Their eyes met.

His voice was changed to the tone of a grey resolve.
"I will deliver my message now," he said.

"Afterwards--...

It will be soon enough then." The pit was so enormous and so encumbered that it was a long and tortuous route to the place from which Redwood could speak to them all.
He and Cossar followed a steeply descending way that passed beneath an arch of interlocking machinery, and so came into a vast deep gangway that ran athwart the bottom of the pit.

This gangway, wide and vacant, and yet relatively narrow, conspired with everything about it to enhance Redwood's sense of his own littleness.