-head has caught,
and the bucket is going down without us, and taking the rope with it.
Have you a steady head?"

"I s'pose so," said Charlie lightly, for, in his ignorance of mines, he
had no idea of the possible danger of his position.

"Very well; can you turn around and step down on the beam that's just
below us?" returned Mr. Everett, still speaking in the same calm voice,
though with the brevity of a captain giving his orders on a field of
battle. "If you can, do it, and then put your arm around the back of the
guide there. So; that's all right."

In another moment, he had followed Charlie, and taken his place beside
him on the other side of the guide, where he showed the boy how to grasp
the timber in such a way that the cross-head, coming up, should not
touch his arm. That done, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"There!" he said; "now we're safe for the time being. The next question
is: how are we going to get out of this trap?"

"Why couldn't we stay on the cross-head?" asked Charlie, as it began to
move slowly away from the spot where it had lodged.

"Just that reason," returned Mr. Everett, with a motion of his head
towards the clumsy frame which, once loosed, went sliding away down the
rope after the bucket. "Though you may not have known it, young man, you
were never in a much more dangerous place than you were five minutes
ago; for, as soon as it could get free, the cross-head was going to
crash down on top of the bucket, with force enough to kill anybody that
happened to be on it. I knew 'twould go, sooner or later; but I didn't
feel so sure that we could get off in time."

"Then it's done it before?" asked Charlie, in no wise moved by the
knowledge of his past danger, but, boy-like, rather enjoying the novelty
of his position, halfway down the shaft of the mine, and lodged like a
fly on the wall, with only a narrow beam between himself and a fall of
four or five hundred feet.

"Once," answered Mr. Everett, amused, in spite of his anxiety, by the
boy's coolness. "It killed four men on the cross-head, and the one in
the bucket; but they have such accidents in the other mines often
enough, so we know about what the chances are. That's one reason we're
going to put in a cage. Now," he went on, resuming his tone of
authority, "don't you try to move, and, above all, don't look down. I'm
going to get round to the other side, where I can reach the bell-rope,
and signal the engineer to bring up the cross-he