At two o'clock, five of the intrepid persons who had thus nobly volunteered their assistance, ascended; two were still in the shaft, and the other two remained below, when a second explosion, much less severe, however, than the first, excited amongst the relatives of those entombed in the mine still more frightful expressions of grief and despair. The persons in the shaft experienced but little inconvenience from this fresh eruption, while those below, on hearing the distant growlings, immediately threw themselves flat on their faces, and in this posture, by keeping a firm hold on a strong wooden prop, they felt no other annoyance from the blast than that of having their bodies tossed in various directions, in the manner that a buoy is heaved by the waves of the sea. As soon as the atmospheric current returned down the shaft, they were safely drawn to the light. As each came up, he was surrounded by a group of anxious enquirers; but not a ray of hope could be elicited; and the second explosion so strongly corroborated their account of the impure state of the mine, that their assertions for the present seemed to obtain credit. This impression, however, was but of short duration,--hope still lingered; they recollected that persons had survived similar accidents, and that, upon opening the mine, they had been found alive after considerable intervals. Three miners, for instance, had been shut up for forty days in a pit near Byker, and during the whole of that period had subsisted on candles and horse-beans. Persons too were not wanting to agitate the minds of the relatives with disbelief in the report of the pitmen who had lately descended to explore the mine. It was suggested to them, that want of courage, or bribery, might have induced them to magnify the danger, and to represent the impossibility of reaching the bodies of the unfortunate sufferers. By this species of wicked industry, the grief of the neighbourhood began to change its gloomy, for an irritable aspect. The proposition to exclude the atmospheric air from the mine, in order to extinguish the fire, was received with the cries of _Murder!_--and with the determination to oppose such a proceeding by violence. Many of the widows lingered about the mouth of the pit during the whole of the night with the hope of hearing the cries of a husband or a son.