Dean Rawson's lean, muscular hands took Smithy's broad shoulders and spun the younger man around. "Cheer up," Dean told him. "We've got it licked. Why it doesn't blow out of that shaft like hell out for noon is more than I can see; but the heat's there! We've won!" "But--" Smithy began. Rawson sent him spinning toward the door in a good-natured showing of strength that his assistant had not yet guessed. "Soup!" he ordered. "Break out the nitroglycerine, Smithy. Get that Swede, Hanson, on the job; he's a shooter. He knows his stuff. We'll blow open the bottom end of our shaft so it'll never go shut!" * * * * * Hanson knew his stuff and did it. But he met Rawson's inquiring eyes with a puzzled shake of his head when the open mouth of the twenty-inch bore gave faint echo of the deep explosion and followed after a time with only a feeble puff of air. "Like a cannon, she should have gone," Hanson stated. "And she yoost go _phht_!" "It's open down below," said Rawson briefly. "This is a different kind of a well from the kind you've been shooting." To the waiting Riley he said: "Hook a bailer onto that cable and send it down. See what you can tell about the hole." Again ten miles of cable hissed smoothly down the gaping throat. Then it slowed. "Fifty-two-seven," said Riley, "and she's open. Seven twenty-five! Seven fifty, and we're on bottom!" "Up," Rawson ordered, "if there's anything left of the bailer. It's probably melted into scrap." But strangely it was not. It hung from the dangling cable spinning lazily until Riley stepped in to check its motion. There was a check valve in the bottom--a door that opened inwardly, to take in water and fragments of rock when need arose. Riley, disregarding the possible heat of the twirling bailer, reached for it with bare hands. He drew them back, then held them before him--and a hundred watching eyes saw what had been unseen before: the slow dropping of red liquid from the bailer's end. The same drops were falling from Riley's hands that had touched that end. "Blood!" The word came from the foreman's throat in one horrified gasp. It ran in a whispering echo from one to another of the watching crew. From far across the hot sands came the rattle of a truck that brought the first of many loads of cement and steel for Rawson's buildings. Its driver was singing lustily: "Hark to what I say: You're pokin' through the crust of hell And braggin' too damn loud of it, For, when you get to hell, you'll find The devil there to pay!" But Rawson, looking dazedly into Smithy's eyes, said only: "It's cold--the bailer's cold. There's no heat there." CHAPTER IV _The Light in the Crater_ "Of course it wasn't blood!" said Smithy explosively. "But try to tell the men that. See how far you get. 'Devils!' That's been their talk since yesterday when Riley got smeared up--and now that the bailer's gone we can't prove a thing."