Part 13 (1/2)
”Well?”
”I wasn't more than half-way to the gang when the bird began to quiver and just as I reached them, it fell off the perch. I held out the cage.
That was all the proof I needed.”
”'Guess the kid's right,' the foreman of the gang said. 'Go back, boys.'
”They raised a howl with him the same way that my own men did with me.
But he was an old-timer, and without wasting any words, he smashed the foremost of the workers across the jaw. Under a torrent of abuse, the men fell back. I was half-way to the entrance when everything turned black before me. Next thing I knew, I was in the Mine Superintendent's house with a trained nurse.”
”White damp?” queried Eric.
”That's what the doctor said.”
”What happened to the imprisoned bunch?”
”Old Man Barnett had just reached the entrance to the working with a large rescue party all equipped with breathing apparatus, when I collapsed. He got the trapped men out.”
”I should think they'd have been poisoned for fair,” said Eric.
”Not a bit of it,” his friend replied. ”The leak of white damp had all come on the outside of the roof-fall, and there was hardly any of it on the other side. Some of the men were pretty weak from lack of air and that sort of thing, but not seriously hurt. It was the rescuers who suffered.”
”How was that, Ed?”
”Three of the five men who were in my gang died,” said the other mournfully.
”Great guns! Died?”
”Yes,” the young miner said, ”poor fellows, they went under. Another man and I were the only ones who got over it.”
”Died in saving others! That's sure tough!” There was a pause, and Eric added, ”What got you two clear?”
”The other chap had been lying full length on the ground, while working, and as white damp rises, he had breathed less of the gas than the others. I wasn't able to work, so I didn't have to breathe deep.” He looked down at his broken arm. ”It's a queer thing,” he said, ”but it was breaking my arm that saved my life.”
CHAPTER IV
s.n.a.t.c.hED FROM A FROZEN DEATH
”Father! Father! What do you think?” cried Eric, bursting into the sitting room at breakfast one morning, a couple of weeks after his encounter with his young mining friend, ”I'm going into the Life-Saving work right away!”
”What's the excitement?” his father asked, speaking for the rest of the family. ”Cool down a bit, my boy, and tell us all about it.”
”I've--I've just got a letter from the Captain Commandant,” replied Eric, fairly stuttering in his haste to tell the good news, ”and he says I can enlist in one of the lake stations until the close of navigation.
I'll get some real practical training that way, he says, and then I can take up prep. work for the Academy all winter.”
In view of the fact that there had been considerable correspondence between the ruling head of the Coast Guard and Mr. Swift, the old inspector was less surprised than the boy expected. Not for the world would the lad's father have let him think that there had been any consultation about this plan. He wanted the boy to have the sense of being ”on his own”!
”I remember now,” he said, ”you said something about writing along that line a couple of weeks ago.”