34 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
reopened, the water in the mine rose to a depth of 20 feet, filling all the tunnels on the 700-foot level.
Several
days after the fire I went down the shaft accompanied by Captain
Hambley, Assistant Inspector of Mines, and one of the overmen. I
arranged to lower the skip gradually down the incline to make the first
inspection. As we went down, an insulated signal wire was lowered, and
provision was made so that I could keep the bell ringing continually,
and instructions were given to haul up the skip at the moment the
ringing stopped, for I feared that we might drop into foul air so
sudÂdenly that we would not be able to signal in the usual manner. So
we went down in the skip slowly to a point about 150 feet above the
crushed ground in the shaft. At this point, some 250 feet below the
surface, we saw the body of one of the men who went down with Mr.
Lindsay just before the breaking out of the fire. We did not stop, for
the moment, but kept on signalling until the skip was lowered to the
ground which closed the shaft. Our search for any further trace of the
lost miners was fruitless, for we could find no more bodies. Mr.
Lindsay and his remainÂing companions were buried beneath the debris
when this part of the shaft caved in. Finding that the further descent
of the skip was cut off, I then gave the signal to hoist, and on
reaching the surface, gave instructions for men to go down and remove
the body seen in the shaft. The poor man had climbed up to the point
where he died, in a desperate effort to escape. The other men, as well
as the skip in which they went down, were buried deeply under the mass
of crushed ground.
The
work of repairing No. 2 incline could not be begun until July 19th, for
the smoke and heat from the mine made work in the crushed portion of
the shaft unendurable. Even then it was only practicable to advance
very slowly, and the shaft was not opened until the 3d of August, when
the large skips were at once employed to bail out the water. Eight days
later the mine was drained, and the reopening of the workings could be
undertaken.
It was originally intended that the large skips in No. 2 in-
