Half-way to the slope they met the advancing waters from which Derrick had just escaped.
The miner who was in advance gave a great cry of "It's a flood, mates, and it's cut us off. We're all dead men!"
"No we beant!" shouted Monk Tooley. "Up wid ye, men, inter de breast we just passed."
Running back a few steps to the mouth of a chute he had noticed a moment before, the miner tossed Paul up into it much in the same way that Derrick had tossed his oil-can into a similar opening. Springing up after him, Tooley lent a hand to those behind, and with an almost supernatural strength dragged one after another of them up bodily beyond the reach of the flood. Only poor Boodle was caught by it and swept off his feet; but he clutched the legs of the man ahead of him, and both were drawn up together. In another minute they too were sealed in behind an impassable wall of water.
Although they did not know it at the time, they were in a chamber adjoining that in which Derrick had sought refuge, and were divided from him only by a single wall of coal a few feet thick. It was a very small chamber, for the coal found in it proving of an inferior quality, it had quickly been abandoned. The one on the opposite side of the wall from them, in which Derrick found himself, was of great extent, being in fact several breasts or chambers thrown into one by the "robbing out" of their dividing walls of coal.
"Out wid yer lights, men!" cried Monk Tooley as soon as they had all been dragged in. "De air's bad enough now, an' de lamps 'll burn de life outen it. Besides, we'll soon have need of all de ile dat's left in 'em."
The air of that confined space was already heavy and close, with eight men to breathe it, and eight lamps to consume its oxygen. Extinguishing all the others, they sat around one lamp, pricked down low, for they could not bear the thought of absolute darkness.
Monk Tooley had assumed a sort of leadership among them, and by virtue of it he ordered every lunch-pail to be emptied of what scraps of food it contained, and all of it to be given to Paul for safe keeping. There was not much—barely enough of broken crusts and bits of meat to fill Paul's pail; but it was something, and must be doled out sparingly, for already the men gazed at it with hungry eyes.
Then they tried to talk of their situation and discuss the chances of escape. On this subject they had but little to say, however, for they all knew that long before the waters could be lowered so that any attempt to save them could be made, the foul air of that small chamber would have done its fatal work. Indeed, they knew that before one day should have passed their misery would be ended.
Even as they tried to talk, poor Boodle, saying that he was sleepy, lay down on the bare rock floor, where he was almost instantly fast asleep and breathing heavily. "'Tis like he'll never wake again," said one of the miners, gloomily.