“Zackey has forgot it,” said Trevarrow, looking round.
“It don’t matter; hand me the borer.”
“No, I won’t,” said Trevarrow decidedly, as he grasped the iron tool in question. “Ho! Zackey booy, throw down the tampin’-bar.”
This was done, and the operation of filling the hole continued, while Trevarrow commented somewhat severely on his companion’s recklessness.
“That’s just how the most o’ the reckless men in the bal do get blaw’d up,” he said; “they’re always picking away at the holes, and tamping with iron tools; why, thee might as well put a lighted match down the muzzle of a loaded gun as tamp with an iron borer.”
“Come, now,” said Maggot, looking up from his work with a leer, “it warn’t that as made old Kimber nearly blow hisself up last week.”
“No, but it was carelessness, anyhow,” retorted Trevarrow; “and lucky for him that he was a smart man, else he’d bin gone dead by this time.”
Maggot soon completed the filling of the hole, and then perpetrated as reckless a deed as any of his mining comrades had ever been guilty of. Trevarrow was preparing to ascend by the windlass, intending to leave his comrade to light the fuse and come up after him. Meanwhile Maggot found that the fuse was too long. He discovered this after it was fixed in the hole, and, unobserved by his companion, proceeded to cut it by means of an iron tool and a flat stone. Fire was struck at the last blow by the meeting of the iron and the stone, and the fuse ignited. To extinguish it was impossible; to cut it in the same way, without striking fire, was equally so. Of course there was plenty of time to ascend by the windlass, but only one at a time could do so. The men knew this, and looked at each other with terrible meaning in their eyes as they rushed at the bucket, and shouted to the man above to haul them up. He attempted to do so, but in vain. He had not strength to haul up two at once. One could escape, both could not, and to delay would be death to both. In this extremity David Trevarrow looked at his comrade, and said calmly,—“Escape, my brother; a minute more and I shall be in heaven.”
He stepped back while he spoke—the bucket went rapidly upwards, and Trevarrow, sitting down in the bottom of the shaft, covered his eyes with a piece of rock and awaited the issue.
The rumbling explosion immediately followed, and the shaft was filled with smoke and flame and hurling stones. One of these latter, shooting upwards, struck and cut the ascending miner on his forehead as he looked down to observe the fate of his self-sacrificing comrade!