the pent-up waters, in
their irresistible fury, carried before them the pent-up atmosphere, and
sent it through the low and narrow levels as if through the circling
tubes of a monster trumpet, which, mingled with the crash of hurling
timbers, rocks, and debris, created a mighty roar that excelled in
hideous grandeur the prolonged peals of loud thunder.

Every man dropped his tools, and ran to the nearest shaft for his life.
It was not, indeed, probable that the flood would fill all the
wide-extended ramifications of the vast mine, but no one knew for
certain where the catastrophe had occurred, or how near the danger might
be to the spot where he laboured. Enough for each that death was
dealing terrible destruction somewhere _overhead_, and that, unless
every muscle were strained to the uttermost, the pathway might be filled
up, and his retreat cut off. The rush was swiftly but not easily made.
Those who have never traversed the levels of a Cornish mine may perhaps
fancy, on hearing of levels six feet high, and about two and a half feet
broad, on the average, that the flight might resemble the rush of men
through the windings and turnings of the intricate passages in a
stupendous old castle. But it was far otherwise. The roofs, walls, and
floors of these levels were irregular, not only in direction, but in
height and form. There was no levelling or polishing-off anywhere. It
was tunnelling of the roughest kind. Angles and projections remained as
the chisel, the pick, and the blasting-powder had left them. Here, the
foot tripped over a lump, or plunged into a hollow; there, the head
narrowly missed a depending mass of rock, or the shoulder grazed a
projecting one. Elsewhere, pools of water lay in the path, and at
intervals the yawning chasm of a winze appeared, with one or two broken
planks to bridge the gulf, of twenty, forty, or sixty feet, that
descended to the levels below. Sometimes it was possible to run with
the head stooped a little; generally the back had to be bent low--often
double; and occasionally progress could only be made on hands and
knees,--this, too, with a candle to be guarded from blasts of air or
dripping water, and trimmed, lest it should go out and leave the place
in total darkness.

But long-continued habit and practice had made the men so familiar with
the place, and so nimble in their movements, that they traversed the
levels with wonderful rapidity, and most of them ascended the sha