The Call of the Beaver Patrol | Page 4

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."
"And which level is this?" asked Tommy.
"Why, we're on the bottom, ain't we?"
"Of course," laughed Tommy. "I ought to have known that!"
"Well come along if you want to see the mine!" urged Sandy. "All we
have to do is to push our searchlights ahead and walk down the
gangway. We'll come to something worth seeing after a while."
As the boys advanced they found the gangway considerably cluttered
with "gob," or refuse, and the air was none of the best.
"I wish we could set the air shaft working," suggested Sandy.
"Well, we can't!" Tommy answered with a scornful shrug of his
shoulders. "We can't set the whole works going in order to give us a
midnight view of the Labyrinth mine. What gets me is, how are we
going to find our way back? There seem to be a good many passages
here."
"I've got that fixed all right!" Sandy exclaimed.
As the lad spoke he took a ball of strong string from his pocket and tied
one end to the cage which lay at the bottom of the shaft.
"Now we can go anywhere we please," he chuckled "and when we want
to return, all we've got to do is to follow the string."
"Quite an idea!" laughed Tommy.
The boys proceeded along the gangway, walking between the rails of
the tramway by means of which the coal was delivered at the bottom of
the