He found his way along the level which had been driven to within nine
feet of going through on the heading in which the inbreak of moss had
taken place. He noticed the roof was broken in many places and that the
timber which had been put in years before was rotten. Strange noises
seemed to assail his senses, and stranger smells, yet the lilt of that
old childish game was ever humming in his brain and he saw himself with
other boys and girls with clasped hands linked in a circle and going
round in a ring as they sang the old ditty.
"Three breakings should dae it," he said as he looked at the face of the
coal dripping with water from the cracks in the roof. "If only they were
here to put up the props. I could soon blow it through," and he began to
prepare a place for batons and props, pending the arrival of more help
from those who were only too eager to come down to his aid.
It was almost an hour before help came in the shape of two men carrying
some props. Then came another two and soon more timber began to arrive
regularly and the swinging blows of their hammers as they drove in the
fresh props were soon echoing through the tunnels, and Robert set up his
boring machine and soon the rickety noise of it drowned all others.
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