SS8 An Account of the Inundation of 



fell down the pit. He, however, dispatched Mathieu Larde- 

 nois in search of the oversman, Hubert Goffin, who was then in 

 a mine about 540 yards off. He was almost immediately on 

 the spot, and perceiving the danger to be real, his first care was 

 to seek his son Mathieu Goffin, aged twelve years. No person 

 had yet been drawn up : the water was not considerable, and 

 Goffin might still have escaped the danger. He had even one 

 leg in the corf, and his son standing close to him, when he ex- 

 claimed, '* If I ascend, my workmen will be lost : I am deter- 

 mined to leave this place the last — to save them all, or to perish 

 with them." So saying, he jumped out of the corf, and put 

 Nicholas Riga, a blind man, into his place. The corf ascended 

 rapidly, but, being suspended only by two of the four chains, it 

 fell to one side, and some of the men not able to keep their 

 position, fell into the water, out of which they were drawn by 

 Goffin and his son, who had not left him. 



The corf reached the bottom a second time, and the workmen 

 rushed towards it in a crowd, but the force of the fall of water 

 threw a part of them down, some of whom, by the depth of the 

 water at the bottom, and the assistance of the brave Goffin, his 

 son, and John Bernard, were saved. The horses of the ma- 

 chine being rapidly whipped round, the corf once more returned. 

 The men had only a moment allowed to lay hold of it. Goffin 

 perceived their danger ; they, however, I'ashly disregarded him, 

 clung to the corf, and in their ascent most of them fell and 

 perished in the pit, which is two yards six inches deeper than 

 the place of filling, where the water was already breast high. 



Not a moment was now to be lost. Escape by the pit became 

 impracticable, the water having nearly reached the roof of the 

 galleiies. Goffin continued collected. The devotion of this 

 father of seven young children had electrified Nicholas Bertrand, 

 Mathieu Laybeye, and Melchoir Clavir, who, though they 

 could have ascended, remained beside him. He had ordered 

 N. Bertrand to make an opening in the air or upcast shaft, in 

 order that the workmen coming from the dip or lowest part of 

 the mine might turn round the downcast, and pass through the 

 upcast shaft, to gain the rise-boards or galleries on the ascend- 

 ing part of the strata from the pit, every other way of escaping 

 death being impossible. The upcast shaft is a pit of the same 



