Warleggan by Winston Graham

shone, no shine, no sleek water, no metal or stone. He'd still little idea how far below the rim of the pit he was; but the grim thought came that if they had not blasted this morning and allowed. some of the water to drain, this pit might have been full and left him no harder task than clawing a way back up the greasy winze.
    He changed hands for the twentieth time and as he did so the nail moved. Fear grip your throat, begin to shout, at the to p of your voice, over and over again. Help, help, help; I am lost in the very deeps of the earth. Not eight feet underground - but two hundred; blind already but not deaf, shuddering in ,the warm water, fingers burning last grip loosening; one nail, one rusty nail.
    He, tried to make himself let go, to splash around again in, the darkness; he might have missed something last time, some better handhold; but he no longer had the courage to try; he might never find this place again.
     
    Time passed. Try to count. Sixty minutes make one hour. He reckoned three hours had passed. Must be after eight now. Someone must come soon. They would of course come straight to the place where they had been blasting this morning. A drip of water somewhere, and this his ears again and again magnified into r escuing footsteps. To keep his sanity he counted up to two hundred and then sh outed and began again. But he was getting lightheaded. And the strain on his arms. Cramp seized him often, his legs were leaden, already swollen and dead. Sometimes he forgot numbers and talked with people who came close to him in the water His father, gouty and eruptive and purple. `Francis, Francis. Where are you, boy?' Aunt Agatha., not as she now was but younger and severe; dandling him on her knee. He was running across the sands of Hendrawna with Ross after him, their feet glinting in the sun.
    He began to count again; and then suddenly heard a crash of splintering wood and looked up and saw Ross kneeling at the edge of the shaft reaching down a hand to help him out. Ross said sourly : `My God, why can't you learn to swim!', and Francis reached up a despairing hand to grasp the help. Their fingers seemed to touch, and then a foul swirl of liquid closed over Francis's mouth and nose and, he kicked and struggled to get to the surface again : he had lost grip of the nail, had nearly lost life in his dream of salvation, only death had wakened him; on ly death; in time the automatic responses of the body. So it would be every time, every time until the last.
    Try to reassure yourself. This time tomorrow. In a few weeks you will be able to laugh about this experience. Or be dead. . . . This time tomorr ow between comfortable sheets, recovering. Or a swollen corpse covered with a sheet in the great hall of Trenwith waiting an early burial.
    His breath was going. That was the worst. If he shouted now, he had to suck at the air for half a minute afterward to recover. By now it was well after ten. Somebody must come soon. He could not disappear without trace and cause no comment! Curnow had seen him come down. They would grow anxious. They would think. What were their brains for! Henshawe was often at the m ine between five and. six. Often he joined Ross and Francis to see how the work was going. Not today. Not of course today.
    Francis let out a higher-pitched shout, much nearer a scream. He stopped, gasping at the air. The nail turned in his painful clutch. Any further movement and it would come out.
    `Help, help!' he shouted. `Help, help!' a dozen times, and a dozen times more. It went on and on and on, until the volume decreased and the breath in was as noisy as the breath out. Tears were running down his cheeks.
    There's reason for me to live now l Oh, God, I don't want to die.
     
    At about this time Elizabeth closed the book with which she had been teaching Geoffrey Charles to read.
    `It's time for your supper, my darling. Papa will be home soon, and you know he likes you to be in bed, by seven.'
    `Just this bit,