"Nobody durst go near the shafts for some time, for fear of another explosion taking place. At last we considered it necessary to run the rope backward and forward, and give the miners, if there were any at the bottom of the shaft, an opportunity of catching the rope as it came to the bottom. Several men were safely got up in this way; one man, who had got hold of the rope, was being drawn up, when a farther explosion took place while he was still in the shaft, and the increased current which came about him projected him as it were up the shaft; yet he was landed without injury: it was a singular case.... The pit continued to blast every two or three hours for about two days. It appears that the coal had taken fire, and as soon as the carbureted hydrogen gas collected in sufficient quantity to reach the part where it was burning, it ignited again; but none of the explosions were equal to the first, on account of many parts of the mine having become filled with azotic gas, or the _after-damp_ of the mine. All the ditches in the countryside were stopped to get water to pour into the pit. We had fire-engines brought from Newcastle, and the water was poured in till it came above the fire, and then it was extinguished. The loss to the owners of the colliery by this accident must have been about £20,000."[43] Another explosion took place in the same pit in 1809, by which twelve persons lost their lives. The blast did not reach the shaft as in the former case, the unfortunate persons in the pit having been suffocated by the after-damp. More calamitous still were the explosions which took place in the neighboring collieries, one of the worst being that of 1812, in the Felling Pit near Gateshead, a mine belonging to Mr. Brandling, by which no fewer than ninety men and boys were suffocated or burnt to death; and a similar accident occurred in the same pit in the year following, by which twenty-two men and boys perished. [Illustration: The Pit Head, West Moor. [By R. P. Leitch.]]