Part 7 (1/2)
An hour after leaving the cottage, Jaone a distance of four ed by anxiety and hope, walked on without noticing the length of the way He pondered over all that the old uiven in support of his belief He agreed with hi that the continued een certainly showed the existence of a new coal-seaas, as it is sost the rock, it would soon have been empty, and the pheno to Simon Ford, the fire-damp escaped incessantly, and froht be considered certain Consequently, the riches of the Dochart pit were not entirely exhausted The chief question nohether this was merely a vein which would yield coe extent
Harry, who preceded his father and the engineer, stopped
”Here we are!” exclaimed the old miner ”At last, thank Heaven! you are here, Mr Starr, and we shall soon know” The old overhtly
”Be calineer ”I am as excited as you are, but we allery at this end of the pit widened into a sort of dark cave
No shaft had been pierced in this part, and the gallery, bored into the bowels of the earth, had no direct communication with the surface of the earth
James Starr, with intense interest, exa On the walls of the cavern the marks of the pick could still be seen, and even holes in which the rock had been blasted, near the ter The schist was excessively hard, and it had not been necessary to bank up the end of the tunnel where the works had come to an end There the vein had failed, between the schist and the tertiary sandstone From this very place had been extracted the last piece of coal from the Dochart pit
”Wehis pick; ”for at the other side of the break, at more or less depth, we shall assuredly find the vein, the existence of which I assert”
”And was it on the surface of these rocks that you found out the fire-damp?” asked James Starr
”Just there, sir,” returned Ford, ”and I was able to light it only by bringing my lamp near to the cracks in the rock Harry has done it as well as I”
”At what height?” asked Starr
”Ten feet froround,” replied Harry
James Starr had seated hi the air of the cavern, he gazed at the twotheir words, decided as they were In fact, carburetted hydrogen is not coineer, whose sense of smell was very keen, was astonished that it had not revealed the presence of the explosive gas At any rate, if the gas hadair, it could only be in a very sht without fear open the safety lamp to try the experiment, just as the old miner had done before
What troubled Jaled with the air, but lest there should be little or none
”Could they have been mistaken?” he murmured ”No: these men knohat they are about And yet--”
He waited, not without some anxiety, until Simon Ford's phenomenon should have taken place But just then it seemed that Harry, like himself, had remarked the absence of the characteristic odor of fire-damp; for he exclaias was no longer escaping through the cracks!”
”No longer!” cried the old ether, he snuffed the air several times
Then, all at once, with a sudden movement, ”Hand me your lamp, Harry,”
he said
Ford took the laauze case which surrounded the wick, and the flame burned in the open air
As they had expected, there was no explosion, but, aswhich indicates the presence of a small quantity of fireda, fixed his lah above his head, up to where the gas, by reason of its buoyancy, would naturally accuht and clear, revealed no trace of the carburetted hydrogen
”Close to the wall,” said the engineer
”Yes,” responded Ford, carrying the lamp to that part of the wall at which he and his son had, the evening before, proved the escape of gas