ten o'clock
At nine o'clock Grant Adams had been twice over the mine , on the three levels and had thirty men hammering away for dear life . He sent a car of lumber down to the mule barn , while he went to the third level to direct the division of an air shaft into an emergency escape . On one side of this air shaft the air came down and there was a temporary hoist for the men on the third level and on the other side a wooden stairway was to be built up seventy feet toward the second level . At ten o'clock Grant came back to the second level by the hoist in the air shaft and as he started down the low air course branching off from the main passage and leading to the new mule barn , he smelled burning pine ; and hurrying around a corner saw that the boy who dumped the pine boards for the mule barn had not taken the boards into the barn , nor even entirely to the barn , but had dumped them in the passage to the windward of the barn , under the leaky torch , and Grant could see down the air course the ends of the boards burning brightly . The men working in the barn could not smell the fire , for the wind that rushed down the air course was carrying the smoke and fumes away from them . Grant ran down the course toward the fire , which was fanned by the rushing air , came to the lumber , which was not all afire , jumped through the flames , slapping the little blazes on his clothes with his hat as he came out , and ran into the barn calling to the men to help him put out the fire . They spent two or three minutes trying to attach the hose to the water plug there , but the hose did not fit the plug ; then they tried to turn the plug to get water in their dinner pails and found that the plug had rusted and would not turn .