Chapter 2

Maybe it was my imagination, but the little light in my helmet seemed to be getting dimmer. If I were left down in that hole with no light at all, I would be entirely helpless -- dependent on somebody's coming to the rescue from above.

Well. They were bound to come. Weren't they?

I turned off the helmet light and forced myself to just sit there, in now perfect darkness. The mine shaft, so far as I could tell, was completely free of animal life of any kind. There were no rats, no insects, nothing that could harm me.

So why was I feeling stuff crawling on me every few seconds? Why was I scratching at imaginary itches on my arms and legs?

I was thirsty, too. It hadn't been all that long, I knew, since I'd had a drink of water. But it seemed long.

I waited for rescue. After awhile, huddled there, in the perfect darkness, I must have slept.

When I awoke, I was astonished to see a dim light at the entrance to the mine shaft, high above. It was daylight! I'd slept through the night, sitting in that cramped space in the half-broken barrel, and no rescuer had come.

That was remarkable. Aunt Rachel knew where we were. Why hadn't she sent someone to check on us?

I turned on the helmet light again and, with some relief, saw that it had made at least a temporary recovery overnight. The light from the lamp above my eyes was ample. I took my broken barrel stave in hand again, climbed to the top of the barrel, and made a few more passes at snagging the rope on the nails extending from the stave. As before, I touched the rope several times but didn't manage to get any kind of traction to hold onto it.

Another possibility occurred to me. Perhaps I could mount a couple of those barrel staves on the top of the barrel's frame. Then maybe I could climb up on them to reach the rope directly. I wedged two staves on the barrel's rim, and propped them up at a steep angle against the wall of the mine shaft. They made a precarious, makeshift walkway, at about a 45 degree angle, upward. They would afford me another two feet of reach toward the rope dangling there, above. Not enough to reach it, but, perhaps, enough to jump up and grab it.

But if I grabbed it and missed, or let the rope go, I was in for a long and awkward fall, back down into the barrel. Worse, the fall could cause my body to strike the top rim of the barrel at a bad angle, possibly breaking an arm or a leg, or a rib, in the process.

Well. I had tried everything else. I climbed up onto the mounted barrel staves as high as I could get, and made an awkward leap upward. I grabbed the rope in one hand, getting a grip on a couple of inches of it at the very end before losing my hold and falling downward.

But at least the rope's position above me had allowed a direct fall into the barrel. I managed to miss the sides and fall feet-first to the bottom, where the impact seemed to have knocked loose even more of the wooden panels at the bottom of the barrel. Much more of this and there would be no place for me to stand, inside the damned barrel, even if I could reach the rope and pull myself out.

Again, the helmet light was turned off while I gathered my strength and courage for another try. When I turned the light back on, I re-arranged the propped staves so that they were slightly better-located under the dangling rope, and again cautiously climbed up onto this precarious platform as high as I could get. The barrel staves were smooth under my rubber-soled running shoes, and the danger of slipping when I tried to jump straight upward was considerable.

The little helmet light seemed to be getting dim again, and maybe that added scare put a little something extra into my leap. Anyway, this time, my right hand grasped the rope and held on. And the end of the dangling rope slowly came back down, with me hanging onto it, until the rope and I were both back in the barrel. My weight had been enough to retrieve it, and there had been enough resistance to prevent me from coming down hard in another free fall.

But now I confronted a new problem. Whatever the rope had been attached to, above the barrel, was nowhere to be seen. And if this rope was operating on a pulley mechanism, where was the rest of the rope? Where was the other half of the mechanism? Where was the rope that was supposed to extend from the other side of the faraway pulley?

I pulled the rope farther into the barrel and tied it to the broken barrel rim to assure that it didn't get away from me again. Then I started searching, in vain, for the other half of the rope.

Finding nothing, I pulled on the rope again until, after it came in toward me for a few feet, I found that it was stretched tight.

OK. It was only twenty feet or so to the opening, above, where Uncle Willard's body lay waiting for rescue. I could climb hand-over-hand for that far -- even on this heavy-gauge piece of rope.

So I left the barrel down there and scrambled upward.

When I reached the opening in the side of the mineshaft, I made certain, again, that the rope was secured, and then allowed myself to rest. For the first time in twelve hours, I could stretch my body out flat and lie down. No bed had ever felt better than that rocky surface.

Using my helmet light, I located a small metal box in the chamber that turned out to contain four plastic bottles of water, several granola bars, and a couple of soft drinks in cans. The warm water seemed more attractive than the warm soft drinks, so I polished off one of the waters and enjoyed a granola bar for breakfast.

Hating the darkness, I nonetheless turned off my helmet light to preserve the battery, but first I took Uncle Willard's helmet off his head and, testing his light, found it to be a stronger-beamed reserve. The extra helmet I stored next to the box of water and granola bars.