Two whole days had now elapsed.  The food, though economized, was all gone.  Burnley’s lamp was flickering, and utter darkness was about to be added to the horrors which were now beginning to chill the hopes with which these poor souls had entered on their dire probation.  Hope took the alarm, seized the expiring lamp, trimmed it, and carried it down the one passage that was open.  This time he did not confine his researches to the part where he could stand upright, but went on his hands and knees down the newest working.  At the end of it he gave a shout of triumph, and in a few minutes returned to his daughter exhausted, and blackened all over with coal; but the lamp was now burning brightly in his hand, and round his neck was tied a can of oil.

“Oh, my poor father,” said Grace, “is that all you have discovered?”

“Thank God for it,” said Hope.  “You little know what it would be to pass two more days here without light, as well as without food.”

* * * * *

The next day was terrible.  The violent pangs of hunger began to gnaw like vultures, and the thirst was still more intolerable; the pangs of hunger intermitted for hours at a time, and then returned to intermit again:  they exhausted but did not infuriate; but the rage of thirst became incessant and maddening.  Ben Burnley suffered the most from this, and the wretch came to Hope for consolation.

“Where’s the sense of biding here,” said he, “to be burned to deeth wi’ drought?  Let’s flood the mine, and drink or be drooned.”

“How can I flood the mine?” said Hope.

“Yow know best, maister,” said the man.  “Why, how many tons of water did ye draw from yon tank every day?”

“We conduct about five tons into a pit, and we send about five tons up to the surface daily.”

“Then how much water will there be in the tank now?”

Hope looked at his watch and said, “There was a good deal of water in the tank when you blew up the mine; there must be about thirty tons in it now.”

“Well, then,” said Burnley, “you that knows everything, help me brust the wall o’ tank; it’s thin enow.”

Hope reflected.

“If we let in the whole body of water,” said he, “it would shatter us to pieces, and crush us against the wall of our prison and drown us before it ran away through the obstructed passages into the new workings.  Fortunately, we have no pickaxe, and can not be tempted to self-slaughter.”

This silenced Burnley for the day, and he remained sullenly apart; still the idea never left his mind.  The next day, toward evening, he asked Hope to light his own lamp, and come and look at the wall of the tank.

“Not without me,” whispered Grace.  “I see him cast looks of hatred at you.”

They went together, and Burnley bade Hope observe that the water was trickling through in places, a drop at a time; it could not penetrate the coaly veins, nor the streaks of clay, but it oozed through the porous strata, certain strips of blackish earth in particular, and it trickled down, a drop at a time.  Hope looked at this feature with anxiety, for he was a man of science, and knew by the fate of banked reservoirs, great and small, the strange explosive power of a little water driven through strata by a great body pressing behind it.