he mouth of the twenty-inch casing.
The cable that ran from it was entangled with the wreckage of the
derrick, but it had not been cut. Smithy set doggedly to work.

* * * * *

A little gin-pole and light tackle allowed him to erect a heavier
tripod of steel beams; it hoisted the big sheave block into place, and
gave Smithy's two hands the strength of twenty to rig a temporary
hoist. The juice was still on the main feed line, and the hoisting
motors hummed at his touch. The ten miles of cable wound slowly onto
the drums.

"It's nonsense, I suppose," he told himself silently. But something
drove him to do this last thing--to leave it all as Rawson would have
had it.

The long bailer came out at last; there was just room to hoist it
clear and let it drop back upon the drilling floor. A glint of gold
flashed in the sunlight as Smithy let the long metal tube down, and he
broke into voluble cursing at sight of the bit of metal that was
caught near the bailer's top.

The gold had started it all! That first finding of the gold on the big
drill had begun it.... He crossed swiftly to the gleaming thing that
seemed somehow to symbolize his loss.

He stooped to reach for it, intending to throw it as far as he could.
Instead he stood in an awkward stooping attitude--stood so while the
long uncounted minutes passed....

His eyes that stared and stared in disbelief seemed suddenly to have
turned traitor. They were telling him that they saw a ring--a
cameo--jammed solidly into the shackle at the bailer's end. And that
ring, when last he had seen it, had been on Dean Rawson's hand! Dean
had caught it; he had hooked it over a lever in this very place--and
now, from ten miles down inside the solid earth, it had returned. It
meant--it meant....

But the stocky, broad-shouldered youngster known as Smithy dared not
think what it meant. Nor had he time to follow the thought; he was too
busily engaged in running at suicidal speed across the hot sand toward
barren mountains where a ribbon of road showed through quivering air.

CHAPTER VIII

_The Darkness_

Darkness; and red fires that seemed whirling about him as his body
twisted in air. To Dean Rawson, plunging down into the volcano's maw,
each second was an eternity, for, in each single instant, he was
expecting crashing death.

Then he knew that long arms were wrapped about him, holding him,
supporting him, checking his downward plunge