molasses candy bar that's been melted? Did it?"

"Why, no," said Smithy. "It hadn't dripped any; it was cut off nice
and clean."

"Cut!" Rawson almost shouted the word. "You said it, Smithy. So was
the shaft of the drill. And if you ever saw a piece of this alloy
being melted you know that it's as gummy as a pot of old paint. It was
cut, Smithy! Dipping into that melted gold threw us off the track; we
were thinking of ramming the drill down into a mess of lava. But we
didn't. It was cut off by a blast of flame so much hotter than lava
that melted rock would seem cold!"

"And that helps us a lot, doesn't it," asked Smithy, scornfully, "when
the flame melts the end of the shaft shut as fast as we open it?"

Dean Rawson's lean, muscular hands took Smithy's broad shoulders and
spun the younger man around. "Cheer up," Dean told him. "We've got it
licked. Why it doesn't blow out of that shaft like hell out for noon
is more than I can see; but the heat's there! We've won!"

"But--" Smithy began. Rawson sent him spinning toward the door in a
good-natured showing of strength that his assistant had not yet
guessed.

"Soup!" he ordered. "Break out the nitroglycerine, Smithy. Get that
Swede, Hanson, on the job; he's a shooter. He knows his stuff. We'll
blow open the bottom end of our shaft so it'll never go shut!"

* * * * *

Hanson knew his stuff and did it. But he met Rawson's inquiring eyes
with a puzzled shake of his head when the open mouth of the
twenty-inch bore gave faint echo of the deep explosion and followed
after a time with only a feeble puff of air.

"Like a cannon, she should have gone," Hanson stated. "And she yoost
go _phht_!"

"It's open down below," said Rawson briefly. "This is a different kind
of a well from the kind you've been shooting."

To the waiting Riley he said: "Hook a bailer onto that cable and send
it down. See what you can tell about the hole."

Again ten miles of cable hissed smoothly down the gaping throat. Then
it slowed.

"Fifty-two-seven," said Riley, "and she's open. Seven twenty-five!
Seven fifty, and we're on bottom!"

"Up," Rawson ordered, "if there's anything left of the bailer. It's
probably melted into scrap."

But strangely it was not. It hung from the dangling cable spinning
lazily until Riley stepped in to check its motion.

There was a check valve in the bottom--a door that opened inwardly, to
take in water and fragments of rock whe