandy in the
face.
"Cut it out!" whispered Sandy. "You don't have to do anything to wake
me up! I've been wondering for a long time whether you hadn't gone to
sleep! You looked sleepy when the light went out."
"Never was so wide awake in my life!" declared Tommy.
"Well, get up and dress," advised Sandy. "If we get into the mine
tonight, we'll have to hurry!"
"Have you figured out how we're going to get into the mine?" asked
Tommy. "It will be the ladders for us, I guess."
"Of course, it'll be the ladders!" replied Sandy.
"Do you suppose Canfield is coming here in the middle of the night to
turn on the power?"
"I wonder how deep the shaft is?" asked Tommy. "I guess this one must
be about five hundred feet."
"Is that a guess, or a piece of positive information?"
"It's a guess," laughed Sandy, drawing on his shoes and walking softly
across the bare floor in the direction of the shaft.
The boys passed out of the sleeping chamber into a passage which led
directly to the shaft of the mine. This shaft was perhaps twenty feet
in width. It included the air shaft, the division where the pumps were
operated, and two divisions for the cages which lifted the coal from
the bottom of the mine. The pumps were not working, of course, and no
air was being forced down.
One of the cages lay at the top so the other must have been at the
bottom of the shaft. As the boys looked down into the shaft, Tommy
seized his chum by the arm and whispered:
"Did you see that light down there?"
"Light nothing!" declared Sandy.
"But I did see a light!" insisted the other.
"Perhaps you did," replied Sandy, "but if there's any light there it's
merely a reflection from our electrics. There may be a metallic
surface down there which throws back the light rays."
"Have it your own way!" grunted Tommy. "You know yourself that the
caretaker said there were lights in the mine which no one could
account for and he especially mentioned the light in Tunnel Six.
"All right!" Sandy grinned. "We'll sneak down so quietly that any
person who happens to be at the bottom of the shaft with the light
will never suspect that we are within a hundred miles of the place.
We may be able to geezle the fellow that's making the ghost walk
around here nights."
The boys took to the ladders and moved down as silently as possible.
Now and then a rung creaked softly under their feet, but they got to
the bottom without any special mishap.
Tommy drew a long breath when at last they landed at the bottom of the
shaft. He threw his light upward, then, and declared that in his
opinion they were at least ten thousand feet nearer the center of the
earth than they were when they started down.
"I remember now," Sandy said with a grin, "that the Labyrinth mine is
only about five hundred feet deep. If I remember correctly, there are
three levels; one at three hundred feet; one at four, and one at
five."
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