I could not wait any longer, I had reached the limit of passive endurance. I started to walk along the rail, willing myself to go slowly and cautiously, and when I came up to the mound of rubble beyond the ore cart I opened the matchbook and struck the first match. The flare of light half blinded me; I had to look away and then back before I was able to see anything. In the eerie flickering glow, the walls and ceiling had a pocked look where the rock had given way; most of the support timbers were still holding. Five feet ahead I could just make out the hanging timber I had run into during my retreat.
When the heat of the match flame touched my fingertips, I shook it out and went ahead five paces, ducked down and walked another couple of steps until I was certain I had gone beyond the suspended beam. Then I lit a second match. The amount of rubble was greater now, and the holes in the tunnel walls looked larger, the wood latticework less stable. Sections of wood jutted up from the floor at odd angles, like broken bones. Another half-dozen steps. Match. Half-dozen steps. Match. The poisonous clouds of dust had finally dissipated, but the air was still thick, stifling; I began to have trouble breathing again. Six paces. Match. And I was back near the place where I had lain-I could see marks on the floor and among the debris.
But I still could not see any sign of daylight ahead.
Eight feet farther on, the jumble of rock and wood and earth rose as high as three and four feet across the width of the tunnel. I held another match up over my head so I could judge the condition of the ceiling. Still intact, not too deeply pitted, half the supports holding in place; most of the rubble seemed to have come from the walls. But I had no way of telling yet how bad it would be near the entrance. I leaned down into one of the mounds and started to inch my way along, pulling larger rocks and lengths of wood aside gingerly with both hands-aware all the while of the danger of new slides, of upsetting the balance of the mass around me and getting myself buried as a result. Every yard or so I stopped to check my position and the configuration of debris by matchlight. I could hear myself wheezing in a kind of constant counterpoint to the rattling of rocks, the small sounds of movement; I was soaked with sweat. Panic stayed close to the surface, and now I had a growing sense of claustrophobia. The urge to scream was strong inside me: tension, fear and tension.
I'm going to get out, I thought. I'm not going to die in here, not in here, I'm going to get out.
The mounds became steadily larger, more tightly packed, and the hollows between them grew shallower. Inevitably, after ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, I reached the end of the line-a solid blockage sloping upward from floor to ceiling.
Not as much oxygen here, the air still clogged with particles of dust; the burning sensation was back in my chest, and the feeling of giddiness had returned to make my thoughts sluggish-but that helped to keep the panic at bay. I struck a new match and held it up. Most of the ceiling had collapsed here. Not even a chink of daylight showed through.
Think, remember. How far had I been from the entrance when the cave-in forced me off my feet? Less than ten yards maybe, and I had crawled another two or three. How far had I come from that place where I had lain? Difficult to judge, but it might have been as much as fifteen feet. That left… what? A minimum of five feet to the outside? Five feet of compressed earth and rock and all I had to dig with was my hands and as soon as I started to do that the rest of the ceiling might give way No. I'm going to get out of here.
I am going to get out of here.
I clenched the matchbook between my teeth and pulled myself up the slope on knees and hooked fingers. Earth slid away beneath me, a dislodged rock thumped down against my thigh and brought a stinging slash of pain. When one of my hands touched the edge of a timber, I anchored my body and managed to get a match free and flaming. Near the top, now, the ceiling was a foot over my head, scarred by a deep trough. The timber was edged at an angle into the trough, half-buried in the rubble, and on top of it was a huge oblong of broken limestone.
I eased away from there, laterally to my right, and used another match-not many left now, have to ration them. Just rock and earth here, no shattered supports within a three-foot radius of what looked to be the sealed juncture of ceiling and debris. Dig at this spot, then-hurry! Air running out, time running out…
I scraped at the earth, dug rocks loose and let them slide down past my body. Dust misted around me, and the dizziness got worse, and my thoughts seemed to break up into disjointed fragments; I could feel myself slipping back again into that timeless emptiness, conscious of little but the movement of my hands and the overwhelming need to get free.
Depression opening up, widening into a kind of tunnel-tunnel within a tunnel. Use a match. No air for a match. And my hands digging, digging, body wiggling forward, if the ceiling is going to collapse, let it be now or let me get out, shifting earth, rocks thumping, can't breathe, oh God please don't let me black out Light.