The water below

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the shift, the mine sounded as it always did. The pump struck its steady beat somewhere beyond the brickwork, iron wheels complained along the rails, and the men answered one another through the dark. Daniel was filling the third tub when he heard a lighter knock following the pump: one tap after every heavy blow.

He raised his lamp. The sound appeared to come first from the wall and then from beneath his boots. Mr Bell ordered the picks to be lowered, but silence did not settle the matter. One man blamed a loose rail; another said that a stone was turning in the pump. When work began again, a narrow strip of dust between the rails had grown dark. Daniel touched it. His finger came away wet.

Water shone briefly ahead of them, joining the two rails before slipping beneath a loaded tub. Mr Bell called for the men to move towards the ladder shaft. They had taken only a few steps when the same shine appeared behind them. Then the wall gave a sound like cloth being torn slowly in two. Black water pushed loose coal across the floor and lifted the empty tubs against their chains.

The men reached the ladder with the water at their knees. Daniel climbed last and saw the lowest lamp disappear without showing him what had struck it. At the surface, the pump continued its patient beat. By evening, two tubs and most of the tools had been lost. Even after the level was drained, the manager could not say whether the first break had opened in the floor, the roof or the sealed passage beyond the wall.

“By never revealing where the water comes from, the writer turns an ordinary shift into a frightening ordeal.”

Evaluate how successfully the writer presents this idea. Support your judgement with detailed references to the passage.