“Go back and get it. You’ll be able to move the boulder away without any trouble. Then we’ll clear out of here.”
Joe picked up his flashlight and turned to retrace his steps into the main working of the mine.
“I’ll only be a few minutes,” he promised.
“Don’t worry about me. I won’t go away,” said Frank, with a laugh. He could be cheerful even in the dangerous position in which he found himself.
Back down the narrow tunnel crawled Joe, back toward the cavern into which they had first descended. He remembered having seen a long iron bar lying at the foot of the shaft and he realized that it would be an ideal lever for moving away the boulder that imprisoned his brother. He made haste, not wishing to leave his brother too long imprisoned, and in a few minutes he was back in the great cave.
At first he could not find the iron bar, and he hunted about, flashing the light here and there into dark corners. At last he found it, near the foot of the shaft. It was quite heavy and one end of it lay beneath a heap of rocks.
Joe tugged at the iron bar.
At first it resisted his efforts. He put all his strength into the attempt and the bar slowly moved. A final tug and it came free so suddenly that he staggered backward.
It was this circumstance that saved his life.
For, in extricating the bar, he had dislodged the mass of rocks. With a rush and a roar they came tumbling down across the bottom of the shaft. Had Joe been standing beneath he would have been crushed to death.
Then, before the clattering had died away, came a sullen, hollow roar from higher up in the shaft. Timbers snapped and crackled. The old boards, long since rotting away, suddenly gave beneath the pressure of rocks and earth. An avalanche of stones descended into the shaft on top of the first downfall of rock. More followed, showers of earth came rushing down and a cloud of dust pervaded the cavern.
Joe leaped back.
Then, with a roar like thunder, the entire shaft caved in. Rocks and timbers came tumbling down with a terrific crash. The air was filled with the noise of smashing timbers and falling rock. The faint light from the shaft that had given some vague illumination to the cave, was blotted out. The mine reverberated with echoes and shook with the force of the crash.
Silence reigned. It was broken by the sharp sounds of falling pebbles that descended in the wake of the avalanche. Then those noises too died away. The cavern was filled with a choking cloud of dust.
Joe was almost stupefied by horror. He realized to the full the peril of the situation.
“The shaft has caved in,” he thought. “We’re trapped in the mine! We’ll never get out alive!”
He turned his flashlight on the place where the shaft had been. The light revealed only a high, sloping hill of rocks and shattered timbers. The shaft was completely blocked. It would take an army of men to clear away the debris.
Joe realized that he and Frank would never be able to accomplish the task. And he knew there was no hope of assistance from outside, for no one knew where they were. It might be days before they were traced to the mine.
XIII
In the Depths of the Earth
Joe Hardy still had the iron bar in his hand. He had not relinquished his grip on it.
“That’s what caused all the trouble,” he said to himself. The sight of the bar reminded him of Frank, still imprisoned back in the tunnel. He knew Frank would have heard the crash and would be wondering what had happened.
“I may as well set him free first and then we can reason out what we are going to do.”
He turned and, dragging the heavy bar behind him, made his way to the opening of the tunnel. When he reached it he crouched down and proceeded into the passage.
With the flashlight illuminating the way, he went on toward the place where his brother was imprisoned. He found that the collapse of the shaft had shaken the entire mine. Bits of rock and heaps of earth and dirt along the floor of the tunnel testified to the shock of the cave-in. But when he came to the place where the tunnel turned to the right, he found, to his surprise, that the turning had vanished.
Instead, there was a solid wall of rocks and boulders ahead of him!
At first, Joe could not believe his eyes. Then realization dawned on him. The collapse of the shaft had shaken loose the boulders and rocks that lined the tunnel at this point and they had fallen down to block the passage.
He stared incredulously at the rocky wall ahead of him. He was cut off completely from his brother. Then he shouted:
“Frank!”
There was no answer. His shout echoed and reechoed in the narrow space of the tunnel.
He shouted again and again, but the echoes were his only answers. Once he thought he heard a faint cry from beyond the wall, but he could not be sure. Communication had been cut off. He realized that his peril was doubled now. With the shaft blocked, with the passageway blocked, he was imprisoned underground in a small space, where the air would soon become foul and where suffocation would eventually end his life. He set his flashlight on the floor of the tunnel, seized the iron bar, and set to work to remove the blockade.
The task seemed hopeless. The rocks were piled up deeply and were so large and so tightly jammed together that it seemed impossible to remove them. Joe knew that if the roof of the tunnel had completely fallen in there would be little hope, as rock would continue to fall as fast as he removed
