Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1915-12-17

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Collins Big Voice Came Through the
Rolling Smoke.
darkness. Every man of them was
western born and the taunt had gone
home. He leaped himself for the
handle of a saw sticking out from the
bole of a 150-foot sugar pine and the
whining song of the cross-cuts rose
again under the dwaring roa
Fourteen men had heard and an.
swered that call, and they were alone
In the purgatory of heat and smoke
All the rest were running for their
lives down the cleared fall toward the
valley beyond the dip.
From time to time Sandry glanced
upward at the increasing light. The
sugar pine fell with a rending roar
and with Harris, who, he saw for the
first time, had been pulling with him
he al to the next.
He saw as he ran that one of the
men, working like a fury to fell the
saplings, was Murphy, who had greet.
ed his pompous "Dillingworth" with
such grinning irony in the old days.
He had a moments vague wonder at
this odd stripe of humanity that could
hold such prejudice, fight with Hamp
denis men in savage enmity, to join
their ranks later with happy irrespon
sibility at the call of gold, and was
still willing to turn back to fight with
him on deaths brink, because he had
returned their taunt Of East and West.
One by one, in silence, in a tension
that drew the skin tight on their faces,
they saw the last remaining monarchs
fall, the kindling saplings laid on
earth, the trench, much narrower and
shallower, creep upward to the ridge.
Against time, against heat that
scorched their bare arms and tortured
their starting eyeballs, against a sti.
fling atmosphere that drove them
nearer and nearer to the earth for
breath, they drew the last blade, sent
the last big pine crashing toward the
north.
The ridge was clear in the increas.
ing glow.
"Now!" cried Sandry with the tri.
umph of a general on a victorious
field, now for the ridge and over!"
But even as he dropped his saw and
ran, calling his men, Collins big voice
came through the rolling smoke with
the calm of finality.
"Ain't no over It's a ninety-foot
drop on to hard rock beyond that
ridge"
Sandry stopped in his tracks. his
head cleared as if with a Whit of salt
air by that call.
The ne had closed in with the in
stinct of their kind to be together in
danger, as if SO the danger were les.
sened.
But the Fastener was u~ndaunted.
"Then we'll take to the East Belt"
he cried, "even though it is a crown
fire and coming fast, l think our trench
will hold It,"
With all confidence he turned to the
south. Instinctively the men had
drawn in behind him. The neck Of the
East Belt was a wavering wall of
fame. He whirled and glanced back
along the fall and the trench. Long
streamers of fame were licking across
it. The half-looked-for had happened.
The little bunch of fighters were
hemmed in, ringed around by fire.
Death faced them on every side.
Then, as the owner sent a searching
look to every quarter. he sprang for
ward.
"Here!" he cried, here! Into it!
Every man of you. In, l say!"
At the crest of the sheer ridge an
old, abandoned tunnel gaped in the
gloom, a dim haven of refuge. Its
mouth was o%verhung by vines. it's re-
cess mysterious in the blackness. San.
dry sprang to its edge and turned back
for the men to pass. They stood, a
small, silent bunch, gazing in wordless
CONSERVATION at the red canopy.
Now how in hell did it get across
the fall?" said Collins h~oarsely.
But one by n they stopped and
entered the small black hole in the
earth. 1t ran backward into the ridge.
scarce the height of a tall man. its
floor uneven with the heaps of earth