Twisted and torn before him were the timbers of the tunnel, while muck and refuse lay everywhere.

A cave-in--another cave-in--at almost the exact spot where the one had occurred years before, shutting off the chamber from communication with the shaft, tearing and rending the new timbers which had been placed there and imprisoning Harry behind them! Fairchild shouted again and again, only gaining for his answer the ghostlike echoes of his own voice as they traveled to the shaft and were thrown back again.

He tore off his coat and cap, and attacked the timbers like the fear-maddened man he was, dragging them by superhuman force out of the way and clearing a path to the refuse.

Then, running along the little track, he searched first on one side, then the other, until, nearly at the shaft, he came upon a miner's pick and a shovel.
With these, he returned to the task before him.
Hours passed, while the sweat poured from his forehead and while his muscles seemed to tear themselves loose from their fastenings with the exertion that was placed upon them.

Foot after foot, the muck was torn away, as Fairchild, with pick and shovel, forced a tunnel through the great mass of rocky debris which choked the drift.