Down in the pit, Andrew Marshall, Matthew Maitland, Peter Pegg, and a number of others toiled like giants possessed. Their naked bodies streamed with sweat and glistened in the light of their lamps. Timber was placed in position, and driven tight with desperation in every blow from their hammers; blocks of rock were tossed aside, and smashed into fragments, ere being filled into the tubs which were ever waiting ready to convey the debris to the pit-head. Few words were spoken, except when a warning shout was given, when some loose rubble poured down from the great gaping cavern in the roof, and then men jumped and sprang to safety with the agility of desperation, to wait till the rumbling had ceased, only to leap back again into the yawning hell, tearing at the stones, and trying to work their way into the place where they knew Geordie and the boy were lying. It seemed impossible that human efforts would ever be able to clear that mountain away. "Wait a minute, callans," said Andrew, almost dropping with exhaustion, and drawing his hands across his eyes to wipe the sweat from them, whilst he "hunkered" down, his back against a broken tree which stood jutting out from the building, supporting a broken "baton" (cross-tree), which bent down in the center, making the roadway low and unsafe. "Let us tak a minute's thocht, and see if we can get a way o' chokin' up that stuff fear fallin' doon. We'll never get it redd up goin' like this." So they sat down, tired but still desperate, to listen to each one suggesting a way of stopping the debris from continuing to fall. Baffled and at their wits' end, they could think of nothing. At last in came a number of other men to relieve them--men equally anxious and desperate as they, burning with the desire to get to grips with this calamity which had come upon two of their comrades. "I'm no' goin' hame," said Andrew decisively, "till I see Geordie out." He was almost dropping with exhaustion, but he could not think of leaving his dead friend in there. So at last it was agreed that he should stay, and at least give the benefit of his advice. The others, more tired than ever they had been before in all their experience of the mines, where hard work is the rule, trudged wearily home, to be met by the waiting groups of women and children, who at all times stood at the corners of the village eagerly asking for news, "If they'd been gotten yet." After a few minutes' deliberation a plan was decided on by Andrew and his comrades of trying to choke up the hole in the roof with timber, and the work went on desperately, silently, heroically. Time and again their efforts were baffled by new falls, but always the same persistent eager spirit drove them back to their toil. So they worked, risking and daring things of which no man who never saw a like calamity has any conception, and which would have appalled themselves at any other time.