ch bar-room personalities are characteristic of you," he retorted.
"Your place--"

But it was fated that Shelby should not learn his place. A sharp
warning cry from a workman heralded the crumbling fall of a great
section of the bank overhanging the drill which Graves had idly
watched, and, as idly, watched still. A dreamer of habit, his will
failed immediately to rally to the naked fact and its demands. It was
unreal, a picture, a play, a poet's conception of chaos--that was it!
The thing was Dantesque or Miltonic. The gaping rent, the jumbled
rocks, the thick spurt of steam issuing from the buried drill, it was
all tumultuous, primeval; and that grimy workman, heaving aside the
dirt and scrambling to the air, was suggestive of Milton's earth-born
"tawny lion, pawing to get free."

"Good God, man, wake up!" Shelby shook him roughly by the arm and
dragged him toward the scene of the catastrophe. "There are men under
that heap."

A little knot of Polish laborers forthwith congregated, ox-eyed and
inert. Shelby tore a shovel from a paralyzed hand and began to dig,
ripping out crisp oaths at their stupidity.

"Find shovels for these cattle," he commanded.

By signs Graves roused the unnerved men to action, but he could find no
sort of tool for himself, and stood empty-handed apart, conscious of
unfitness. The politician, burrowing like a woodchuck, showered him
with red earth.

"English? Anybody speak English?" he panted without stopping. "How
many are under here?"

One of the workmen understood, chattered excitedly with his fellows,
and held up one soiled finger.

"Ein," he said. "Kiska, he vork here."

Shelby's shovel grated on the cylinder of the buried drill. From
underneath its tripod protruded the booted leg of a man.

"Go easy, boys," he cautioned.

With his own hands he skilfully uncovered the victim's head and trunk.
Graves saw that it was the giant of his day-dream. The man's rugged
face was earth-stained and still; his great chest motionless. Shelby
mastered the situation with a glance, thrust his hand into the coarse
shirt, and felt for the heart.

"There's life in him," he announced. "Over with him into the shade."
Between them all they bore him to a shelf of level rock. "Off with his
shirt," said Shelby to his helper, and they two stripped the body to
the waist. It was the torso of a gladiator. Shelby rolled the garment
and thrust it underneath the bare back below the shoulder