“No,” said Philip rather bitterly, “not even when I am working to save their lives.”
“Nay, lad; but that’s what they don’t believe. Yo’ mun go on wi’ ’em more gently. But what brought you down to-neet?”
“There was a fall in the barometer, and a great want of pressure in the atmosphere this evening,” said Philip. “I could not rest without coming to see that everything possible was done.”
“Ah,” said the overman grimly, “that’s what our lads weant believe in—your brometers, and pressures, and such like. They don’t like to be teached by one who they say’s nobbut a boy.”
“Does it matter how many years old a person is,” cried Philip sternly, “if he can point out what is right? Look here,” he said, as he stopped short in a low-roofed and distant part of the mine, “do you see this?”
He pointed to his Davy-lamp, inside of which the light kept burning blue, and there was a series of little sputtering explosions.
“Ay, I see it, lad; it’s often so,” said the overman coolly; “but the ventilation’s about reet, and it will soon carry that off. It’s nowt to do wi’ no brometers.”
“Listen!” said Philip; and as the man impatiently stood still, there was a low dull hissing noise plainly to be heard, where the gas was rushing from the cracks and fissures of the shaley rock and gathering in the long galleries of the mine.
“Now,” said Philip, “does not the barometer speak truly? When the air is weighty and dense it keeps back the gas, when it is light the gas forces its way out. What would be the consequences if I were to open our lamp?”
“There wouldn’t be no consekences,” said the overman with a grim laugh; “there’d be a inquest, if they had pluck enough to come and hunt out what of us was left.”