Of course--yes--he must not forget that. He must not leave his jacket behind; and, laying down the cartridge once more, he leisurely put on his frock and cap, hesitated a few minutes longer, and then, with the thoughts of the yellow gold blinding his eyes, he seemed to nerve himself to desperation, picking up the cartridge, and trying to fit it into the hole he had bored. It went in easily enough for a part of the distance; but the action of the tool had made the hole slightly funnel-shaped, and the cartridge would not go in so far as he wished. True, he might have fired it where it was, but then he would not have been sure of the result. The wall of rock was comparatively thin, he knew, but unless the cartridge was well in, a sufficiency might not be brought down, and his wish was to make so terrible a gap that no pump ever made, or likely to be made, could keep down the water in the deluged mine. How it would rush in, carrying all before it, as soon as the shot was fired. He had seen dozens of such blastings, and he knew what great chasms were blown out of the solid rock. Here, where the wall was thin, the whole side would be blown back into the sea, and then where would rich Wheal Carnac be? John Tregenna would say, at all events, that he had well done his work, he thought; but how was this cartridge to be forced farther in? He laid it down for a moment, and took up the iron, thinking to enlarge the hole, but he knew it would be an hour's work, and now he was strung up he wanted it done. He tried the cartridge again. It nearly fitted; a good drive with the back of the tamping-iron would force it in. So, twisting it round and round, he screwed the paper-covered roll in for so goodly a distance that it was well placed in the wall, and needed, he thought, but a slight thrust or two to send it home. He was ignorant, and blinded by his desire to finish the task he had undertaken; desperate, too, with the fear that was beginning to master him; and catching up the iron once more, he hesitated for a moment as he turned it round, and then, placing the butt end in the hole, he gave the cartridge a sharp blow. In the act of striking he moderated the blow, so as not to strike fire from the rock; but no fire was needed there, the percussion was sufficient to explode the mighty imprisoned force, and, as that blow fell, there was one deafening crash, a pause, and then an awful rush of water that swept off the shattered fragments of the dead miner from the floor, and wall, and ceiling, and churned them up and bore them along through the galleries of the ruined mine. For Lannoe's blast had been a success. He had blown out so great a mass of the thin wall that the pump had not been invented that could master such a rush of water as that which poured in to flood the mine.