Notwithstanding the untiring efforts made to place these pumps in the mine, it was found impossible.  Either they were upon a plane too much inclined to admit of their playing with facility, or the water was too muddy to be received up the pipes; they were therefore abandoned.  In the meantime, the attempts made to reach the miners by sounding or by the inclined well, seemed to present insurmountable difficulties.  The distance to them was unknown; the sound of their blows on the roof, far from offering a certain criterion, or, at least, a probable one, seemed each time to excite fresh doubts; in short, the rock which it was necessary to pierce, was equally hard and thick, and the gunpowder unceasingly used to perforate it, made but a hopeless progress.  The consequent anxiety that reigned in the mine may be easily conceived.  Each of the party, in his turn, offered his suggestions, sometimes of hope, sometimes of apprehension; and the whole felt oppressed by that vague suspense, which is, perhaps, more painful to support than the direst certainty.  The strokes of the unfortunate miners continued to reply to theirs, which added to their agitation, from the fear of not being able to afford them effectual help.  They almost thought that in such a painful moment their situation was more distressing than those they sought to save, as the latter were, at any rate, sustained by hope.

While most of the party were thus perplexed by a crowd of disquieting ideas, produced by the distressing nature of the event itself, and by their protracted stay in a mine where the few solitary lamps scarcely rendered “darkness visible,” the workmen continued their labors with redoubled ardor; some of them were hewing to pieces blocks of the rock, which fell slowly and with much difficulty; others were actively employed in boring the hole before named, while some of the engineers’ apprentices sought to discover new galleries, either by creeping on “all fours,” or by penetrating through perilous and narrow crevices and clefts of the rock.

In the midst of their corporeal and mental labors, their attention was suddenly excited from another painful source.  The wives of the hapless miners had heard that all hope was not extinct.  They hastened to the spot; with heart-rending cries and through tears alternately of despair and hope, they exclaimed, “Are they all there?” “Where is the father of my children?  Is he among them, or has he been swallowed up by the waters?”

At the bottom of the mine, close to the water-reservoir, a consultation was held on the plan to be pursued.  Engineers, pupils, workmen, all agreed that the only prospect of success consisted in exhausting the water, which was already sensibly diminished, by the working of the steam-pump; the other pumps produced little or no effect, notwithstanding the vigorous efforts employed to render them serviceable.  It was then proposed remedying the failure of these pumps by une