Mr Walker paused.
"You said eight!" cried another woman's voice in an agony of suspense. "The other two—for the love of God!"
"Amos Entwistle," replied Mr Walker grimly—"and Mr Carthew."
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
LABORARE EST ORARE.
Six men sat upon six heaps of small coal in a long rectangular cavern five feet high and six feet broad. The roof was supported by props placed at distances specified by the Board of Trade. One side of the cavern was pierced at regular intervals by narrow openings which were in reality passages; the other was a blank wall of gleaming coal.
This was the "face"—that point in the seam of coal which marked the limits of progress of the ever-advancing line of picks and shovels.
The men were well over two hundred fathoms—roughly a quarter of a mile—below the surface of the earth, and they had been prisoners in Number Three Working ever since an explosion of fire-damp and coal-dust had cut them off from communication with the rest of Belton Pit six hours before.
The prisoners were Jim Carthew, Amos Entwistle, and Adam Wilkie, together with a hewer, a drawer, and a pit-boy, named Atkinson, Denton, and Hopper respectively. There had been two others, but they lay dead and buried beneath a tombstone twelve hundred feet high.