It was a risk, but he must chance the gas. The air caused by the rushing 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 rushing 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 rushing 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 passed in that flood of rushing 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.