In the meantime word had been conveyed to the mine captain that an accident had occurred in number seventeen. With a force of men he was already hurrying to the scene as fast as an electric tram could carry him. The word he had received was to the effect that several men had been killed. The company's surgeon had been sent for and all preparations were made to care for the wounded. During all this time brave little Steve Rush lay inside the drift, half buried under rock and red ore. He had toppled backwards when the explosion came, half turned and had fallen face downward, his arms crossed under his forehead so that his nose and mouth were free. Otherwise he undoubtedly would have smothered before help could reach him. Steve stirred uneasily, coughed and tried to raise himself. He could not do so. He found himself held down by an oppressive weight. Some little time elapsed before his return to consciousness, and even then he was still dazed. At first he tried hard to recall what had happened, and at last it all came back to him. "There was another in here with me--the powder-man. I wonder if he is dead?" muttered the lad. After some difficulty the lad got his hands free of his head and began feeling about him. He made a discovery that thrilled him through and through. The body of the powder-man lay across his own, holding the lad firmly to the ground. Yet under these trying conditions the lad did not lose his steady nerve for an instant. As his mind became clearer he began weighing the possibilities of getting out of his predicament. He reasoned that he and his companion must have been imprisoned in some way by the explosion. All the time he was carefully twisting his body this way and that in an effort to free himself without hurting the man who was lying across him. At last Rush succeeded in crawling from under his human burden and the weight of ore and rock that hemmed them both in. Steve's first act was to stretch forth a hand to his companion. The hand wandered from the face of the prostrate man down over the heart, where it paused. A faint, irregular beating of that organ rewarded Steve's effort. "He's alive," cried the lad, scrambling to his feet. "He's----" A severe fit of coughing cut short the young miner's words. A dense cloud of suffocating powder smoke hung over the drift like a pall. Steve dropped to the ground, pressing his face close to the earth, where he found the air better. After a few long breaths he began searching for a candle. He knew there had been one on the powder-man's cap when the explosion came. A search, however, failed to locate the candle. "I wish I knew what to do for him," muttered the lad. "He surely will die here unless they get us out pretty soon, and I wouldn't give much for my own life if I had to stay in this awful air very long." Steve uttered a long shout, which ended in a fit of coughing.