side of the newly removed floorboard tumbled backward along with Chuck and Clarence. Carson and Jeremy, on the far side of the plank, threw themselves forward, scrabbling for anything to hold onto as the floor fell away behind them. Before they, like Samuel, disappeared, each managed to grab the snapped end of one of the two rotted timbers that had served as the floorboards’ foundation.
The three remaining students crawled on their hands and knees past Chuck and Clarence. Chuck scrambled forward, reaching a hand to Carson, hanging chest-deep in the black hole that had opened beneath the collapsed floor. Chuck pulled Carson out of the hole and into Clarence’s waiting arms.
Jeremy fought for purchase, his fingers slipping on the wet, broken timber at the edge of the hole, which extended the width of the tunnel and all the way to the tunnel’s back wall.
Chuck jammed a boot against the timber, anchoring himself at the edge of the six-foot-by-six-foot opening. Jeremy latched onto Chuck’s ankle with both hands. Only Jeremy’s head and neck showed above the edge of the hole. The rest of his body dangled into darkness. He gulped in terror, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down.
With the addition of Jeremy’s weight, Chuck’s foot slid along the moist timber, inches from the gaping hole. He threw himself away from the opening, his arms outstretched, reaching for something, anything, before his foot broke free and Jeremy dragged him into the pit.
A pair of hands grasped him from behind. “Got you,” Clarence said in his ear, toppling with Chuck to the ground between the timbers, his arm wrapped tight around Chuck’s chest. Clarence extended his free hand past Chuck to Jeremy, who grabbed it and scrambled up and out of the hole.
As soon as Jeremy crawled past him, Chuck shook himself free of Clarence, rolled to his stomach, and extended his head over the edge of the pit, shining his headlamp into the darkness. To his immense relief, Samuel was not impaled on shattered floorboards at the bottom of the opened hole. The bearded young man clung to the side of the hole, eight feet below the floor of the mine tunnel, his feet kicking in space, his hands grasping the remnant of a handmade wooden ladder affixed to the wall of what appeared to be a downward extension of the mine.
A pair of rusted, iron stanchions secured the splintered, three-rung length of the ladder to the rock face of the vertical shaft. One of the stanchions broke free and the length of ladder dropped several inches on one side, nearly sending Samuel plummeting to the bottom of the pit.
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Samuel said, his voice strained, staring up at Chuck with fear-filled eyes. He toed the damp rock wall before him, searching for a foothold but finding none.
Chuck scanned the squared-off walls of the vertical shaft. He needed rope, webbing, carabiners, but he had no climbing gear at hand nor the time necessary to effect such an involved rescue.
He spoke over his shoulder in a staccato burst. “Grab my ankles. Now. Everybody.”
He shoved himself forward, counting on Clarence and the members of Team Nugget to respond to his terse command. His body canted downward as his torso extended past the edge of the hole. Hands wrapped themselves around his lower legs from behind.
“All the way,” he said, worming his body past the lip of the opening. “Far as you can lower me.”
Harsh exhalations of exertion sounded from behind Chuck as Clarence and the students lowered him headfirst into the vertical shaft. His hardhat slipped from his head and tumbled past Samuel, the beam of its headlamp wheeling off the walls as it fell. It struck one side of the shaft and ricocheted to the other before coming to rest, its lamp still shining, amid the wreckage of the collapsed floorboards and ladder some sixty feet below.
Chuck hung upside down, his face to the rock wall. The tops of his feet rested like angle irons on the lip of the vertical shaft, locking him in place.
He reached downward, past his head, but his outstretched fingers found only blank rock wall and moist air.
“Chuck,” Samuel gasped, his voice flagging.
“Lower,” Chuck called to Clarence and the students, his voice muffled against the rock wall. “You’ve got to get me lower.”
He relaxed his feet. No longer using his own strength to help hold his body in place, he plunged downward several inches. Alarmed cries sounded from above as Clarence and the students halted Chuck’s descent, their hands tight around his ankles.
Again Chuck reached past his head. This time, his groping fingers found the ladder rung to which Samuel clung. Chuck swept his hands along the rung until he came to Samuel’s fingers, wrapped like steel bands around the wooden dowel. Stretching, Chuck reached lower and took hold of Samuel’s wrists with both his hands.
“Let go,” Chuck panted. “Grab my wrists.”
“No,” Samuel said.
“You’ve got to. We’re running out of time. First one hand, then the other.”
“I can’t,” Samuel said, his voice trembling.
The splintered length of ladder ripped free of the last stanchion holding it in place. Samuel swung away from the wall with an anguished cry, held aloft only by Chuck’s grip on his wrists. He released the ladder rung and grabbed Chuck so that the two were attached wrist-to-wrist like a pair of trapeze artists.
“Up,” Chuck said through gritted teeth, addressing Clarence and the students above. “Up.”
Clarence and the members of Team Nugget pulled on Chuck’s ankles, their groans filling the chamber, but Chuck and Samuel didn’t budge.
“Can’t…do…it,” Clarence wheezed.
Blood pounded in Chuck’s head, his grip on Samuel’s wrists weakening.
“Climb past me,” he told Samuel.
“I can’t,” Samuel whimpered.
“Do it,” Chuck commanded, and pulled upward with his right arm, lifting Samuel’s hand a few inches. “I’m letting go.”
“No!” Samuel cried.
Chuck continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Reach up my back, grab hold of my belt. Give it everything you’ve got.”
“No!” Samuel gasped.
“On the count of one.” Chuck didn’t pause. “One.”
Chuck slid his right hand free of Samuel’s grasp, keeping his left hand wrapped around Samuel’s other wrist. Samuel swung free, locked to Chuck by only one hand. Calling upon what must have been his last reservoir of strength, Samuel clambered monkey-like up Chuck’s body from his belt to the hammer loop on the leg of his canvas work jeans to the lip of the hole and out.
Freed of Samuel’s weight, Clarence and the team pulled hard on Chuck’s ankles, bringing Chuck up a few inches, their heaving breaths echoing in the chamber as they struggled with the awkward angle.
“No…leverage,” Clarence panted.
Chuck ran his hands across the face of the wall. It was wet and slick. He found a protruding nubbin of rock, but as soon as he leaned into it, his hand slipped.
He
