"That first un seems to hev done it," he said with a coarse laugh. "Spying, that's what he was about. Now I'll give them a job." He set down the lamp once more upon the ledge, picked up the big bar, and began to drive it heavily in the hole he had made in the coal, the great bar going in quite three feet at each stroke, while Philip lay watching him, paralysed still in body, but seeing all that took place. At the end of half-a-dozen strokes the bar seemed to go through farther, and as the great miner drew it back a little stream of dirty water came trickling through, and Parks stood watching it intently. "I knowed it wur theer," he muttered; "but it'll never make no head if I don't open it a bit more." He hesitated for a moment, and then, raising the bar once more, drove it through with all his force. The effect was very different to what he had anticipated, for he must have dislodged a goodly-sized piece of coal on the other side, and as he snatched back the bar there was a fierce rush of water in a spurt as big as a man's arm, whose flash Philip Hexton just saw, and then the lamp was extinguished. The noise was so great--such a fierce, hissing roar--that the cry uttered by Ebenezer Parks was half drowned; while, in less time than it takes to tell it, the young deputy felt a sudden shock as a rush of cold water bathed his face and head, acting so magically that he rose quickly, and, with the water rising above his ankles, began to feel his way along the stony wall, as fast as he could, in the direction in which he had come. The confusion from the blow was rapidly passing away, cleared as it was by a great horror--that of being overtaken and drowned in the flooding mine, and, sometimes striking himself heavily, but always making progress, he waded on. Still it was slow work, for the water seemed to hinder him, and he had reached a curve where the gallery took a fresh direction when there was a fiercer roar behind, one which betokened that the water was forcing for itself a greater way; and so it proved, for in a very few moments the rushing icy stream was above his knees. It was very horrible there in the darkness, listening to the gurgling rush of the water, ever increasing in violence; but forgetting self for the moment, Philip wondered where his assailant could be, and then, hearing nothing, he began to think of the men in the pit, and whether they would have time to escape. All depended, he knew, upon whether the wall of coal between the two mines stood firm where Ebenezer's bar had not struck, and hoping this would be so, but despairing of his own life now, he waded on, the water being far above his knees. "I shall never find my way in the dark," he groaned, with a chilly feeling of horror creeping over him, and placing his hands above his throbbing breast as if to check the beating of his heart, he uttered a cry of joy, for they came in contact with the lamp.