THE SOUND OF HEAVENLY MUSIC
THEY quickly realized they must size up their situation carefully and rationally. This was hard to do, for they had never experienced such intense darkness before. Their eyes rebelled at it, and for a few minutes lights flashed just as though the tunnel were full of flickering beams, dancing about at random, elusive, teasing to be caught. Then this stopped.
“Don’t move, Ted, not even a step,” Nelson warned him. “The first thing to do is to retrieve our flashlights. Maybe all that happened is that the bulbs are broken, and we can replace them.”
But they both heard the flashlights hit the hard ground with a solid crash, and knew that it didn’t take much of a jolt to disconnect the circuit on a flashlight. They stooped down and began to feel along the ground. Ted soon recovered one of them, but the other had rolled a few feet away. Nelson had to feel a short distance in several directions before he finally regained it.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed. “Cut myself.”
“Very badly?”
“I don’t know. Turn on the lights and I’ll see.” But his cut was evidently nothing to worry about, in view of their far greater troubles. “Now, Ted, let’s sit down on the ground facing each other, with our legs touching, and we’ll put all the parts between our legs so we can’t lose them. Just hold on to your flashlight for a minute, and I’ll see what I can do with mine. The glass is broken, of course, but I’m screwing off the top so I can change bulbs without cutting myself. All right. Now I’ll take out the old bulb. It’s broken, too.”
“Don’t cut yourself.”
“I’m using a handkerchief on it. It’s hard, but now it’s coming. There. I’ve got a fresh bulb out of my pocket now, and I’m screwing it in. No, it still doesn’t light.” He tried not to sound disappointed. “All right, Ted, we’ll try the same thing with your flashlight. Want me to do it?”
“No, I’ll try it myself.” Ted repeated the same operation, with the same result. “Mine isn’t going to work either. What more can we do about it, Nel? Is there any way to fix the flashlights?”
“I don’t know yet. Sometimes if you just bang them around a little, you can get them going again. We’ll have plenty of time to try that later, if nothing else works. Do you think putting in fresh batteries might help any, Ted?”
“I never knew that batteries could get broken from a short drop like that, but let’s try it anyway.” They did, but with no success.
“All right, then, Ted, we’ll have to see what else we can think of. We don’t have any matches, or any way of starting a fire—which may be just as well. What do we have? We’ve got plenty of batteries and bulbs. Actually, you don’t even need a flashlight case. You just put a bulb on top of a battery or two, and then you connect the bulb to the bottom of a battery with a little piece of wire, and you’re in business. What have you got in your pockets, Ted? You must have a paper clip. You always carry paper clips with you.”
“No, when I took these clothes to the laundry I cleaned out the pockets. I don’t have a clip.”
“You’re sure about that, Ted? This might be awfully important.”
“No, no clip—but I’ll never be without one again.”
“All right, no clip. Now tell me everything you do have.”
“I’ve got my notebook—”
“Metal rings?”
“No, this is my stitched one. And I have two pencils.”
“Metal?”
“No, one is a wooden pencil, and the other one is made out of plastic. Not even a metal clip on it.”
“But there might be a metal spiral inside.”
“I don’t know about that. If there is, we might have a devil of a time getting it out.”
“Go on. What other metal have you got?”
“My wallet, with a metal snap on it. A belt buckle. How about the zipper on my jacket?”
“That won’t do. There are gaps between the teeth. What else?”
“Some pocket change. Silver is a good conductor of electricity, if we could only assemble a string on a piece of tape, but we can’t. There’s my wristwatch, but the band is leather, the tips of my shoe laces, and maybe a couple of silver fillings in my teeth, and that’s all the metal I’ve got on me.”
“Let’s see if I can do any better. I’ve got just about the same inventory, plus the chalk and extra batteries and bulbs I’m carrying. If worse comes to worst, we might be able to smash up one of the flashlight cases, in the hope of getting out a piece of metal that we could use. But we won’t do that unless we’re completely desperate. It’s too much like burning your bridges behind you. Right now let’s try banging the flashlights on the ground a little. How do you rate our chances of getting found, Ted?”
“Well, this mine isn’t exactly uninhabited. There are maintenance men around, there are the pirates, there is a ghost, in case he comes back. But it’s an awfully big place, too. We might be in an abandoned part of it that doesn’t get visited every week, or even every month. There’s no telling how long it would be before someone stumbled across us. But what about someone coming in search of us, Nel?”
“Our car might be sitting out there anywhere from three days to a week before someone reports it to the police or they spot it themselves. Then they’re likely to tow it in, and might or might not notify our families while they waited for us to turn up. It could be another week before anything was done.”
“Wouldn’t they connect an abandoned car with the mine, long before that?”
“I don’t know how long you mean, Ted. Especially with the coal pirates around, they might not be particularly anxious to see too much. The point is, we don’t know how long it’ll be, but we can’t count on having that much time. Who else besides the police? The motel keeper? I don’t think he would give us a thought, as long as our rent’s paid up in advance. When that time is up, he might be satisfied to hold our luggage for a while, and my camera’s worth good money. What about Mr. Dobson?”
“He doesn’t expect to hear from me every day. If he thought I was particularly busy winding up on a story, it might be a week before he began to worry seriously about us. Probably the same thing goes with our families. They know we’re working, and that satisfies them.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to coax this flashlight back into operation, but let’s trade, just for luck. Who else might find us?”
“At least we’ve got those marks on the walls you made working for us. Just in case someone did come looking for us, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem about it.”
“I hope you’re right, Ted, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that maybe I made a mistake someplace. It wouldn’t be too important to us, because we had your map and our memories to help us. But it would only take a small error to throw the whole thing off for someone looking for us.”
“I guess it adds up to the fact that there’s a chance someone might find us, but we can’t count on it. So we’d better consider our chances for finding our own way out. That offers two possibilities: to go forward, or to go backward.”
“Which looks better to you, Ted?”
“Going back has certain advantages. We’ve been there before, and have at least an idea about things. And we’re staying within the area where we’ve made our markings, so that we’d have a better chance of being found by someone looking for us. But when I remember all the places to make a wrong turn, and know that only one mistake would be too many, I just can’t see how we’ll make it.
“Going ahead looks attractive because for all we know there might be an entrance to the mine just a short way ahead of us. Or we might get into a part of the mine where someone was working. Even coal pirates would look pretty good to me now!
“But I suppose our chances of finding another entrance are really pretty small. We’re down deep here. I don’t know whether we’re below the level of the river or not, but at least we know we have a big hill sitting on top of us. There might be open pits or stale or contaminated air ahead of us. And I’m not sure we could mark our trail so that anyone following us could stay with us. That’s how I size it up. What would be your vote?”
“The same as yours, Ted. If we try to find our own way out, I guess it would be better to go back. Then the question is, how long do we wait here before we make our move?”
“It can’t be too long. It’s a long way back to the surface, and we have to make it while we still have enough energy and before we get knocked out by thirst. That gives us maybe three days to do it in, and we may need every minute of it. How long do you think we should fool with the flashlights, Nel?”
“Let’s see, at least we can tell time with these illuminated dials. Suppose you give me two hours to see if I can rig up something. If I can’t do it by then, we’ll give it up and start hunting for our way back. I suppose we could walk along side by side, with you feeling along one wall while I felt along the other. We could take note of every turnoff, and reach a decision about it. But distances are awfully deceptive in the dark.”
Nelson set to work with the flashlights, but just what he was trying to do Ted did not know. Except to hand Nelson something that he asked for from time to time, Ted took no part in the operation, trusting more in Nelson’s mechanical abilities than in his own. All he was sure of was that Nelson had not yet pounded one of the flashlights apart.
Occasionally they heard a noise—probably, they decided, the groaning or creaking of the supports as the temperature changed, and a few times they heard pebbles fall. This could be a natural thing, or there might be rats or other small animals scurrying about in the darkness.
“Listen!” said Ted suddenly.
Nelson did, for at least half a minute. “I don’t hear anything.”
“No, I don’t either now. Wait . . . there it goes again. Hear it?”
“Yes. What is it? It sounds a little bit like music. What could it be?”
“Heavenly music, the sweetest music ever heard,” said Ted, his voice more optimistic than it had been since the lights went out. “That’s a bell . . . a tinkling bell . . . it sounds like Alice’s bell!”
“Alice! Say, Ted, I believe you’re right. Is she coming this way?”
“I—I think so. Listen, Nel, grab up everything and stick it in your pockets. We may need it later. Got everything?”
“Yes, I guess so. She’s still coming, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but in her own good time.”
The boys stood up. They found that it was not easy to keep their balance in the dark, and even small obstacles, as they took a few steps, threw them off stride.
“How’ll we handle Alice, Ted? We’ve got to be careful not to spook her off. But she knows us already, so that might not be too bad.”
“Don’t touch her, whatever you do, Nel.”
“Why’s that, Ted?”
“Because the minute you touch her she’ll think you’re trying to guide her, and it becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. We’ve got to be careful that she goes exactly where she wants to go.”
“She must be almost here. Let’s keep talking, Ted, so our voices don’t suddenly startle her.”
They did so, and though Alice must have heard them now, it did not seem to frighten her or cause her to change either her pace or her course. She was very close now. They thought they could even hear her breathing. They pulled back against the wall, so that Alice would pass them, and then they could follow her. To their great surprise, Alice did not pass them, but turned the Y and headed down the other corridor.
“She’s taking us into the strange part of the mine. Quick, Nel, we’ve only got a few seconds to decide, and it may be a matter of life or death. Do we follow Alice blindly, or do we wait around for some human beings to find us?”
“Right now I’d rather trust Alice than people. But don’t let me have the whole say.”
“We follow Alice then!”
They did not want to follow so closely as to alarm the mule, nor did they want to lose her. They hurried after her until they were some twenty feet behind her, and then they slowed their pace to match hers, talking quietly the while.
“You know that air door, Nel? It’s usually closed, and maybe Alice knows it. She has to go a different way.”
“I only hope she knows what she’s doing. Do you think she can see any better in the dark than we can, Ted?”
“No, not when it’s as black as this. But her hearing may be a good deal better. Blind people often do well by listening for echoes. And it may be that she has this whole course memorized. She worked down here for many years.”
They found it best to drag their feet along as they walked, thus kicking aside small stones or feeling their way cautiously over larger ones. A sprained ankle wasn’t a pleasant thought, and a straggler would have to be left behind while the other one went for help. Alice seemed much more sure of foot than they, and never faltered. Making turns offered a ticklish problem in the dark, and occasionally her bell stopped tinkling, giving them a momentary scare, but it soon commenced again as she regained her former stride. She seemed to have no fear of these people she must know by now were following her. Whatever was going on in her mulish mind, she was intent upon it. They hoped that she was heading home for supper.
They were lost through the myriad of turnings, but they had a feeling of climbing, which was a good sign. Had they come a half mile . . . a mile? It was hard to guess in the dark. About half an hour had passed since they had chosen Alice as their guide, but it was hard to translate time into distance.
And then they made a turn, and there was daylight ahead! Furthermore, they found, as they neared the opening, that it was the same entrance they had used.
“I guess we did it,” said Nelson in an awed voice.
“Yes, we did. I’ve got a feeling, though, that Alice brought us back through the left turn, not through the right turn where we went down.”
“Whatever it was, she did just right. If I ever want to give my grandchildren any advice, I’ll tell them this: ‘When you get in trouble, always trust a mule.’ ”