Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/198

166 "I'll climb down with a candle so you can see."

In that narrow hole there was room for only one at a time, and it was necessary to enter as he had started to emerge, on hands and knees.

"Don't slip," he grunted.

In a moment eyes grew a little accustomed to the light. A wooden platform, burdened with pipes, overhung a pit, apparently bottomless.

“The pipes are for to carry off the water," the creature said. “We have to pump almost from the first spadeful, and it's pump, pump, pump, every foot we go down, and, when we get down, every foot we go out.'

He struck a match and applied it to a stump of a candle. He swung over the brink, fumbling with his feet for ladder rungs. I heard him scrape down, holding the candle in one hand. His face was no longer visible. His candle was a mere speck. When he called up his voice was muffled and far away.

"We strike out from here."

Yet no sound of tools came up. In almost complete silence that sap was creeping towards the German trenches a hundred yards away. That it might go at all this uncouth creature and many like him were daily accomplishing a task compared with which ordinary ore mining is pure recrea-