Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and
darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense
of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery
ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless
darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower
descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the
chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on
this world—which in fact it _was_.
From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley
was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron
umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his
ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was
only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the
dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was
tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed
to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down
before him, like a lost soul.
Flashley now felt a wavering motion in his descent, while an increasing
current of air rose to meet him; and almost immediately after, he heard
strange and confused sounds beneath. Looking down into the darkness, he
not only saw a reddening light, but, as he stared down, it became
brighter, until he saw the gleam of flames issuing from one side of the
shaft. He fully expected to descend into the midst, and ‘there an end;’
but he speedily found he was reserved for some other fate. The fire was
placed in a large chasm, and appeared to have a steep red pathway
sloping away behind it. He passed it safely. From this moment he felt no
current of air, but his ears were assailed with a variety of noises, in
which he could distinguish the gush of waters, the lumbering of wood,
the clank and jar of chains, and the voices of men—or something worse.
Three black figures were distinctly visible.
In a few seconds more, his feet touched earth—which seemed to give a
heave, in answer. His descent from the upper surface had not occupied
longer time than has been necessary to describe it, but this was greatly
magnified to his imagination by the number, novelty, and force of the
emotions and thoughts that had attended it. He was now at the bottom of
the William Pitt Coal Mine, nine hundred and thirty feet below the
surface of the earth.
A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took
hold of Flashley, and extricating him from the chain girdle and iron
umbrella, led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck
in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand.
Over all the various sounds, that of rushing waters predominated at this
spot; and very soon they turned an angle which enabled Flashley to
descry a black torrent spouting from a narrow chasm, and rushing down a
precipitous gully on one side of them to seek some still lower abyss.
Another angle was turned; the torrent was no longer seen and its noise
grew fainter almost at every step.
The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid
coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with
the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock,
stone, or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. In width the
sides could be reached by the man’s extended hands. They were sometimes
supported by beams, and sometimes by a wall of brick, and the roof was
frequently sustained by upright timbers, and limbs or trunks of trees.
In one place, where the roofing had evidently sunk, there stood an
irregular row of stunted oak trunks, of grotesque shapes and shadows,
many of which were cracked and gaping in ragged flaws from the crushing
pressure they had resisted; showing that, without them, the roof would
certainly have fallen, and rendering the passage more ‘suggestive’ than
agreeable to a stranger beneath. Here and there, at considerable
distances, candles stuck in clay were set in gaps of the coaly walls, in
the sandstone, or against the logs and trunks. The pathway was for the
most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with
frequent nobs and snaggs of rock and iron-stone. In this path of
intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of
which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving
above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light,
and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them. It
seemed clear that nothing could save them from being run over, unless
_they_ could run over the horse. However, his guide made him stand with
his back flat against one side of the passage—and presently the long,
hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and
breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so
long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with
docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were
formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be
driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else
from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.
They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade,
which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a
door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner
were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own
careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in
the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone,
or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses
drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two
horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same
unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as
before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by
any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little
and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat,
and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of
an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a
previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age,
one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management,
to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all
within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the
careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has
passed.
Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the
high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from
the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was
danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might
crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the
entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the
ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the
best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without
being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together
with the black masses in which they were embedded.
Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey
between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most
forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and
sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing
more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by
the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal
in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration
than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every
now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again
thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and
turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added
solemnity to the announcement,—
‘We are now walking beneath the bed of the sea!—and ships are sailing
over our heads!’
Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already
described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse, walked in
front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a
black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been
invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical
form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of
Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water,
he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to
the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth
sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It
continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some
spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was for ever lost to
its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own
history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness.
‘You used to be fond,’ observed Flashley’s companion, with grim ironical
composure, after one of these close encounters with horseflesh—‘You
_used_ to be fond of horses.’
Flashley made no reply, beyond a kind of half-suppressed groan of
fatigue and annoyance.
‘Well, then,’ said the other, appearing to understand the smothered
groan as an acquiescence—‘we will go and look at the stables.’
He turned off at the next corner on the left, and led the way up a
narrow and steep path of broken brick and sandstone, till they arrived
at a bank of rock and coal, up which they had to clamber, Flashley’s
guide informing him that it would save a mile of circuitous path.
Arriving at the top, they soon came to a narrow door, somewhat higher
than any they had yet seen. It opened by a long iron latch, and they
entered the ‘mine stables.’
A strong hot steam and most oppressive odour of horses, many of whom
were asleep and snoring, was the first impression. The second, was a
sepulchral Davy-lamp hanging from the roof, whose dull gleam just
managed to display the uplifting of a head and inquiring ears in one
place, the contemptuous whisking of a tail in another, and a large
eye-ball gleaming through the darkness, in another! The stalls were like
a succession of narrow black dens, at each side of a pathway of broken
brick and sand. In this way sixty or seventy horses were ‘stabled.’
‘This is a prince of a mine!’ said the guide; ‘we have seven hundred
people down here, and a hundred and fifty horses.’
They emerged at the opposite end, which led up another steep path
towards a shaft (for the mine now had four or five) which was used for
the ascent and descent of horses. They were just in time to witness the
arrival of a new-comer,—a horse who had never before been in a mine.
The animal’s eyes and ears became more frightfully expressive, as with
restless anticipatory limbs and quivering flesh he swung round in his
descending approach to the earth. When his hoofs touched, he made a
plunge. But though the band and chain confined him, he appeared yet more
restrained by the appalling blackness. He made a second plunge, but with
the same result. He then stood stock-still, glared round at the black
walls and the black faces and figures that surrounded him, and instantly
fainted.
The body of the horse was speedily dragged off on a sort of sledge, by a
tackle. The business of the mine could not wait for his recovery. He was
taken to be ‘fanned.’ Flashley of course understood this as a mine joke;
but it was not entirely so. A great iron wheel, with broad fans, was
often worked rapidly in a certain place, to create a current of air and
to drive it on towards the fire in the up-cast shaft, assisting by this
means the ventilation of the mine; and thither, or at all events, in
that direction, the poor horse was dragged, amidst the laughter and
jokes of the miners and the shouts and whistles of the boys.
How silent the place became after they were gone! Flashley stepped
forwards towards the spot immediately beneath the shaft. It was much
nearer to the surface than any of the other shafts, and the daylight
from above ground just managed to reach the bottom. Under the shaft was
a very faint circle of sad-coloured and uncertain light. The palest
ghost might have stood in the middle of it and felt ‘at home.’
The ‘streets’ of the mine appeared to be composed of a series of
horse-ways having square entrances to ‘workings’ at intervals on either
side, and leading to narrow side-lane workings. Up one of these his
guide now compelled Flashley to advance; in order to do which they were
both obliged to stoop very low; and, before long, to kneel down and
crawl on all-fours. While moving forward in this way upon the coal-dust
slush, where no horse could draw a waggon, a poor beast of another kind
was descried approaching with his load. It was in the shape of a human
being, but not in the natural position—in fact, it was a boy degraded to
a beast, who with a girdle and chain was dragging a small coal-waggon
after him. A strap was round his forehead, in front of which, in a tin
socket, a lighted candle was stuck. His face was close to the ground. He
never looked up as he passed.[2]
Footnote 2:
Young women and girls were also used in this way till the Report of
the Children’s Employment Commission caused it to be forbidden by Act
of Parliament.
These narrow side-lane passages from the horse-road, varied in length
from a few fathoms, to half-a-mile and upwards; and the one in which
Flashley was now crawling, being among the longest, his impression of
the extent of these underground streets and by-ways, was sufficiently
painful, especially as he had no notion of what period he was doomed to
wander through them. Besides, the difficulty of respiration, the
crouching attitude, the heated mist, the heavy sense of gloomy monotony,
pressed upon him as they continued to make their way along this dismal
burrow.
From this latter feeling, however, he was roused by a sudden and loud
explosion. It proceeded from some remote part of the trench in which
they were struggling, and in front of them. The arrival of a new sort of
mist convinced them of this. It was so impregnated with sulphur, that
Flashley felt nearly suffocated, and was obliged to lie down with his
face almost touching the coal-slush beneath him, for half-a-minute,
before he could recover himself. Onward, however, he was obliged to go,
urged by his gruff companion behind; and in this way they continued to
crawl till a dim light became visible at the farther end. The light came
forwards. It proceeded from a candle stuck in the front of the head of a
boy, harnessed to a little narrow waggon, who pulled in front, while
another boy pushed with his head behind. A side-cutting, into which
Flashley and his companion squeezed themselves, enabled the waggon to
pass. The hindermost boy, stopping to exchange a word with his
companion, Flashley observed that the boy’s head had a bald patch in the
hair, owing to the peculiar nature of his head-work behind the waggon.
They passed, and now another distant light was visible; but this
remained stationary.
As they approached it, the narrow passage widened into a gap, and a
rugged chamber appeared hewn out in the coal. The sides were supported
by upright logs and beams; and further inwards, were pillars of coal
left standing, from which the surrounding mass had been cut away. At the
remote end of this, sat the figure of a man, perfectly black and quite
naked, working with a short-handled pickaxe, with which he hewed down
coals in front of him, and from the sides, lighted by a single candle
stuck in clay, and dabbed up against a projecting block of coal. From
the entrance to this dismal work-place, branched off a second passage,
terminating in another chamber, the lower part of which was heaped up
with great loose coals apparently just fallen from above. The strong
vapour of gunpowder pervading the place, and curling and clinging about
the roof, showed that a mass of coal had been undermined and brought
down by an explosion. To this smoking heap, ever and anon, came boys
with baskets, or little waggons, which they filled and carried away into
the narrow dark passage, disappearing with their loads as one may see
black ants making off with booty into their little dark holes and
galleries under ground.
The naked miner in the first chamber, now crept out to the entrance,
having fastened a rope round the remotest logs that supported the roof
of the den he had hewed. These he hauled out. He then knocked away the
nearest ones with a great mallet. Taking a pole with a broad blade of
iron at the end, edged on one side and hooked at the other, something
like a halbert, he next cut and pulled away, one by one, by repeated
blows and tugs, each of the pillars of coal which he had left within. A
strange cracking overhead was presently heard. All stepped back and
waited. The cracking ceased, and the miner again advanced, accompanied
by Flashley’s guide; while, by some detestable necromancy, our young
visitor—alack! so very lately such a dashing young fellow ‘about town,’
now suddenly fallen into the dreadful condition of receiving all sorts
of knowledge about coals—felt compelled to assist in the operation.
Advancing with great wedges, while Flashley carried two large sledge
hammers to be ready for use, the miners inserted their wedges into
cracks in the upper part of the wall of coal above the long chamber that
had just been excavated, the roof of which was now bereft of all
internal support. They then took the hammers and began to drive in the
wedges. The cracks widened, and shot about in branches, like some black
process of crystallisation. The party retreated several paces—one wide
flaw opened above, and down came a hundred tons of coal in huge blocks
and broad splinters! The concussion of the air, and the flight of
coal-dust, extinguished the candles. At this the two miners laughed
loudly, and, pushing Flashley before them, caused him to crouch down on
his hands and knees, and again creep along the low passage by which they
had entered. A boy in harness drawing a little empty waggon soon
approached, with a candle on his forehead, as usual. The meeting being
unexpected and out of order, as the parties could not pass each other in
this place, Flashley’s special guide and ‘tutor’ gave him a lift and a
push, by means of which he was squeezed between the rough roofing and
the upper rail of the empty waggon, into which he then sank down with a
loud ‘Oh!’ His tutor now set his head to the hinder part of the waggon,
the miner assumed the same position with respect to the tutor—the boy
did the same by the miner—and thus, by reversing the action of the
wheels, the little waggon, with its alarmed occupant, was driven along
by this three-horse power through the low passage, with a reckless speed
and jocularity, in which the ridiculous and hideous were inextricably
mingled.
Arriving at the main horse-road, as Flashley quickly distinguished by
the wider space, higher roofing, and candles stuck against the sides,
his mad persecutors never stopped, but increasing their speed the moment
the wheels were set upon the rails, they drove the waggon onwards with
yells and laughter, and now and then a loud discordant whistle in
imitation of the wailful cry of a locomotive; passing ‘getters,’ and
‘carriers,’ and ‘hurryers,’ and ‘drawers,’ and ‘pushers,’ and other
mine-people, and once sweeping by an astonished horse—gates and doors
swinging open before them—and shouts frequently being sent after them,
sometimes of equivocal import, but generally _not_ to be mistaken, by
those whom they thus rattled by, who often received sundry concussions
and excoriations in that so narrow highway beneath the earth.
In this manner did our unique _cortège_ proceed, till sounds of many
voices ahead of them were heard, and then more and more light gleamed
upon the walls; and the next minute they emerged from the road-way, and
entered a large oblong chamber, or cavern, where they were received with
a loud shout of surprise and merriment. It was the dining-hall of the
mine.
This cavern had been hewn out of the solid coal, with intervals of rock
and sandstone here and there in the sides. Candles stuck in lumps of
damp clay, were dabbed up against the rough walls all round. A table,
formed of dark planks laid upon low tressels, was in the middle, and
round this sat the miners, nearly naked,—and far blacker than negroes,
whose glossy skins shine with any light cast upon them,—while these were
of a dead-black, which gave their robust outlines and muscular limbs the
grimness of sepulchral figures, strangely at variance with the
boisterous vitality and physical capacities of their owners. These, it
seemed, were the magnates of the mine—the ‘hewers,’ ‘holers,’
‘undergoers,’ or ‘pickers,’—those who hew down the coal, and not the
fetchers and carriers, and other small people.
Before he had recovered from his recent drive through the mine, Flashley
was seated at the table. Cold roast beef, and ham, and slices of cold
boiled turkey were placed before him, with a loaf of bread, fresh
dairy-butter, and a brown jug of porter. He was scarcely aware whether
he ate or not, but he soon began to feel _much_ revived; and then he saw
a hot roast duck; and then another; and then three more; and then a
great iron dish, quite hot, and with flakes of fire at the bottom, full
of roast ducks. Green peas were only just coming into season, and sold
at a high price in the markets; but here were several delphic dishes
piled up with them; and Flashley could but admire and sit amazed at the
rapidity with which these delicate green pyramids sank lower and lower,
as the great spoonfuls ascended to the red and white open mouths of the
jovial black visages that surrounded him. He was told that the
‘undergoers’ dined here every day after this fashion; but only with
ducks and green peas at this particular season, when the miners made a
point of buying up all the green peas in the markets, claiming the right
to have them before all the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood.
While all this was yet going on, Flashley became aware of a voice, as of
some one discoursing very gravely. It was like the voice of the Elfin
who had wrought him all this undesired experience. But upon looking
forwards in the direction of the sound, he perceived that it proceeded
from one of the miners—a brawny-chested figure, who was making a speech.
Their eyes met, and then it seemed that the miner was addressing himself
expressly to poor Flashley. Something impelled the latter, averse as he
was, to stand up and receive the address.
‘Young man—or rather gent!’ said the miner—‘You are now in the bowels of
old mother Earth—grandmother and great grandmother of all these seams of
coal; and you see a set of men around you, whose lives are passed in
these gloomy places, doing the duties of their work without repining at
its hardness, without envying the lot of others, and smiling at all its
dangers. We know very well that there are better things above ground—and
worse. We know that many men and women and children, who are ready to
work, can’t get it, and so starve to death, or die with miserable
slowness. A sudden death, and a violent is often our fate. We may fall
down a shaft; something may fall upon us and crush us; we may be damped
to death;[3] we may be drowned by the sudden breaking in of water; we
may be burned up by the wildfire,[4] or driven before it to destruction;
in daily labour we lead the same lives as horses and other beasts of
burden; but for _all_ that, we feel that we have something else within,
which has a kind of tingling notion of heaven, and a God above, and
which we have heard say is called ‘the soul.’ Now, tell us—young master,
you who have had all the advantages of teachers, and books, and learning
among the people who live above ground—tell us, benighted working men,
how have _you_ passed your time, and what kind of thing is your soul?’
Footnote 3:
_The choke-damp_, carbonic acid gas.
Footnote 4:
_Fire-damp_, also called _the sulphur_—hydrogen gas.
The miner ceased speaking, but continued standing. Flashley stood
looking at him, unable to utter a word. At this moment, a half-naked
miner entered hurriedly from one of the main roads, shouting confused
words—to the effect that the fire which is always placed in the up-cast
shaft to attract and draw up the air for the ventilation of the mine,
had just been extinguished by the falling in of a great mass of coal,
and the mine was no longer safe!
‘Fire-damp!’—‘The sulphur!’—‘Choke-damp!’ ejaculated many voices, as all
the miners sprang from their seats, and made a rush towards the main
outlet. Flashley was borne away in the scramble of the crowd; but they
had scarcely escaped from the cavern, when the flame of the candles ran
up to the roof, and a loud explosion instantly followed. The crowd was
driven pell-mell before it, flung up, and flung down, dashed sideways,
or borne onwards, while explosion after explosion followed the few who
had been foremost, and were still endeavouring to make good their
retreat.
Among these latter was Flashley, who was carried forwards, he knew not
how, and was scarcely conscious of what was occurring, except that it
was something imminently dreadful, which he momentarily expected to
terminate in his destruction.
At length only himself and one other remained. It was the miner who had
been his companion from the first. They had reached a distant ‘working,’
and stopped an instant to take breath, difficult as it was to do this,
both from the necessity of continuing their flight, and also from the
nature of the inflammable air that surrounded them. Some who had arrived
here before them, had been less fortunate. Half-buried in black slush
lay the dead body of a miner, scorched to a cinder by the wildfire; and
on a broad ledge of coal sat another man, in an attitude of faintness,
with one hand pressed, as with a painful effort, against his head. The
black-damp had suffocated him: he was quite dead.
Beyond this Flashley knew nothing until he found himself placed in a
basket, and rising rapidly through the air, as he judged, by a certain
swinging motion, and the occasional grating of the basket against the
sides of the shaft. After a time he ventured to look up, and to his joy,
not unmixed with awe, he discerned the mouth of the shaft above,
apparently of the size of a small coffee-cup. Some coal-dust and drops
of water fell into his eyes; he saw no more; but with a palpitating
heart, full of emotions, and prayers, and thankfulness, for his prospect
of deliverance, continued his ascent.
Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
------------------------------------------------------------------------