Safe up.' "`All right, is it ?' I says, scratching the sand out o' my head, `and how's me and the dog to come ?' "They seemed to have thought of that, for the ganger shouts down the crooked hole--`How are we to get down the rope to you ?' "`I d'know,' I says; and I stood there in the dark thinking and listening to the buzzing voices, and wondering what to do.
"`Wonder how nigh I am to the hole,' I says to myself; and I walked up quite a heap o' sand and tried if I could touch anything, but I couldn't.
"Then I thought of the dog.
"`Hi, Juno!' I says, and she whined and come to me, and I took hold of her.
"`Here, you try if you can't get out, old gal,' I says; and I believe as she understood me as I lifted her up and helped her scramble up, and somehow I got her right with her stomach on my head.

Then I lifted her shoulders up as high as I could reach, as I stood on the heap o' sand, and she got her legs on my head, and my! how she did scratch, and then the sand began to come down, and I knowed she could reach the top.

Next moment she'd got one of her hind paws on my hand as I reached up high, and then there was a rush and scramble, and I heard another shouting of `Hooray!' while the sand come down so that I had to get right as far away as I could.
"`What shall we do now ?' says the ganger, shouting to me:-- "`Send the dog down again with the two ropes round her.' "`Right!' he says; and then in a minute there was a scuffling and more rushing, and Juno come down with a run, to begin barking loudly as she fell on the soft sand.
"`There you are, old gal,' I says, patting her, as I took off one rope, and felt that the other was fast round her.

`Up you go again.' I lifted her up and shouted to 'em to haul, and in half a minute she was gone, and I was alone in the dark, but with the rope made fast round my chest.
"`Are you ready ?' shouts the ganger.
"`Ay!' I says.

`Pull steady, for I'm heavier than the dog.' "They began to haul as I took tight hold of the rope above my head, and up I went slowly with the sand being cut away by the tight line, and coming thundering down on me at an awful rate, just as if some one was shooting cart loads atop of me.
"`Steady!' I yelled; and they pulled away slowly, while I wondered whether the rope would give way.