'Know where you are, me beauty?' asked the big man who stood before him,
and who spoke as if with a pebble on his tongue.

Dick knew where he was. He was hanging over the open shaft of the Piper
Mine, another of Waddy's abandoned claims, suspended from one of the
skids by a stout rope.

'Look down,' commanded the man.

Dick obeyed and saw only the black yawning shaft. 'Know she's deep, don't
yer? There's three hundred feet o' shaft below you there. That's the
short road to hell. Now look here.'

He flashed the bright blade of a large knife before the eyes of his
prisoner; then, seating himself on a broken truck near the shaft he began
deliberately to sharpen the knife on his boot. The operation was not in
the least hurried--the man was desirous of making a deep impression.

'There,' he said at length, 'that's beautiful. Feel!' He cut the skin of
Dick's nose with a touch of the keen edge. 'Now, listen here. I'm goin'
to take this bandage off yer mouth, 'cause I've a few perticular
questions to ask an' you must answer 'em, but understand first that one
little yell from you, an'--' He made a blood-curdling pretence of cutting
at the rope above Dick's head. 'You'd go plug to the bottom an' be
smashed to fifty bits!'

The man removed the gag and reseated himself on the old truck. As he
talked he toyed with the ugly knife, making occasional passes on the side
of his left boot resting on his knee.