brothers was afterwards found alive here, and carried to the
surface; but he was speechless, and died twenty minutes after being
brought up. When the dead body of the younger and weaker brother was
recovered, it was found to be dreadfully shattered, nearly every bone
being crushed.

In the same level, two men--John Paul and Andrew Teague--hearing the
rush of the advancing torrent above their head, made for a shaft, went
up it against a heavy fall of water, and escaped.

A man named Richard--a powerful man and a cool experienced miner, who
had faced death in almost every form--was at work in one of the lowest
levels with his son William, a youth of twenty-one, and his nephew, a
lad of seventeen, who was the sole support of a widowed mother with six
children. They were thirty fathoms from one of the winzes down which
the water streamed. On hearing the roar Richard cautioned the younger
men to be prompt, but collected. No time was to be lost, but rash haste
might prove as fatal as delay. He sent them on in front of him, and
they rushed under and past the winze, where they were nearly crushed by
the falling water, and where, of course, their candles were
extinguished, leaving them in midnight darkness. This last was not so
serious a matter to the elder Richard as, at first sight, it might
appear. He knew every foot of the ground they had to traverse, with all
its turnings, yawning chasms, and plank bridges, and could have led the
way blindfold almost as easily as with a light. As they neared the
shaft he passed the younger men, and led the way to prevent them falling
into it. At this time the water raged round them as high as their
waists. The nephew, who was weak, in consequence of a fever from which
he had not quite recovered, fell, and, passing the others unobserved,
went down the shaft and was lost. The escape of Richard and his son was
most wonderful. William was a stout fellow, but the father much more
so. They were driven at first into the shaft, but there the fall of
water was so great that they could do nothing more than cling to the
ladder. By this cataract they were beaten back into the level, but here
the water rose around them so quickly and with such force as to oblige
them to make another effort to ascend.

There was a crevice in the roof of the level here, in which the father
had left part of his supply of candles and a tinder-box. He succeeded
in reaching these, and in striking a light, wh