e."

Four men only could work at the face of the stall together, and Jack
divided the twenty into five sets.

"We will work in quarter-of-an-hour shifts at first," he said; "that
will give an hour's rest to a quarter of an hour's work, and a man can
work well, we know, for a quarter of an hour. When we get done up, we
will have half-hour shifts, which will give two hours for a sleep in
between."

The men of the first shift, stripped as usual to the waist, set to work
without an instant's delay; and the vigour and swiftness with which the
blows fell upon the face of the rock would have told experienced miners
that the men who struck them were working for life or death. Those
unemployed, Jack took into the adjacent stalls and set them to work to
clear a narrow strip of the floor next to the upper wall, then to cut a
little groove in the rocky floor to intercept the water as it slowly
trickled in, and lead it to small hollows which they were to make in the
solid rock. The water coming through the two stalls would, thus
collected, be ample for their wants. Jack then started to see how the
men at work at the doors were getting on. These had already nearly
finished their tasks. On the road leading to the main workings
choke-damp had been met with at a distance of fifty yards from the
stall; but upon the upper road it was several hundred yards before it
was found. On the other two roads it was over a hundred yards. The men
had torn strips off their flannel jackets and had thrust them into the
crevices of the doors, and had then plastered mud from the roadway on
thickly, and there was no reason to fear any irruption of choke-damp,
unless, indeed, an explosion should take place so violent as to blow in
the doors. This, however, was unlikely, as, with a fire burning, the gas
would ignite as it came out; and although there might be many minor
explosions, there would scarcely be one so serious as the first two
which had taken place.

The work at the doors and the water being over, the men all gathered in
the stall. Then Jack insisted on an equal division of the tobacco, of
which almost all the miners possessed some--for colliers, forbidden to
smoke, often chew tobacco, and the tobacco might therefore be regarded
both as a luxury, and as being very valuable in assisting the men to
keep down the pangs of hunger. This had to be divided only into twenty
shares, as Mr. Brook said that he could not use it in that way, and that
he ha