Moreover, fire-damp, as
well as the latter, a mixture of inflammable gases,
forms a detonating mixture as soon as the air unites with it
in a proportion of eight, and perhaps even five to the hundred.
When this mixture is lighted by any cause, there is an explosion,
almost always followed by a frightful catastrophe.
As they walked on, Simon Ford told the engineer all that he had done
to attain his object; how he was sure that the escape of fire-damp took
place at the very end of the farthest gallery in its western part,
because he had provoked small and partial explosions, or rather
little flames, enough to show the nature of the gas, which escaped
in a small jet, but with a continuous flow.
An hour after leaving the cottage, James Starr and his two companions
had gone a distance of four miles. The engineer, urged by anxiety
and hope, walked on without noticing the length of the way.
He pondered over all that the old miner had told him, and mentally weighed
all the arguments which the latter had given in support of his belief.
He agreed with him in thinking that the continued emission
of carburetted hydrogen certainly showed the existence of a new
coal-seam. If it had been merely a sort of pocket, full of gas,
as it is sometimes found amongst the rock, it would soon have
been empty, and the phenomenon have ceased. But far from that.
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