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.
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