Part 6

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.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like 1^{st}).