Indeed, the first sight of that little group was a strange and touching one. About a dozen men sat huddled round one of their number, a Wesleyan class-leader, who had been praying with them and reciting passages from St. John. All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth.
A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them.
"Weren't you afraid?" Tressady asked one of these, turning a curious look at him, while the doctors were examining the worst cases, and rough men were sobbing and shaking each other's hands off.
"Noa," said the young hewer, his face, like something cut out in yellowish wax, returning the light from Tressady's lamp. "Noa, theer was cumpany. Old Moses, there—ee saved us."
Old Moses was the leader of the prayer-meeting. He was a fireman besides, who had been for twenty-six years in the mine. At the time of the explosion, it appeared, he had been in a working close to that door on the heading where death had done so ghastly and complete a work. But the flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther end. These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and they could wait for rescue.
George was the first to help the old fireman to his feet. But instead of listening to any praises of his own conduct, he was no sooner clinging to Tressady's arm than he called to Madan:
"Mr. Madan, sir!"
"Aye, Moses."
"Have ye heard aught of them in the West Heading yet?"
"No, Moses; we must get these fellows out first. We'll go there next."