Grant stopped them: "Now, here--let's divide off, five in a squad and go after the men on this level, and five in a squad go up to the next level and call the men out there. There's time if we hurry to save the whole shift." He tolled them off and they went down the glimmering passages, that were beginning to grow dim with smoke. As he left the main bottom he saw by his watch under a torch that it was nearly eleven o'clock. He ran with his squad down the passage, calling out the men from their little rooms. Three hundred yards down the smoke grew denser. And he met men coming along the passage. "Are they all out back of you?" he called to the men as they passed. "Yes," they cried, "except the last three or four rooms." Grant and his men pushed forward to these rooms. As they went they stumbled over an unconscious form in the passage. The men behind Grant--Dooley, Hogan, Casper Herdicker, Williams, Davis, Chopini--joined him. Their work was done. They had been in all the rooms. They picked up the limp form, and staggered slowly back down the passage. The smoke gripped Grant about the belly like a vise. He could not breathe. He stopped, then crawled a few feet, then leaned against a timber. Finally he rose and came upon the swaying group with the unconscious man. Another man was down, and three men were dragging two. The smoke kept rolling along behind them. It blackened the passage ahead of them. Most of the lights the men carried were out. Grant lent a hand, and the swaying procession crawled under the smoke. They went so slowly that one man, then two on their hands and knees, then three more caught up with them and they were too exhausted to drag the senseless man with them. At a puddle in the way they soused the face of the prostrated man in the water. That revived him. They could hear and feel another man across the passage calling feebly for help. Grant and Chopini, speaking different languages, understood the universal call of distress, and together crawled in the dark and felt their way to the feeble voice. Chopini reached the voice first. Grant could just distinguish in the darkness the powerful movement of the Italian, with his head upon the ground like a nosing dog's as he wormed under the fallen body and got it on his back and bellied over to the group that was slowly moving down the passage toward the glimmering light. As they passed the rooms vacated by the miners, sometimes they put their heads in and got refreshing air, for the smoke moved in a slow, murky current down the passage and did not back into the rooms at first.