Hope flew at him again, but incautiously, and the savage lowering his head, drove it with such fury into Hope's chest that he sent him to a distance, and laid him flat on his back utterly breathless.

Grace flew to him and raised him.
He was not a man to lose his wits.

"To the truck," he gasped, "or we are lost." "I'll flood the mine! I'll flood the mine!" yelled Burnley.
Hope made his daughter mount a large fragment of coal we have already mentioned, and from that she sprang to the truck, and with her excitement and with her athletic power she raised herself into the full truck, and even helped her father in after her.

But just as she got him on to the truck, and while he was still only on his knees, that section of the wall we have called the tank rent and gaped under Burnley's pickaxe, and presently exploded about six feet from the ground, and a huge volume of water drove masses of earth and coal before it, and came roaring like a solid body straight at the coal truck, and drove it against the opposite wall, smashed the nearest side in, and would have thrown Grace off it like a feather, but Hope, kneeling and clinging to the side, held her like a vise.
Grace screamed violently.

Immediately there was a roar of exultation outside from the hitherto silent workers; for that scream told that the _woman_ was alive, too: the wife of the brave fellow who had won all their hearts and melted away the icy barrier of class.
Three gigantic waves struck the truck and made it quiver.
The first came half-way up; the second came full two-thirds; the third dashed the senseless body of Ben Burnley, with bleeding head and broken bones, against the very edge of the truck, then surged back with him into a whirling vortex.
Grace screamed continuously; she gave herself up now for lost; and the louder she screamed, the louder and the nearer the saving party shouted and hurrahed.
"No, do not fear," cried Hope; "you shall not die.