It reached our feet, and left us but a very limited space, in which the air was compressed, when the noise of the inundation ceased.

There was a singing in our ears, so that we could scarcely hear one another speak.

We knew that the whole mine had become a lake by that time, and that it would take months to drain her, if she was ever drained.

We knew that we were buried alive hundreds of feet beneath the earth; and yet we did not quite lose heart.
There was this gleam of hope: supposing that the next gallery, which was on a higher level than our own, was not also flooded, we could be got at through the seam.

We did not know the fact that it was more than sixty feet of solid coal, and would have taken under ordinary circumstances at least four weeks to dig through; we only knew that, if a door of escape was to open any where, it must open there.