Back he rushed, his
light again becoming extinguished, the flood pursuing him relentlessly,
the air now so heavy that he could hardly breathe, but groping his way
he reached the first end roadway down which for the moment the flood ran
to meet the rising moss creeping up relentlessly from below.
Choking and only half conscious he staggered on with all sense of
disaster gone from his mind, with no thought of his comrades on the
other side waiting so impatiently to be released, and singing their
frothy songs in the hope that all was well, his legs doubling below him,
and his lungs heaving to expel the poison which the thick air contained.
Down at last he fell, his head striking against the side of the roadway,
and he lay still.
The moss might rise hungrily over him now, the rotten roof might fall
upon him, all the dangers of the mine might conspire together against
him; but nothing they might do could ever again strike terror into the
young heart that lay there, feebly throbbing its last as it was being
overcome with the deadly poison of the black damp.
He was proof against all their terrors now, the spirit could evade them
yet; for though the old shaft might collapse and imprison his body and
claim it as a sacrifice to the King Terror of the Underworld, no prison
was ever created that could contain the indomitable spirit of man as
God.
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