dangerous depths. Suddenly, and with a jerk that threw us up to the roof of the cage, we stopped, and in a few seconds something heavy fell down upon the cage.
'What has happened?' I tried to say, but found that the mask and headpiece prevented utterance most effectively. Brand broke a corner off our roof and enabled us to look up. We could see coils of a broken rope, and up towards the mouth of the shaft a mass of what appeared to be fire. We were imprisoned in the shaft and could neither get up nor down. Brand wrote on a board for us the words, 'An unusual electric storm is raging above us; imprisoned here until men can get through to help us, we have each four, hours' air; cannot remove masks; a few breaths of what is around us would produce asphyxia and probably kill us; we must wait.'
For three hours we waited, and all the time the fires filled the shaft above us. Grayson was silent and almost motionless; Brand never ceased to watch for the coming of help; I grew anxious and frightened. I had no wish to die just on the threshold of what might be a grand and happy life.
More time passed, and then we heard someone on the roof. We looked out. A man was trying to find the end of rope, evidently with the intention of drawing it up, splicing it, and pulling up the cage. Brand put his watch up through the hole he had made and pointed out the time; he then wrote some instructions on a slip of paper, These the man took, and troubling no further about the cage, put himself in a sling of rope and got drawn rapidly upwards. His life and ours hung on that rope. If it got burnt with another storm he would fall, and Brand's instructions would never reach the surface. I learned afterwards that all the ropes used were insulated with glass fibre, the kind used in weaving the garments we wore.
Brand tore away at the roof, and I helped him to make the hole larger. We made it so that one of us could have crept out, but we could do nothing with the heavy tangled coils of rope above us.
More time passed and my head began to feel full and hot, and strange lights began to dance before my eyes. I then began to feel sleepy and dizzy, and a sickly, faint sensation stole over me. I made efforts to rally, and looked through Brand's glass at his face; it was very pale and troubled. He tore a piece of paper and wrote, 'Do not breathe when they change h—,' and then he staggered and would have fallen if I had not caught him. In a few seconds more we were both on the floor of the cage somehow, and the last thing I saw was something coming through the broken roof and Grayson taking hold of it.
A little later—how much later I could not tell—I found Brand and Grayson leaning over me, and making the movements necessary to produce respiration. I rose to my feet; we all three shook hands. The fresh helmets Brand had sent for had come in time. We had each six hours more air—our lives ware saved.
