"That means we have just forty-five minutes to live....

Let us not lie to one another."] He smiled, and put out a hand to her.
"A slide of rock has fallen over the mouth of the tunnel," he said, forcing himself to speak as if it meant little or nothing.

"Hold the lantern, Joanne, while I get busy." "A slide of rock," she repeated after him dumbly.
She took the lantern, her eyes still looking at him in that stricken way, and with his naked hands John Aldous set to work.

Five minutes and he knew that it was madness to continue.

Hands alone could not clear the tunnel.
And yet he worked, tearing into the rock and shale like an animal; rolling back small boulders, straining at larger ones until the tendons of his arms seemed ready to snap and his veins to burst.