CHAPTER XIX

Joanne’s white lips spoke first.

“The tunnel is closed!” she whispered.

Her voice was strange.  It was not Joanne’s voice.  It was unreal, terrible, and her eyes were terrible as they looked steadily into his.  Aldous could not answer; something had thickened in his throat, and his blood ran cold as he stared into Joanne’s dead-white face and saw the understanding in her eyes.  For a space he could not move, and then, as suddenly as it had fallen upon him, the effect of the shock passed away.

[Illustration:  “The tunnel is closed,” she whispered....  “That means we have just forty-five minutes to live....  Let us not lie to one another.”]

He smiled, and put out a hand to her.

“A slide of rock has fallen over the mouth of the tunnel,” he said, forcing himself to speak as if it meant little or nothing.  “Hold the lantern, Joanne, while I get busy.”

“A slide of rock,” she repeated after him dumbly.

She took the lantern, her eyes still looking at him in that stricken way, and with his naked hands John Aldous set to work.  Five minutes and he knew that it was madness to continue.  Hands alone could not clear the tunnel.  And yet he worked, tearing into the rock and shale like an animal; rolling back small boulders, straining at larger ones until the tendons of his arms seemed ready to snap and his veins to burst.  For a few minutes after that he went mad.  His muscles cracked, he panted as he fought with the rock until his hands were torn and bleeding, and over and over again there ran through his head Blackton’s last words—­Four o’clock this afternoon!—­Four o’clock this afternoon!

Then he came to what he knew he would reach very soon, a solid wall!  Rock and shale and earth were packed as if by battering rams.  For a few moments he fought to control himself before facing Joanne.  Over him swept the grim realization that his last fight must be for her.  He steadied himself, and wiped the dust and grime from his face with his handkerchief.  For the last time he swallowed hard.  His soul rose within him almost joyously now in the face of this last great fight, and he turned—­John Aldous, the super-man.  There was no trace of fear in his face as he went to her.  He was even smiling in that ghostly glow of the lantern.

“It is hard work, Joanne.”

She did not seem to hear what he had said.  She was looking at his hands.  She held the lantern nearer.

“Your hands are bleeding, John!”

It was the first time she had spoken his name like that, and he was thrilled by the calmness of her voice, the untrembling gentleness of her hand as it touched his hand.  From his bruised and bleeding flesh she raised her eyes to him, and they were no longer the dumb, horrified eyes he had gazed into fifteen minutes before.  In the wonder of it he stood silent, and the moment was weighted with an appalling silence.