Burrows flushed. Tressady's penetrating look forced his own to meet it.
"As fit as you are," was his haughty reply.
"Well"—said Tressady, slowly, "we don't want to be refusing strong men.
If Madan'll have you, you shall come. Mind, we're all under his orders."
He went to the manager, and said a word in his ear. Madan, in response, vouchsafed neither look nor remark to the man, whom he hated apparently more bitterly than his employer did. But he made no further objection to his joining the search party.
Presently all preparations were made. Picked bands of firemen and timbermen descended first, with Madan at their head. Then George, Mr. Dixon, a couple of local doctors who had hurried up to offer their services, and Burrows.
As they shot down into the darkness George was conscious of a strange exhilaration. Working on the indications given him by the first exploring party, his mind was alive with conjectures as to the cause of the accident, and with plans for dealing with the various obstacles that might occur. Never during these weeks of struggle and noise and objurgation had he felt so fit, so strenuous. At the bottom of the shaft he had even to remind himself, with a shudder, of the dead men who must be waiting for them in these blank depths.
For some little distance from the shaft nothing was to be seen that spoke of an explosion. Some lamps in the porch of the shaft and along the main roadway were burning as usual, and the "journey" of trucks, from which the "hookers-on" and engine-men had escaped at the first sign of danger, was standing laden in the entrance of the mine. The door of the under-manager's cabin, near the base of the shaft, was open. Madan looked into the little den, where the lamp was still burning on the wall, and groaned. The young fellow who was generally to be found there was a great friend of his, and they attended the same chapel together. A little farther an open cupboard was noticed with a wisp of spun yarn hanging out from it—inflammable stuff, quite untouched. But about thirty yards farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly perceptible.
Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the lamps turned upon him. A man lay on his side, close against the wall, with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body. But in itself the lamp told little. If it were the illegal unlocking of a lamp that caused the disaster, neither this lamp nor this man could be at fault; for he had died clearly on the verge of the explosion area, and from the after-effects of the calamity. But the inspector, who had barely looked at the dead man, turned the lamp round in his hands, dissatisfied.
"Bad pattern! bad pattern! If I had my way I'd fine every manager whose lamps could be unlocked," he said to himself, but quite audibly.
"The fireman may have unlocked it, sir, to re-light his own or someone else's," said Madan, stiffly, put at once on his defence.