Part 6 (2/2)

”That first un seems to hev done it,” he said with a coa.r.s.e laugh.

”Spying, that's what he was about. Now I'll give them a job.”

He set down the lamp once more upon the ledge, picked up the big bar, and began to drive it heavily in the hole he had made in the coal, the great bar going in quite three feet at each stroke, while Philip lay watching him, paralysed still in body, but seeing all that took place.

At the end of half-a-dozen strokes the bar seemed to go through farther, and as the great miner drew it back a little stream of dirty water came trickling through, and Parks stood watching it intently.

”I knowed it wur theer,” he muttered; ”but it'll never make no head if I don't open it a bit more.”

He hesitated for a moment, and then, raising the bar once more, drove it through with all his force.

The effect was very different to what he had antic.i.p.ated, for he must have dislodged a goodly-sized piece of coal on the other side, and as he s.n.a.t.c.hed back the bar there was a fierce rush of water in a spurt as big as a man's arm, whose flash Philip Hexton just saw, and then the lamp was extinguished.

The noise was so great--such a fierce, hissing roar--that the cry uttered by Ebenezer Parks was half drowned; while, in less time than it takes to tell it, the young deputy felt a sudden shock as a rush of cold water bathed his face and head, acting so magically that he rose quickly, and, with the water rising above his ankles, began to feel his way along the stony wall, as fast as he could, in the direction in which he had come.

The confusion from the blow was rapidly pa.s.sing away, cleared as it was by a great horror--that of being overtaken and drowned in the flooding mine, and, sometimes striking himself heavily, but always making progress, he waded on.

Still it was slow work, for the water seemed to hinder him, and he had reached a curve where the gallery took a fresh direction when there was a fiercer roar behind, one which betokened that the water was forcing for itself a greater way; and so it proved, for in a very few moments the rus.h.i.+ng icy stream was above his knees.

It was very horrible there in the darkness, listening to the gurgling rush of the water, ever increasing in violence; but forgetting self for the moment, Philip wondered where his a.s.sailant could be, and then, hearing nothing, he began to think of the men in the pit, and whether they would have time to escape.

All depended, he knew, upon whether the wall of coal between the two mines stood firm where Ebenezer's bar had not struck, and hoping this would be so, but despairing of his own life now, he waded on, the water being far above his knees.

”I shall never find my way in the dark,” he groaned, with a chilly feeling of horror creeping over him, and placing his hands above his throbbing breast as if to check the beating of his heart, he uttered a cry of joy, for they came in contact with the lamp.

It was, of course, extinct as he tore it from his breast, but he had matches in his pocket far above where the water had yet reached.

It was a risk, but he must chance the gas. The air caused by the rus.h.i.+ng water might have swept it away, and trembling so that he could hardly perform the office, he drew key and matches from his pockets, nearly, in his agitation, dropping the lamp in the rus.h.i.+ng stream that swept against his legs.

He saved it, though, and struck a match, which went out directly, and another and another shared its fate. The next burned brightly, though, and no explosion following, he lit the lamp, trimmed the wick, dropped the match in the water, where it went out with a faint hiss; and then, closing the gauze, he held the feeble Davy above his head.

It was a star of hope, though, to him; and so it must have been to Ebenezer Parks; for as the rays shone out, there came from far behind a wild, despairing yell, and then, as Philip turned towards it, there was a fierce hissing rush, the stream doubled in volume, he was swept against the wall, and it was only by hurrying with it that he was able to keep his feet.

Twice over he essayed to turn, but the effort was vain. It was impossible to battle with it. All he could do was to hold his lamp up so as to guide him from striking against the wall, and go with the rus.h.i.+ng stream, that now increased so in depth that he felt that before long he might be compelled to swim.

The hours or more that he pa.s.sed in that flood of rus.h.i.+ng waters seemed afterwards like some terrible confused dream to the young man, for it was long enough before he found himself in a part where the galleries took an upward inclination, and he gained a place where, faint and exhausted, he could rest with the water only about to his knees, and draw out the map, by whose help he at length made out where he was.

Even then he had a long and arduous trial before he managed to wade to the foot of the shaft late at night, to find lights burning and the pumping-engine at its fullest speed, but unable to arrest the steady rise of the water, which, by the next day, had completely drowned the workings, though its progress was sufficiently slow to enable the men to save their lives before it came upon them in the lower seams.

A fortnight elapsed before the pit was once more drained, during which time Philip had been seriously ill, suffering greatly from the shock.

His first inquiry was for Ebenezer Parks, whose body, however, was not found for some time, where it had been forced into a cranny by the stream; and in strange corroboration of the tale Philip Hexton had to tell, his great muscular hand still grasped the big iron bar, round which the muscles were as tense as steel.

Poor wretch! In the gratification of his miserable malice he had done much mischief and had lost his life; but he had hastened Philip Hexton's plan of utilising the shaft of the old mine, which his villainous act had drained, and the result before long was that the old pit property was purchased for a mere song, the galleries fully opened out, and the mine, over which Philip became overseer-in-chief, was acknowledged with its double shaft to be the best-ventilated and safest in the land.

The best proof of which was that for the next ten years there was not a single serious accident; and, as Mrs Hexton declared to her friends, all through the thoughtfulness of her brave boy.

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