He found his way along the level which had been driven to within nine feet of going through on the heading in which the inbreak of moss had taken place.  He noticed the roof was broken in many places and that the timber which had been put in years before was rotten.  Strange noises seemed to assail his senses, and stranger smells, yet the lilt of that old childish game was ever humming in his brain and he saw himself with other boys and girls with clasped hands linked in a circle and going round in a ring as they sang the old ditty.

“Three breakings should dae it,” he said as he looked at the face of the coal dripping with water from the cracks in the roof.  “If only they were here to put up the props.  I could soon blow it through,” and he began to prepare a place for batons and props, pending the arrival of more help from those who were only too eager to come down to his aid.

It was almost an hour before help came in the shape of two men carrying some props.  Then came another two and soon more timber began to arrive regularly and the swinging blows of their hammers as they drove in the fresh props were soon echoing through the tunnels, and Robert set up his boring machine and soon the rickety noise of it drowned all others.  He paused to change a drill when a faint hullo was heard from the other side.

“Hullo,” he yelled, then held his breath in tense silence to hear the response which came immediately.  “Are you all safe?” he roared, his voice carrying easily through the open coal.

“Ay,” came the faint answer; “but the moss is rising in the heading and you’ll have to hurry up.”

Robert knew this, and one of his helpers had gone down an old heading to explore and had returned to say that it was rising steadily and was now within two hundred feet from the old shaft down which he had descended.

“Where away did the roof break?” roared Robert as he changed his second drill.

“Half way doon the cousie brae,” came the answer, “an’ we’re all shut in like rats.  Hurry up and get us oot,” and again the rickety, rackety noise of the boring machine began and drowned all other noises.

He soon drilled his holes and he could hear them on the other side singing now some ribald song to keep up their courage, while others who were religiously inclined chanted hymns and psalms, but all were wondering whether Robert and his men would be able to break through the barrier in time to save them before the persistently rising moss claimed them.

He charged his shots and called them to go back, telling them the number of his charges, then lit his fuse and ran out of the old level to wait in a place of safety while the explosion took place.

Soon they boomed out and the concussion put them all in darkness; but they soon had the lamps re-lit and were back in among the thick volumes of powder smoke, groping about and shading their lamps and peering in to see what their shots had done to lessen the barrier between them and their imprisoned comrades.