"I went down, through the wreckage, as far as I could," he said. "And--there's been more than the mere blowing up of timber and masonry, and iron fittings. We heard it, down there; heard it unmistakably--me and Hargreaves. I heard it; he heard it. Oh, yes; there's no doubt of it. The explosion must have blown out a tremendous lot of wall surface stuff in the lowest workings they'd got to, where they hadn't started any masonry or tubbing, you understand. Because--we heard! No mistaking it! Once--just once--I've heard it before. Never to be forgotten, that--no!" "For God's sake, man, speak plainly!" said Jeckie. "Heard--what!" Robinson glanced fearfully around him as he bent nearer to her. He spoke but one word, in a tense whisper. "Water!" Jeckie started back, and her drawn face grew white to the lips. She, too, spoke the word he had spoken, in a lower whisper than his. "Water!" Robinson edged his chair near to the table and tapped the edge with a forefinger on which there was both grime and blood. "I tell you we heard it--me and Hargreaves," he said. "I say--no mistaking it. This explosion, now--it must have blown a pretty considerable hole into the lowest part of the shaft, where they've been at work this last week or two, and it's released--it may be a thin bed of quicksand that we didn't suspect, or water-logged sandstone or sand, or something of that sort, if you follow me, but there's the fact--water! It's running into the shaft at, I should say, the rate of thousands of gallons a minute; we could hear it fairly roaring down there. It's no use; it's there!" "What'll happen?" asked Jeckie in a curiously hard voice. "The shafts'll be flooded to the brim in twenty-four hours," answered Robinson. "To the brim!' "You said shafts!" exclaimed Jeckie. "It's running into the up-cast, too," said Robinson. "We examined that. There must have been--must be--an extensive bed of quicksand lying between both shafts. Anyhow, it's there. I tell you, they'll be flooded to the brim!" Jeckie's mind went back to a certain conversation she had once had with Revis, of Heronshawe Main. He too, had met with an obstacle in water, and had surmounted it. "But it can be pumped out?" she suggested. "Aye!" assented Robinson. "But how long will it take as things are, and how long after that to get matters put as straight as they were last night, and how much will it cost? It's no use denying it--all that we've done, all that we'd arrived at, is just--ruined!"