down at her side at the moment with his ear to the rail, couldn’t make out one word of it. But Elma’s sharp senses, now quickened by the crisis, were acute as an Oriental’s and keen as a beagle’s.
“Break the pipe of the wires,” they say, she exclaimed, starting back and pondering. “What on earth can they mean by that? What on earth can they be driving at? ‘Break the pipe of the wires.’ I don’t understand them.”
Hardly had she spoken, when another sharp tap resounded still more clearly along the rail at her feet. She bent down her head once more, and laid her eager ear beside it in terrible suspense. A rough man’s voice—a navvy’s, no doubt, or a fireman’s—came speeding along the metal; and it said in thick accents—
“Do you hear what I say? If you want to breathe freer, break the pipe of the wires, and you’ll get fresh air from outside right through it.”
Cyril this time had caught the words, and jumped up with a sudden air of profound conviction. It was very dark, and the lamps were going out, but he took his fusee-box from his pocket and struck a light hastily. Sure enough, on the left-hand side of the tunnel, half buried in rubbish, an earthenware pipe ran along by the edge near the wall of the archway. Cyril raised his foot and brought his heel down upon it sharply with all the strength and force he had still left in him. The pipe broke short, and Cyril saw within it a number of telegraph wires for the railway service. The tube communicated directly with the air outside. They were saved! They were saved! Air would come through the pipe! He saw it all now! He dimly understood it!
At the self-same moment, another sound of breaking was heard more distinctly at the opposite end, some thirty or forty feet off through the tunnel. Then a voice rang far clearer, as if issuing from the tube, in short, sharp sentences—
“We’ll pump you in air. How many of you are there? Are you all alive? Is any one injured?”
Cyril leant down and shouted back in reply—
“We’re two. Both alive. Not hurt. But sick and half dead with stifling. Send us air as soon as ever you can. And if possible pass us a bottle of water.”
Some minutes elapsed—three long, slow minutes of it—intense anxiety. Elma, now broken down with terror and want of oxygen, fell half fainting forward towards the shattered tube. Cyril held her up in his supporting arms, and watched the pipe eagerly. It seemed an age; but, after a time, he became conscious of a gust of air blowing cold on his face. The keen freshness revived him.
He looked about him and drew a deep breath. Cool air was streaming in through the broken place. Quick as thought, he laid Elma’s mouth as close as he could lay it to the reviving current. Her eyes were closed. After a painful interval, she opened them languidly. Cyril chafed her hands with his, but his chafing seemed to produce very little effect. She lay motionless now with her eyelids half shut, and the whites of her eyes alone showing through them. The close, foul air of that damp and confined spot had worked its worst, and had almost asphyxiated her. Cyril began to fear the slight relief had arrived five minutes too late. And it must still in all probability be some hours at least before they could be actually disentombed from that living vault or restored to the open air of heaven.
As he bent over her and held his breath in speechless suspense, the voice called out again more loudly than ever—
“Look out for the ball in the tube. We’re sending you water!”
Cyril watched the pipe closely and struck another light. In a minute, a big glass marble came rattling through, with a string attached to it.
“Pull the string!” the voice cried; and Cyril pulled with a will. Now and again, the object attached to it struck against some projecting ledge or angle where the pipes overlapped. But at last, with a little humouring, it came through in safety. At the end was a large india-rubber bottle, full of fresh water, and a flask of brandy. The young man seized them both with delight and avidity, and bathed Elma’s temples over and over again with the refreshing spirit. Then he poured a little into the cup, and filling it up with water, held it to her lips with all a woman’s tenderness. Elma gulped the draught down unconsciously, and opened her eyes at once. For a moment she stared about her with a wild stare of surprise.
Then, of a sudden, she recollected where she was, and why, and seizing Cyril’s hand, pressed it long and eagerly.
“If only we can hold out for three hours more,” she cried, with fresh hope returning, “I’m sure they’ll reach us; I’m sure they’ll reach us!”
CHAPTER V. — GRATITUDE.
“There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?” Guy asked with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at Staple Inn, recounting the previous day’s adventures.
“Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment, which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a miracle, you may say. But several of the people in the front part of the train got terribly shaken.”
“And you and the other man were shut up in the tunnel there for fifteen hours at a stretch?” Guy went on reflectively.
“At least fifteen hours,” Cyril echoed, without attempting to correct the slight error of sex, for no man, he thought, is bound to criminate himself, even in a flirtation. “It was two in the morning before they dug us quite out. And my companion by that time was more dead than alive, I can tell you, with watching and terror.”
“Was he, poor fellow?” Guy murmured, with a sympathetic face; for Cyril had always alluded casually to his fellow-traveller in such general terms that Guy was as yet unaware there was a lady in the case. “And is he all right again now, do you know? Have you heard anything more about him?”
But before Cyril could answer there came a knock at the door, and the next moment Mr. Montague Nevitt, without his violin, entered the room in some haste, all agog with excitement. His face was eager and his manner cordial. It was clear he was full of some important tidings.
“Why, Cyril, my dear fellow,” he cried, grasping the painter’s hand with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard two or three times over, “how delighted I am to see you restored to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are buzzing with it. A charming girl! You’ll have to marry her, of course, that’s the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the evening papers!”
Guy drew back at the words with a little start of surprise. “Young lady!” he cried aghast. “A charming girl, Nevitt! Then the person who was shut up with you for fifteen hours in the tunnel was a girl, Cyril!”
Cyril’s handsome face flushed slightly before his brother’s scrutinizing gaze; but he answered with a certain little ill-concealed embarrassment:
“Oh, I didn’t say so, didn’t I? Well, she WAS a girl then, of course; a certain Miss Clifford. She got in at Chetwood. Her people live somewhere down there near Tilgate. At least, so I gathered from what she told me.”
Nevitt stared hard at the painter’s eyes, which tried, without success, to look unconscious.
