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.

Then the shovels set to work and tossed the coal which the shots had
dislodged back into the roadway and soon the boring machines were busy
again, eating into the coal; for those tireless arms of Robert's never
halted. He swung the handle or wielded the pick or shovel, never taking
a, rest, while the sweat streamed from his body working like some
mechanical product for always in his mind he was calculating his chances
for being able to blast it through the barrier before the moss rose.

"It has only a stoop length an' a half to rise now," reported one of the
men. "It's creeping up like the doom o' the day o' judgment. But I think
we'll manage. If these shots do as well as the last ones we should be
within two feet of them, an' surely to God we can bite the rest of it,
if we canna blaw it. Let me stem the shots, Rob, an' you take a rest."

"You go to hell," was the unexpectedly astounding reply; for no one had
ever heard Robert Sinclair use language like this before. "As soon as
thae shots are off an' if they blaw as well as the others we'll turn out
the coal an' then