Meantime, Walter and others, whose hearts were with him, ran wildly through the works, and groped on their knees with their lamps to find Hope and his daughter, but they were not to be found, and nine miners beside them were missing, including Ben Burnley. Then Walter came wildly up to the surface, wringing his hands with agony, and crying, "they are lost! they are lost!"
"No," cried Bartley, "they must not be lost; they shall not be lost. One man has come to himself. I gave him port-wine and brandy." Then he dragged the young man into the tent. There was stout Jim Davies propped up and held, but with a great tumbler of brandy and port in his hand.
"Now, my man," said, or rather screamed, Bartley, "tell him where Hope is, and Mary--that I--Oh, God! oh, God!"
"Master," said Jim, faintly, "I was in the hall with Mr. Hope and the lady when the first explosion came. Most of us ran past the old shaft and got clear. A few was caught by the falling shaft, for I looked back and saw it. But I never saw Master Hope among them. If he was, he is buried under the shaft; but I do really think that he was that taken up with his girl, and that darned villain that fired the mine, as he's like to be in the hall either alive or dead."
He could say no more, but fell into a sort of doze, the result of the powerful stimulant on his enfeebled frame and empty stomach. Then Bartley, with trembling hands, brought out a map of the mine and showed Walter where the second party had got to.
"See," said he, "they are within twenty feet of the bottom, and the hall is twenty-three feet high. Hope measured it. Give up working downward, pick into the sides of that hall, for in that hall I see them at night; sometimes they are alive, sometimes they are dead, sometimes they are dying. I shall go mad, I shall go mad!"
With this he went raging about, giving the wildest orders, with the looks and tones of a madman. In a minute he had a cage ready for Walter, and twenty fresh-lit lamps, and down went Walter with more men and pickaxes. As soon as he got out of the cage he cried, wildly, "Stop that, men, and do as I do."
He took a sweep with his pick, and delivered a horizontal blow at the clay on that side of the shaft Bartley had told him to attack. His pickaxe stuck in it, and he extricated it with difficulty.