Amos Gregory promised himself that nought but death waited for him down beneath, and he was right enough for that matter.  How he got down without breaking his neck he never could tell, but the pit sloped outward from below and he managed to find foothold and fingerhold as he sank gingerly lower and lower.  A thousand times he thought he was gone.  Then he did fall in good truth, for a wedge of granite came out in his hand; but to his great thankfulness, he hadn’t got to slither and struggle for more than a matter of another dozen feet, and then he came down on his own coat what he’d dropped before him.  So there he was, only scratched and torn a bit, and like a toad in a hole, he sat for a bit on his coat and panted and breathed foul air.  ’Twas dark as a wolf’s mouth, of course, and he didn’t know from Adam what dangers lay around him; but he couldn’t bide still long and so rose up and began to grope with feet and hands.  He kicked a few of the big stones that Ernest Gregory had thrown down, as he thought atop of him; and then he found the bottom of the hole was bigger than he guessed.  And then he kicked a soft object and a great wonder happened.  Kneeling to see what it might be, he put forth his hand, touched a clay-cold, sodden lump of something, and found a sudden, steady blaze of light flash out of it.  He drew back and the light went out.  Then he touched again and the light answered.

By this time Amos had catched another light in his brain-pan and knowed too bitter well what he’d found.  He groped into the garments of that poor clay and found the light that he’d set going was hid in a dead man’s breast pocket.  Then he got hold of it, drew out an electric torch and turned it on the withered corpse of his elder brother.  There lay Joe and the small dried-up carcase of him weren’t much the worse seemingly in that cold, dry place; but Amos shivered and went goose-flesh down his spine, for half the poor little man’s face was eat away by some unknown beast.

Joe’s brother sat down then with his brains swimming in his skull, and for a bit he was too horrified to do ought but shiver and sweat; and then his wits steadied down and he saw that what was so awful in itself yet carried in its horror just that ray of hope he wanted now to push him on.

His instinct was always terrible strong for self-preservation, and his thoughts leapt forward; and he saw that if a fox had bit poor dead Joe, the creature must have come from somewheres.  Of course a fox can go where a man cannot, yet that foxes homed here meant hope for Amos; and there also was the blessed torch he’d took from his dead brother’s breast.

He nerved himself and felt all over the poor corpse and found Joe’s purse and his tobacco pouch and the two pipes he was reported to have bought at Exeter; and doubtless he’d bought the electric torch also, for Amos knew that his brother possessed no such thing afore.  But there it was:  he’d been tempted to buy the toy, and though it couldn’t bring him back to life, there was just a dog’s chance it might save his brother’s.  Amos knew the thing wouldn’t last very long alight, so he husbanded it careful and only turned it on when his hands couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.