ENTOMBED ALIVE
"Danger! You're plumb crazy about danger, Clem!" Anton declared
impatiently.
The older lad gestured to the big building of the pit-mouth before
them, above which the spider-like legs of the headgear soared high,
surmounted by the huge double winding-wheels which give so
characteristic a note to a modern colliery.
"Any one who forgets that a coal-mine is dangerous is a fool," he
retorted sharply, "and keep that in your head, Anton, my lad. Not that
danger would ever stop me from mining. I like it. I like to feel that
I'm running a risk every time I go into an entry and every time
there's a blast. And I like to feel that I know enough about safety
methods to snap my fingers at the risk. There's excitement in that."
"There'll be excitement enough, if old Otto's warnings come true,"
returned Anton gloomily.
Two days had passed since the old miner's prophecy, two days without
any unusual incident. Clem had all but forgotten the evil presage, but
Anton was brooding over it. It was his work to load cars in the room
where Clem was mining, and the boy's superstitious nature made him
painfully aware that if any accident happened to his comrade, he would
probably be caught, too.
Anton had been working in the mine only a few weeks and he had not yet
been able to grasp the need of Clem's incessant teaching with regard
to the extreme prudence needed in colliery work. He had almost caused
a serious accident during his first week by not blocking his car
properly. The half-loaded car had begun to move down the slope of the
mine gallery, it might easily have run clear down into the entry and
possibly killed some one if Clem had not dashed forward and checked
the car before it had too much speed.
In general, Anton had not reasoned much about the danger or the lack
of danger in coal-mining. He regarded the pit as a matter of course.
It was the only life he knew. All his comrades were at work in the
mine or would be at work therein, as soon as their school-days were
over. The boy himself had started early, soon after his father's
death, since it was the only employment to be got in the neighborhood
and he had his widowed mother to support.
Clem had found a place in the mine for his friend without any
difficulty, for Anton was powerfully muscled. In this he took after
his father, who had been almost a Hercules and one of the champion
wrestlers of the mine. Born of miner stock on both sides, Anton was
short and squat, able to shovel coal all day without fatigue. He had
accordingly, been taken on as a loader, Clem undertaking to keep an
eye over him.
It took the older lad all his time to do so. Anton was absolutely
reckless by nature, and, though he was constantly being advised as to
the necessary precautions for making mining safe, he could never be
persuaded to adopt them.
Instead of blocking his car with one log placed across the track and
another under the car and resting on the transverse log, he would put
a piece of coal under the wheel and trust to its staying there; he
would wear his coat loosely, over his trousers, though he was told
over and over again that he ran the risk of his coat being caught by
the cars, when switching, and being dragged along the side of the rib:
on another occasion, Clem found the boy starting along the
haulage-way used for the coal cars instead of using the man-way
reserved for the workers, in order to save a couple of minutes' time.
What exasperated Clem even more was that, since Otto's warning, Anton
had become more careless than ever. It was evident that the fatalistic
streak in the boy made him feel that if he were foredoomed to an
accident, there was no use in trying to prevent it.
The boy's impatient exclamation and his comrade's retort about danger
had occurred while they were in line in front of the lamp shack,
waiting to get their safety-lamps before going down for the day shift.
As in most well-organized collieries, the safety-lamps were filled and
adjusted by experts, who looked after nothing else. After the lamps
were lighted, they were locked--and not one of the miners was allowed
a key. Thus the lamps could not be opened below ground and there was
no chance for a reckless man to expose a naked flame in a room or
entry where there might chance to be gas. A safety-lamp would not go
out unless the air in the mine was so vitiated that it was dangerous
to life to remain therein, or unless there was some defect in the lamp
which would render it perilous to use.
After the lamps had been given out, Clem and Anton got in the cage to
go down the shaft. Otto happened to be descending at the same time.
"We're still waiting for your 'knockers' to show themselves!" Clem
suggested jestingly.
The old man deigned no reply. Instead, he looked round the cage
meaningly at the other men there, most of whom frowned at Clem's
remark. Among miners, it is believed to bring bad luck to speak or
even to hint of accidents when in the cage. Only Otto's personal
liking for the young fellow kept him from a retort which might have
brought on a quarrel.
On reaching the bottom, Clem and Anton set out along the man-way
together. It was a walk of nearly a mile underground from the main
shaft of the mine to the distant "room" or square hole in the seam,
where Clem was to dig away the coal face, and which was one of the
rooms from which Anton was loading coal.
This Ohio colliery was being worked on what is known as the
pillar-and-room method. This consists in dividing the seam of coal
into squares like a chessboard, taking out the coal from each
alternate square, leaving the intervening squares of coal intact to
act as pillars in holding up the roof. They do not look like pillars
to a careless observer, often being blocks of coal thirty yards
square.
"It seems silly," said Anton, after they had walked on a minute or
two, "to leave all this coal near the shaft and to go digging a mile
away. Why not take all the coal that is handy first?"
"And have the roof come down and block up all the coal that is beyond?
That would be just throwing away the wealth of the mine."
"Timber the roof, then!"
"It would cost too much, for one thing," Clem explained, "and, for
another, all the timber in the world won't hold up a roof if the
excavation is made too big. There's millions of tons of rock pressing
down on a mine roof. Judging by the way you talk, Anton, I don't
believe you understand what a coal formation is, yet."
"Isn't it like Otto said, then?"
"Only in a way. Otto's description of the coal forests was near
enough--in spite of his ideas about goblins and sprites--and he was
correct in saying that the forests decayed under water and turned
into coal after they were pressed down by rock. But it wasn't the
Flood that did that, at least not the Flood that Otto was speaking of.
The coal forests existed millions of years before Noah.
"What's more, it wasn't only just once that the forests were covered
by a deluge. That happened several times, a hundred or more, in some
places.
"For centuries at a time, these gloomy and steaming forests grew in
boggy land, only a few inches above the level of the sea. Gradually
the land sank, the sea came in, the trees fell and decayed under the
water, and a layer of mud or sand was deposited over them. Then
gradually the land rose again just above the level of the sea, and a
new forest grew. Once more the land sank below the water, the second
forest fell into decay and upon that layer a new deposit of mud or
sand was laid. That gave two layers or seams of coal-forest-bog, to be
turned later into coal by pressure; and two layers or strata of mud or
sand, to be turned into shale and slate or into sandstone, also by
pressure.
"When a long time elapsed between the swampings, several centuries of
coal forests had made a deep bed of bog, which, ages after, became a
thick seam of coal. When the swampings happened close together, the
layer of bog was shallow, producing a thin seam of coal. In the same
way, the layers of shale or sandstone are thick or thin according to
the length of time that the land was under the water.
"Because of that, Anton, in nearly every colliery there is not just
one layer or seam of coal, but a number of them. There are sixteen
different seams in this mine, showing that the land rose and fell
sixteen times, probably in the course of a million years.
"Some mines show much bigger changes. In the famous coal basin of
Mons, in Belgium, there are 157 layers of coal, of which 120 are thick
enough to be workable. The Saar basin, on the left bank of the Rhine,
which has played so important a part in the international troubles
following the end of the World War, has 164 seams, with 77 of them
workable, giving a thickness of 240 feet of coal. However, as the
lowest layers are nearly four miles deep, they will probably never be
worked."
"Why not?"
"To start with, the cost of haulage to the top would be enormous. But,
aside from that, a good many mining engineers figure that the
temperature at that depth would be above boiling point. You know, in
general, the farther you go down in a mine, the hotter it gets."
"What do you mean by a seam being 'workable'?" the boy queried. "Can't
all coal be dug out?"
"Not by a long shot. At least not so as to be worked at a profit.
Suppose a seam of coal is only a few inches thick, how is a miner
going to dig it out? He couldn't crawl in such a seam, let alone using
his tools there."
"He could cut out enough rock at the top and bottom to give him a
chance to get in."
"A miner is paid for digging coal, not digging rock," was the answer.
"What's more, according to your scheme, so much shale or sandstone
would be mixed with the coal that it would be useless for burning.
"Even seams two feet thick are so hard to work that most of them are
left alone, and a seam three feet thick means extra expense in getting
out the coal because of the difficulty of labor in hewing and
transporting the coal from the face to the shaft. The ideal thickness
is between six and eight feet, where a man can stand upright and can
reach to the roof with a slate bar. That height, too, makes timbering
easy.
"Very thick seams have their own difficulties. The worst of these is
the supporting of the roof. Take a seam 30 or 40 feet thick, for
example. Look at the size of the hole that is left when the coal is
dug away! Timbering becomes a real problem, there, for the longer a
prop is, Anton, the weaker it is. Coal managers in mines like those
have to do some careful figuring, or the cost of the timber they put
into the mine would be more than the value of the coal they take out."
"How do they handle it then?"
"As if it were a quarry, rather than a mine. The seam is worked on
successive levels, but, even then, it is impossible to prevent
constant accidents from the fall of coal or the sudden collapse of a
roof. Take it the world over, and ten miners are killed every day in
collieries alone. I told you coal mining was dangerous."
"But are there any of those thick seams in the United States?"
"None of the really thick ones. There's a 40-foot anthracite seam in
Pennsylvania. But in France, near the famous Creusot works, there's a
bed of coal which is 130 feet thick. It's a basin, though, rather than
a seam.
"So you see, Anton, every coal mine is different, with its layers or
seams of coal of different thicknesses and at varying distances apart.
Some pits are near the surface, some are very deep; some coal is full
of gas, other has very little; some coal is so hard that every bit of
it has to be blasted, in other mines the coal is so soft that the
hewer spends half his time spragging the face so that the coal doesn't
fall on him when he's undercutting or holing. Don't you make the
mistake of thinking that all a miner has to do is to use his pick!
He's got to know his business thoroughly or he's useless to the mine
boss and a danger to all his fellow-workmen.
"And that isn't all, Anton, not by a good deal!
"Coal mining might be bad enough, even if the coal seams always ran
level. But it's very seldom that they do. They run up-hill and
down-hill in all sorts of fashions and play hide-and-go-seek in a way
that's fairly bewildering.
"Nearly all coal seams are broken up by faults. The coal suddenly
seems to stop, and, when you go to hewing it the pick suddenly hits
against a rock wall, right on the level of the seam. In the North
Gallery of this very mine, there's a fault like that. You know where
the 'snagger' is?"
"Sure," agreed Anton, "you mean where the cars have to be hitched on
to a chain?"
"Yes, there! The coal seam jumps upwards fifty feet. That's why the
cars, after rolling down nearly a quarter of a mile, by gravity, have
to be pulled up fifty feet by an endless chain, to rejoin the same
seam and then to go rolling on down by themselves."
"Just what are faults?"
"H'm, that's a bit hard to explain to you, Anton, because you don't
know anything about geology, but maybe I can get you to see. Faults
are breaks in the layers of rock, or in the stratification, as it is
called. All coal seams and the rocks above and below them have been
laid down by water. Since water levels everything, these layers of
rock were level, once.
"In ages past, however, the crust of the earth changed a good deal. As
the crust cooled, it contracted, crumpling up these different layers
into all sorts of shapes. Sometimes it bulged them up, sometimes it
hollowed them down so that the edges rose. Quite often a layer of
rock would be cracked right across, and one half would stay level
while the other shot up almost a right angle. A good many mountains
show the result of this, and if you look at such rocks as are sticking
up out of the ground you will see some of them standing right on edge.
Once in a while, part of the broken crust slid over the other part.
Then, too, though the surface may not always show it, there have been
breaks in the strata below, and at the break, the layer has sunk or
risen quite a distance from its former level.
"If that happens to a coal seam, you can see that where the seam
breaks, suddenly, the rest of it will continue on another level,
perhaps only a few feet higher or lower, perhaps a good deal more.
It's up to the mine geologist to find where the coal has gone to, and
it's the business of the mine engineer to remodel the entire system of
working the mine in order to get at that seam."
"And are all coal mines mixed up in that funny way?" Anton queried.
"Most of them. Oh, there's no end to the tricks a coal seam can play.
A deep coal seam may split into two narrow ones, too thin to work.
The whole seam may quickly dwindle away to nothing, showing that, in
ages past, a river came rolling over it and washed away all the forest
bog. Sometimes, especially with the lowermost seams, the forest grew
on rolling land, so that the bottom of the coal seam is irregular,
causing all sorts of trouble in laying rails for the cars to roll on.
Sometimes the layer of rock under a coal seam is so soft that when you
start to timber it, the timbers sink into the floor and the roof comes
toppling down.
"Among the queerest of all the things a mine geologist strikes are
what are called dykes. These are great shafts of igneous rock, which
were thrust up from the interior of the earth in a white-hot state and
which burned away the coal as they rose. They put a dead stop to a
working. I could tell you a dozen more freak things that a coal seam
can do. A mine geologist has not only a new problem to tackle with
every mine, but, often, with every mine gallery."
"Is that what you're studying to be, Clem?"
"No, indeed!" The young fellow's answer was emphatic. "That's 'way out
of my reach. It takes a college man, with special technical training
and a big experience, to be anything of a mine geologist. All I'm
trying to do is to learn enough about it so that when I get to be a
mine boss--if I ever do--I'll know what my chiefs are trying to do and
I'll be able to help them.
"Take Otto, for example. There isn't a better worker in the mine. He
gets out more coal and less broken stuff than any other man below
ground. But he'll never be anything but a hewer, because he doesn't
want to learn. Why, just the other day, he was growling because the
mine was shut down to repair one of the shafts, though the other shaft
was working all right."
"So were a lot of the men," Anton put in. "Why couldn't they go on
working, with one shaft?"
"Against the law," was the crisp answer. "That's the A B C of mining.
And I'll show you why! All mines are required to have two shafts, in
case of accident. That law was passed because of a famous disaster
that happened in England nearly a hundred years ago.
"In those days, colliers had only one shaft. One day, the beam of an
engine which was directly over a shaft snapped, and a huge piece of
machinery, weighing several tons, tumbled into the shaft and stuck,
not far from the bottom. As it fell, it ripped away the planking which
lined the shaft and a whole lot of loose rock and earth fell on top of
the piece of machinery, blocking up the shaft entirely and stopping
any air from passing. There were over two hundred men and boys at work
below ground.
[Illustration: MINERS DESCENDING A SHAFT.
_From an Old Print._]
[Illustration: FALLING-IN OF A MINE.]
[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF "FIRE-DAMP."]
"With only one shaft, you can see what a mess that made! Before any
digging could be done, the lining of the shaft had to be repaired,
because dirt and rocks were falling into the shaft all the time.
Miners--hundreds of them--were brought from neighboring mines, and
they worked night and day on two-hour shifts, clinging to the sides of
the shaft as thick as bees in a hive. Others, risking their lives with
every stroke of the pick, dug away at the earth and rock that had
fallen on the big chunk of machinery. With all the speed that human
effort could compass, it was six days and nights before a hole had
been made through the obstruction big enough for a man to pass. And,
when the first rescuer reached the workings below, the 200 men were
dead. Not a single one survived. The miners had been entombed alive
without any air passage and could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to
help themselves out of their living grave.
"Ever since then, every colliery in Europe and the United States is
required to have two shafts, and the law demands that these shall be
no less than fifteen yards apart and connected by a wide passage. Not
only that, but each shaft must have a complete outfit of winding
machinery coupled to separate engines, so that, in the event of an
accident happening to one shaft, the men below ground can be rescued
up the other."
"That sounds all right," said Anton, rather gloomily, "but suppose the
way to both shafts is blocked?"
"Not likely," Clem responded cheerfully, "if a mine has been properly
laid out. Take this one, there are half a dozen ways to get from the
face to the shaft."
"But Otto said--"
The other turned upon him sharply.
"I've had about enough of that Otto business! If you can't keep from
thinking about it, keep from talking about it, anyhow!"
To this rebuke Anton maintained a stubborn silence, and, without
another word said, the two walked on until they reached their
respective places of work.
In the gloomy world of below ground, where the dusty wall of sooty
black is the only landscape to be seen, one day is very much like
another. Reaching his room, Clem stood his tools in order along the
rib, hung his safety lamp on a nail which he drove into a prop
supporting the roof, and, reaching up so as to put one hand on the
roof, tapped it with the flat side of his pick to make sure that there
was no loose slate overhead. He then examined the coal face, as it had
been left by the hewer who had been working on the night shift, to
make sure that it had been properly spragged or timbered.
This done, Clem stripped naked to the waist, for it was hot in that
hole far below ground. Then, lying down flat on his side, his bare
shoulder resting on the gritty ground, he started to pick away the
coal at the level of the floor and just above it, making a
wedge-shaped hole extending under the seam for a distance in of three
feet.
Many mines, especially in America, use mechanical coal-cutters for
this back-breaking labor. These machines are especially useful in
mines where the coal-seams are less than 3-1/2 feet thick, and they
are well adapted to "long-wall" workings where the whole face of the
coal is removed in a single operation. Some are mounted with a toothed
bar which moves in and out, chipping the coal; other types are like
circular saws; several forms have the same action as a miner's pick,
the percussions being at the speed of two hundred strokes a minute,
the motive-power being compressed air.
In pillar-and-room workings, such as this Ohio mine, chain heading
machines were used. This American invention consists of a bed-plate
which rests on the floor and is secured in position by screw-jacks
braced against the roof and against the rib. On this bed-plate rests a
sliding frame which carries a revolving chain on which cutting tools
are fixed. The machine carries its own motor, which not only drives
the chain, but also slides forward the frame into the cut. When the
cut is made to the full depth of the machine, it is withdrawn, and the
machine moved over its own width and another cut commenced. Several of
these machines were at work in the mine, but chiefly in that part of
it where the pillars were being cut away, and where speed in removing
the coal was a prime necessity. In the more distant rooms, hand labor
was used.
All these machines work on exactly the same principle as that of the
miner, lying on his back or on his side, and digging at the coal with
his pick. The coal must be undercut as far in as a pick or a
mechanical coal-cutter will reach, for the entire width of the face.
Every few feet, short props or sprags are put in from the edge of the
undermined portion to the floor, to prevent a premature fall, which
might bury the miner.
When the whole face is undercut and spragged, the shot-firer is
summoned. One or more holes, three feet deep, are bored in the coal,
close to the roof, these holes are filled with explosive and tamped
shut with moist clay, and the charges are fired. This blasting brings
down the coal off the face, clear from the rock roof to the undermined
portion, for such a distance as it has been undercut.
The miner then shovels away the coal far enough to allow him to lie
down again and continue his terribly laborious task, while the loader
comes and shovels the blasted coal into cars or into endless-chain
conveyors, according to the arrangement of the mine.
Day in, day out, this hewing continues. While the miner is at work, he
is always in a cramped position, his body twisted, his muscles at a
strain, performing his toilsome labor in the half-dark, in the heat,
in poor air, choked with coal-dust constantly and menaced by death
every moment. He is well paid, but most fully does he earn every cent
he gets.
The morning had almost passed, and Anton was near the entry, where he
heard, in the distance, a dull rumble like thunder, followed by a
queer cracking sound which seemed to travel along the rock overhead.
The boy halted involuntarily in his task of pushing an empty car back
to a room for loading. Little as he knew of the noises below ground,
he sensed something strange. The deep silence of a coal mine is
generally broken only by the sharp report of a blast or the rattle of
cars, and this rumble did not resemble either sound.
A second or two later, a miner dashed past him, without his tools, his
safety-lamp swinging as he ran.
"The bank is coming down!" he yelled, and disappeared down the
gallery.
Almost at the same moment, another man came out of the entry, his
naked back gleaming as he passed under the electric light hanging at
the opening of the entry.
"Make for the shaft, kid!" he shouted, when he saw the shine of
Anton's lamp.
A sudden babble of excited cries, borne on the strong current of the
ventilating air, reached the boy's ears.
It was the doom of Otto's warning!
Shoving a lump of coal under the car-wheel, Anton whirled on his heel
to follow the escaping miners, when, like a blow, came the stunning
thought:
"Clem!"
He hesitated an instant, and, while he halted, a second and a louder
crash told him that the fall of rock--wherever it might be
happening--was not over. Every fraction of a second that he delayed
might ruin his chances of escape.
But Anton was of sturdy miner stock, and, in addition, was thoroughly
fatalistic. That very feature of his character which his older comrade
had blamed so often, now was to show its good side. If he were going
to be caught by the fall, there was no use in his trying to prevent
it, he thought.
In any case, no matter what might come, though the roof cracked above
him and the coal-ribs crushed beside him, he must warn his friend.
Turning his back to the way of hope, he tore at his utmost speed
towards the room where Clem was working, taking some small comfort, as
he ran, that the rumbling sounded farther and farther away.
"Clem!" he cried, panting, as he turned into the room where his friend
was digging coal, "run for your life!"
By the terror in Anton's voice, the young fellow realized the peril.
In his isolated room, he had not heard a sound.
Leaping to his feet and grabbing his safety-lamp from the prop, he ran
after Anton, who had started back on the road leading to the shaft.
Fleeter of foot than the boy, he caught up with him in a few yards.
"What is it?" he queried.
"The bank's down!"
"Where?"
"I don't know. Everywhere. The whole mine's smashing! Every one else
has got out long ago!"
An ominous creaking sounded over their heads.
Clem caught his comrade by the arm and pulled him into a narrow entry
near by.
"Go slow! We don't want to get smashed!"
He held up his safety-lamp.
"Look at that prop!"
The heavy timber was bending like a twig.
"Get on quick!" cried Anton, struggling against the grasp, but the
young fellow held him fast.
"Don't lose your head!" he warned. "The current of air has stopped,
sure sign that the way to the shafts is blocked. The nearer we get to
the goaf (waste ground), the more likely we are to get crushed.
Listen!"
The creaking grew louder, and then, suddenly, with a rush of sound,
the gallery in front of them, into which Anton had been about to
plunge, sagged. The bending prop went into splinters, and, with a
roar, the whole roof fell, the broken rock coming to within a few
yards of where they were standing.
"Close shave, that!" remarked Clem coolly.
Anton made no answer, but shivered as he looked. He realized that his
comrade's warning had saved his life.
The trembling and the creaking recommenced, but farther away; then,
with a gigantic noise of tearing, there came a rending crash, followed
by utter silence.
"Now!"
He let go the boy's arm and turned sharp off to the right.
"That's not the way to the shaft," protested Anton.
"We'll try the North Gallery," answered Clem. "Likely enough the fall
has followed the line of the fault."
A sharp run of a hundred yards brought them to a pile of rock blocking
up the passage. Clem licked his hand to make it moist, and then slowly
passed it across the entire face of the obstruction.
"No!" he said. "There's not a breath of air coming through. That way's
blocked."
He turned in another direction. With all the ventilation stopped, the
air was growing heavy. Fifty yards' run, and then--
Blocked again!
This time Clem made no comment. He turned back to try the farther side
of the mine. As they wheeled round a corner, and saw a gleam of light
he cried, with a note of relief:
"There they are! I knew they'd send in a rescue party, right away!"
Then his voice dropped.
"No," he added, "there's only one lamp."
A single miner came running towards them.
"The North Gallery?" he queried.
"No good, Jim," Clem answered, who recognized him as a new-comer in
the mine. "Blocked solid!"
"So's the entries to the goaf! I've been there! How about the old
workings I've heard the boys talk of?"
The student miner shook his head.
"Not much chance that way, I'm afraid. They'll be full of gas, sure.
The ventilation has been cut out of there for months. But we can try
it, anyway."
"I'd ought to ha' known better'n to work this shift," declared Jim, as
they ran. "You mind when you talked to Otto in the cage, comin' down?"
"Yes."
"Well, Otto wouldn't go to work, nohow. Said the knockers had been
riled an' he wouldn't take the risk o' goin' agin 'em. The boss swore
at him some, but that didn' faze Otto. He went to the top, just the
same. He had the right hunch. Wish I'd followed him!"
They ran on, and Jim broke out again:
"I'd no business to come coal minin', anyway. I'm a prospector, by
rights. Gold's my end, not coal. You're s'posed to know this game.
What chance ha' we got?"
Clem made no answer in words. He held up his safety-lamp, already
showing a marked blue cap of gas over the flame.
"I'd seen it a'ready! That means gas, don't it?"
"We may get through it," said Clem, but his tone was not hopeful.
They turned into a long gallery leading to the old workings, and, as
they sped along, the cones of gas on the safety lamps grew longer and
longer.
Presently lumps of slate and rock on the floor heralded the end.
Quite suddenly, the gleam of the lamps shone on a wall before them.
The roof had fallen in.
"That's the last chance?" queried Anton, gloomily.
"The very last," said Clem, "we're buried."