one—­and myself were at work in a heading together, when suddenly we heard a noise like thunder.  ‘That’s never blasting,’ says one.  ‘The Lord have mercy on us,’ cries the other; ‘it’s the river come in at last!’ For, as I say, the risk was quite well known, though it was considered small, and made a frequent jest of.  Nothing that ever I heard was equal to that noise; the waves in Gethin caverns here, during storm, are a whisper to it; the whole pit seemed to be roaring in upon us.  We all ran up the gallery, which, fortunately for us, had a great slope, and crouched down at the end of it.  We heard the water pouring in and filling all the workings beneath us, and then pouring in and filling ours.  It reached our feet, and left us but a very limited space, in which the air was compressed, when the noise of the inundation ceased.  There was a singing in our ears, so that we could scarcely hear one another speak.  We knew that the whole mine had become a lake by that time, and that it would take months to drain her, if she was ever drained.  We knew that we were buried alive hundreds of feet beneath the earth; and yet we did not quite lose heart.  There was this gleam of hope:  supposing that the next gallery, which was on a higher level than our own, was not also flooded, we could be got at through the seam.  We did not know the fact that it was more than sixty feet of solid coal, and would have taken under ordinary circumstances at least four weeks to dig through; we only knew that, if a door of escape was to open any where, it must open there.  We kept tapping with the heels of our boots at equal intervals against this wall.”

“The miner’s signal,” explained the landlord, with a wave of his pipe.

“We felt that if we were once heard, and if hard work could do it, that our mates would save us yet; and we encouraged one another as well as we could.  But presently the oil in our lamps gave out, and we were left in darkness; and then our hope grew faint indeed.  We had knocked for four-and-twenty hours unintermittingly without any reply.  We did not cease, however, to discuss the possibilities of escape.  We knew that all was being done for us above-ground that could be done; that the surveys of the mine were well executed; and that it was known exactly where we were, if we were alive at all.  There were more than a hundred men employed in the lower workings, and it was a certainty that not one of them could have escaped death; the attention, therefore, of the engineers would be concentrated upon those parts of the mine that might possibly be left above water.”

“On the second night of our imprisonment we heard a distinct reply to our signal; the old man who was of our company began to weep for joy, though he was doomed, as it turned out, poor soul! never to see the light.  ‘We shall be saved,’ he said; ‘do not fear.’  We knocked again, and again the reply was heard—­they had found us out, and would never relax their efforts