The heroic devotion of a miner has invested with a more than ordinary interest the inundation of the mine of Beaujonc, near Liège, which took place on February 28, 1812. One hundred and twenty-seven persons were in the pit when the waters burst in from some old workings. Thirty-five had time to make their escape through the shaft; twenty-two were drowned in their eagerness to reach it; the majority, severed from the upper world by an impassable gulf, remained behind. Hubert Goffin, the overman, could have ascended in the tub; but, though the father of six children, his sense of duty would not allow him to desert his post, and he resolved to save all his men or to perish with them. As the rising waters forced the prisoners to seek a higher level, the boys burst out weeping and the boldest began to despair; but Goffin revived their courage by reminding them that their friends without would make every effort to save them. As one day after another passed, the prisoners suffered all the horrors of hunger, which some of them endeavoured to appease by devouring the candles they had brought with them. Others went to the water in the hopes of finding the body of some drowned comrade. Two of the pitmen quarrelled, and were on the point of coming to blows. ‘Let them fight,’ said the others; ‘if one of them is killed we will eat him’—a declaration which at once put an end to the dispute. To satisfy their thirst they had nothing but the foul water of the pit. Some made vows to all the saints, others complained in their delirium that they had to wait for their meals. In the midst of these scenes of horror, Goffin alone retained his courage, and, exhorting, consoling, encouraging, and reproving on all sides, appeared as the guardian angel of his despairing comrades.