"You don't mean to use powder, Jack?" Bill Haden asked.
"No, dad; without any ventilation we should be choked with the smoke, and there would be the danger from the gas. When we think we are getting near the water we will put in a big shot, so as to blow in the face."
THE VAUGHAN PIT.—VI.
When the men returned with the tools and the dinners, the latter done up in handkerchiefs, Jack asked Mr. Brook to take charge of the food.
"There are just twenty of us, sir, without you, and nineteen dinners. So if you divide among us four dinners a day it will last for five days, and by that time I hope we shall be free."
Four men only could work at the face of the stall together, and Jack divided the twenty into five sets.
"We will work in quarter-of-an-hour shifts at first," he said; "that will give an hour's rest to a quarter of an hour's work, and a man can work well, we know, for a quarter of an hour. When we get done up we will have half-hour shifts, which will give two hours for a sleep in between."
The men of the first shift set to work without an instant's delay. The vigour and swiftness with which the blows fell upon the face of the rock told that the men who struck them were working for life or death.
Jack took the others into the next stalls and set them to work to clear a narrow strip of the floor next to the upper wall. They were then to cut a little groove in the rocky floor to catch the water as it slowly trickled in, and lead it to small hollows which they were to make in the solid rock. The water coming through the two stalls would, thus collected, be ample for their wants.
Jack then started to see how the men at work at the doors were getting on. These had already nearly finished their tasks. On the road leading to the main workings choke-damp had been met with at a distance of fifty yards from the stall; but upon the upper road it was several hundred yards before it was found.