It was but three minutes from the moment that the cage began to sink to that when it touched the bottom of the shaft, but it seemed an age to those in it. They knew that at any moment a second explosion might come, and that they might be driven far up into the air above the top of the shaft, mere scorched fragments of flesh. Not a word was spoken during the descent, and there was a general exclamation of "Thank G.o.d!" when they felt the cage touch the bottom.

Jack, as an official of the mine, and by virtue of superior energy, at once took the lead.

"Now," he said, "let us push straight up the main road."

Just as they stepped out they came across the bodies of two men, and stooped over them with their lamps.

"Both dead," Jack said; "we can do nought for them."

A little way on, and in a heap, were some waggons, thrown together and broken up, the body of a pony, and that of the lad, his driver. Then they came to the first door--a door no longer, not a fragment of it remaining. In the door-boy's niche the lad lay in a heap. They bent over him.

"He is alive," Jack said. "Will you two carry him to the cage? I will look round and see if there is any one else about here; beyond, this way, there is no hope. Make haste! Look how the gas is catching inside the lamps, the place is full of fire-damp."

The men took up the lad, and turned to go to the bottom of the shaft.

Jack looked a few yards down a cross-road, and then followed them. He was in the act of turning into the next road to glance at that also, when he felt a suck of air.

"Down on your faces!" he shouted, and, springing a couple of paces farther up the cross-road, threw himself on his face.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE IMPRISONED MINERS.

There was a mighty roar--a thundering sound, as of an express train--a blinding light, and a scorching heat. Jack felt himself lifted from the ground by the force of the blast, and dashed down again.

Then he knew it was over, and staggered to his feet. The force of the explosion had pa.s.sed along the main road, and so up the shaft, and he owed his life to the fact that he had been in the road off the course.

He returned into the main road, but near the bottom of the shaft he was brought to a standstill. The roof had fallen, and the pa.s.sage was blocked with fragments of rock and broken waggons. He knew that the bottom of the shaft must be partly filled up, that his comrades were killed, and that there was no hope of escape in that direction. For a moment he paused to consider; then, turning up the side road to the left, he ran at full speed from the shaft. He knew that the danger now was not so much from the fire-damp--the explosive gas--as from the even more dreaded choke-damp, which surely follows after an explosion and the cessation of ventilation.

Many more miners are killed by this choke-damp, as they hasten to the bottom of the shaft after an explosion, than by the fire itself.

Choke-damp, which is carbonic acid gas, is heavier than ordinary air, and thus the lowest parts of a colliery become first filled with it, as they would with water. In all coal-mines there is a slight, sometimes a considerable, inclination, or "dip" as it is called, of the otherwise flat bed of coal. The shaft is almost always sunk at the lower end of the area owned by the proprietors of the mine, as by this means the whole pit naturally drains to the "sump," or well, at the bottom of the shaft, whence it is pumped up by the engine above; the loaded waggons, too, are run down from the workings to the bottom of the shaft with comparative ease.

The explosion had, as Jack well knew, destroyed all the doors which direct the currents of the air, and the ventilation had entirely ceased.

The lower part of the mine, where the explosion had been strongest, would soon be filled with choke-damp, the product of the explosion, and Jack was making for the old workings, near the upper boundary line of the pit. There the air would remain pure long after it had been vitiated elsewhere.

It was in this quarter of the mine that Bill Haden and some twenty other colliers worked.

Presently Jack saw lights ahead, and heard a clattering of steps. It was clear that, as he had hoped, the miners working there had escaped the force of the explosion, which had, without doubt, played awful havoc in the parts of the mine where the greater part of the men were at work.

"Stop! stop!" Jack shouted, as they came up to him.

"Is it fire, Jack?" Bill Haden, who was one of the first, asked.

"Yes, Bill; didn't you feel it?"

"Some of us thought we felt a suck of air a quarter hour since, but we weren't sure; and then came another, which blew out the lights. Come along, lad; there is no time for talking."

"It's of no use going on," Jack said; "the shaft's choked up. I came down after the first blow, and I fear there's no living soul in the new workings. By this time they must be full of the choke-damp."

The men looked at each other with blank faces.

"Hast seen Brook?" Jack asked eagerly.

"Ay, he pa.s.sed our stall with Johnstone ten minutes ago, just before the blast came."

"We may catch him in time to stop him yet," Jack said, "if he has gone round to look at the walling of the old goafs. There are three men at work there."

"I'll go with you, Jack," Bill Haden said. "Our best place is my stall, lads," he went on, turning to the others; "that is pretty well the highest ground in the pit, and the air will keep good there as long as anywhere--may be till help comes. You come along of us, mate," he said, turning to the man who worked with him in his stall.

As they hurried along, Jack, in a few words, told what had taken place, as far as he knew it. Five minutes' run brought them to the place where the masons were at work walling up the entrance to some old workings.

They looked astonished at the new-comers.

"Have you seen the gaffers?"

"Ay, they ha' just gone on. There, don't you see their lights down the heading? No; well I saw 'em a moment since."

"Come along," Jack said. "Quick! I expect they've met it."

At full speed they hurried along. Presently they all stopped short; the lights burnt low, and a choking sensation came on them.

"Back, Jack, for your life!" gasped Bill Haden; but at that moment Jack's feet struck something, which he knew was a body.

"Down at my feet; help!" he cried.

He stooped and tried to raise the body. Then the last gleam of his light went out--his lungs seemed to cease acting, and he saw no more.

When he came to himself again he was being carried on Bill Haden's shoulder.

"All right, dad," he said. "I am coming round now; put me down."

"That's a good job, Jack. I thought thou'd'st scarce come round again."

"Have you got either of the others?"

"We've got Brook; you'd your arm round him so tight that Ned and I lifted you together. He's on ahead; the masons are carrying him, and Ned's showing the way. Canst walk now?"

"Yes, I'm better now. How did you manage to breathe, dad?"

"We didn't breathe, Jack; we're too old hands for that. When we saw you fall we just drew back, took a breath, and then shut our mouths, and went down for you just the same as if we'd been a groping for you under water. We got hold of you both, lifted you up, and carried you along as far as we could before we drew a breath again. You're sharp, Jack, but you don't know everything yet." And Bill Haden chuckled to find that for once his practical experience taught him something that Jack had not learned from his books.

Jack now hurried along after Bill Haden, and in a few minutes reached the place fixed upon. Here the miners were engaged in restoring consciousness to Mr. Brook, who, under the influence of water dashed on his face and artificial respiration set up by alternately pressing upon the chest and allowing it to rise again, was just beginning to show signs of life. Their interest in their employment was so great that it was not until Mr. Brook was able to sit up that they began to talk about the future.

Jack's account of the state of things near the shaft was listened to gravely. The fact that the whole of the system of ventilation had been deranged, and the proof given by the second explosion that the mine was somewhere on fire, needed no comment to these experienced men. It sounded their death-knell. Gallant and unceasing as would be the efforts made under any other circ.u.mstance to rescue them, the fact that the pit was on fire, and that fresh explosions might at any moment take place, would render it an act of simple madness for their friends above to endeavour to clear the shaft and headings, and to restore the ventilation. The fact was further impressed upon them by a sudden and simultaneous flicker of the lamps, and a faint shake, followed by a distant rumble.

"Another blast," Bill Haden said. "That settles us, lads. We may as well turn out all the lamps but two, so as to have light as long as we last out."