The boy laughed. "That's all right. Terence has a right to
his chance." He went on rapidly. "I want five volunteers--quick.
A one-man chance isn't enough to take help. Quick--five."

And twenty men pushed to the boy to follow him into hell.
Swiftly he picked five; they put on the heavy oxygen helmets;
there was a deep silence as the six stepped into the cage and
McLean rang the bell that signaled the engineer to let them down.
That was all. They were the last rescuers to go down, and the
cage had been drawn up empty. That was all, the newspaper said.
The girl read it. All! And his father racing across the
continent, to stand with the shawled women at the head of the
shaft. And she, in the far-off city, going though the motions
of living.

The papers told of the crowds gathering, of the Red Cross,
of the experts come to consider the situation, of the line
of patient women, with shawls over their heads, waiting always,
there at the first gray light, there when night fell; the girl,
gasping at her window, would have given years of her life to
have stood with those women. The second day she read that
they had closed the mouth of the shaft; it was considered that
the one chance for life below lay in smothering the flames.
When the girl read that, a madness came on her. The shawled
women felt that same madness; if the inspectors and the company
officials had insisted they could not have kept the mine closed
long--the people would have opened it by force; it was felt
unendurable to seal their men below; the shaft was unsealed in
twenty-four hours. But the smoke came out, and then the watchers
realized that a wall of flame was worse than a wall of planks