“Don’t see much self-indulgence, as thou calls it, in having a pipe o’ ’bacco.”
“Ay! how wouldst thou like to wuck all neet on the neet shift?” cried another.
“Sithee,” cried Ebenezer, spitting in his great black hands and thrusting his head forward, “thou ca’st me a fool, lad.”
“Stand back!” cried Philip, so sternly that the great fellow flinched. “You are worse than a pack of children,” he continued. “Shame on you! learn to give up your self-indulgence sooner than run such risks.”
“Ay, it’s easy enew to talk,” growled one of the men; “but don’t you think you are coming to lord it over us. S’pose we don’t know when she’s safe and when she isn’t?”
“If I’m to judge from what I’ve seen to-night,” cried Philip, “I’m sure you do not know, and that you are not fit to be trusted. Because you work in a seam and it is safe to-day, do you suppose it follows that it will be safe to-morrow? I tell you men that you are always working on the very edge of death through your own folly.”
“And I tell ’ee,” cried Ebenezer Parks, “that thou knows nowt about it.”
“Silence, sir!” cried Philip, whose blood was up; and in a puzzled way, as if he could not half understand it, the big miner shook his head, and shrank back astonished that this boy, as he called him, should master him as he did.
For the big miner had yet to learn that knowledge is power—a power of ten thousand times greater force than the stoutest muscles ever owned by man.
“I have never spoken to you before as I am speaking now,” cried Philip. “You force me to it, and I tell you that, while I have the management here, the regulations shall be strictly carried out to the very letter; there shall be no evasions—no more of these contemptible tricks. How did you open that Davy-lamp, sir?” he cried, turning sharply upon Ebenezer.