Part 33

In 1862 an inundation occurred at the mine of Lalle, in France, by which one hundred and five persons lost their lives. The story is thus related by M. Simonin:—

On the 11th of October, between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, a violent storm visited the country, and it is asserted by some of the inhabitants, that a waterspout had burst there. The waters of the River Cèze, as well as those of a stream and of a ravine, which is dry at ordinary times, both of them being tributary to the Cèze, rose higher than they had ever been seen before. It was a vast inundation, or, as the people of that region describe it, a deluge. The mine extended under the river, and its mouth was not far from the bank. The water made a whirl at one point, and then rushed into the mine through a large opening over the outcrop of one of the coal seams. There was a rumbling noise all through the mine; all hands were at work under ground, and there was danger of a terrible calamity. Some of the men managed to escape by the ladders, while others hastily ascended a shaft, and floated upwards on the surface of the water.

A noble act of courage and devotion was performed by a Piedmontese workman by the name of Auberto.

[Sidenote: COURAGE OF AUBERTO.]

He escaped up a shaft, and as he did so, he gave the alarm to a comrade who was at work in a lower level. Auberto then ran to another opening, fastened the tub to a rope, descended, and called, the water falling all the while in a perfect torrent. Five men came out; four entered the tub, and were saved; the fifth hesitated a moment, and was lost. As soon as they reached the surface, Auberto caused himself to be lowered again. Perceiving a man entangled in the timbering of the lower gallery, he drew him out, threw him into the tub, and was drawn up at the moment the water took possession of that part of the mine.

Auberto had saved six lives, and would have saved more, but no other point was accessible, the whole mine being then under water.

There was only one outlet remaining, and this had been formed by the breaking of the ground near the point where the waters were rushing in. Lights were seen shining there, and ropes were thrown in; but the violence of the waters increased, the ground fell in afresh, this last outlet became closed, and all the men in that part of the mine were drowned. In half an hour the interior of the mine was converted into a lake. The air and gas in the mine were compressed by the weight of the water, and were forced out through fissures in the ground, producing the effect of gunpowder, throwing the earth to a considerable distance, and in some cases overturning houses.

Everybody in the vicinity rushed to the mouth of the mine, and an anxious and terrified crowd was speedily collected. The engineers and superintendents were first on the spot, and were speedily joined by the engineers and workmen from the neighboring mines.

[Sidenote: PLANS FOR RELIEF.]

No immediate relief is possible. Perhaps the colliery is only a vast tomb, for out of a hundred and thirty-nine men who entered the mine in the morning, only twenty-nine have escaped. A hundred and ten are scattered in the interior of the mine, some at one point and some at another, at different depths and in varying conditions. How are they to be found? and is it certain that even one of them is living?

A dike was made at the surface to keep out the water, and the engineers consulted the plan of the mine, in order to devise the surest and readiest means of relief. While this was being done, a young boy, who had previously been employed in the mine, entered one of the galleries, and, after knocking for some time on the walls, thought he could distinguish sounds answering to his own. He called his comrades, and repeated the experiment with the same result. The engineers were informed, and everybody hastened to the spot. M. Parsan, of the Imperial School of Mines, had arrived from Alais, to direct the work of salvage. He ordered everybody to maintain the most perfect silence, and then he made a signal by knocking with a pick at regular intervals of time. He has written an exciting account of these operations.

“With ears resting on the coal,” he says, “and holding our breath, we soon heard, with profound emotion, extremely faint, but distinct and timed blows,—in fact, the miners’ signal,—which could not be the repetition of our own, because we had only knocked at equal intervals.”

Between the prisoners and their rescuers there was a solid wall more than sixty feet thick, which must be cut through; but the greater part of the miners were shut up in the mine. But volunteers were ready from the other mines, and soon the blows of the pick carried hope to the hearts of the prisoners. The work began at six o’clock on the evening of the 12th, at five differents points in the gallery where the sounds were heard.

[Sidenote: PUSHING THE WORK OF RESCUE.]

The five drift-ways were made towards the place where the sufferers were enclosed. One pickman at a time worked in each heading, and he was relieved at the moment when he began to feel wearied. He worked with all his energy, and the coal which he removed was carried away in baskets as fast as it was detached. The labor proved more difficult in consequence of a want of air, and it became necessary to put up ventilators. Sometimes the lamps would only burn in front of the air-pipe. At two o’clock on the morning of the 14th, the voices of the imprisoned colliers could be heard. “There are three of us,” they said; and they gave their names. The coal increased in hardness, and the heat became unbearable. All that day and the next the best pickmen went to the front, hewing the coal with all their strength, the prisoners all the while making themselves heard. Finally, at midnight of the 15th, one of the drift-ways was completed, and the three men were reached.

Only two were alive. The youngest was sobbing, the other was in a high state of fever, and the third, an old man, had been unable to survive the trying ordeal, and was found dead not far from his companions.

The two survivors were covered with blankets, refreshed with cordials, and carried to the hospital of the mine, where they were put in the care of the physician, who next day pronounced them out of danger.

The work of rescue had continued without intermission for seventy hours. On calculating the amount of rock and coal removed from the drift-ways, it was found that a full month would have been required, under ordinary circumstances, to do the work which had been performed in three days.

[Sidenote: STORY OF THE SUFFERERS.]

The most precise details of the circumstances of their confinement were given by the two rescued colliers. They were at work in a heading when the water was heard coming upon them. They then ran to the upper end of the gallery, where they were found—a narrow place with a considerable slope, and very slippery. With their hands and the hooks of their lamps they dug a little place in the shale to sit down in; the water was up to their feet, and they were in a sort of bell, in which the air was highly compressed. They felt a singing noise in their ears, and for a time they lost their voices. Their lamps went out for want of oil. They tapped with the heels of their shoes on the walls of the gallery to summon assistance. This sound was the one which was heard, but only after they had been imprisoned twenty-four hours!

Convinced that help would arrive, the eldest of the three, the one who was destined never to behold the light of day again, shed tears of joy. Another, mad with thirst, descended into the level with the water up to his armpits, in a vain search for a way through the rubbish; but he afterwards regained his place, being guided by the voices of his companions. The youngest, seventeen years of age, frequently fell asleep, and would have fallen into the water but for the help of his neighbor, who held him in his arms like a child, and thus saved him from death. At one time the noise of the ventilator connected with the operations of their preservers reached their ears, when they imagined that a new influx of water was about to occur, and they became discouraged. The old man was constantly active. Overcome by his efforts, he slid from his resting-place into the water, and was drowned without a struggle, and without uttering a cry. Frozen with horror, and held motionless in their places, the two others dared not move to his assistance, and they even refrained from announcing the accident to those who were working to relieve them. “There are three of us,” they cried, when in reality only two were alive.

[Sidenote: IN DARKNESS WITH A CORPSE.]

The one who suffered from thirst finally determined to move, but touching the dead body while drinking, he clambered back again. Fatigue, bad air, and this fearful vicinity to a corpse, rendered him delirious, and he said to his comrade, “Come, let us leave this.” The other was frightened, and in order to divert his attention, suggested that he should go and drink again. He went, and returned, striking against the dead body in passing. “The darkness,” said he, “made the place more horrible than anything I had ever imagined.”

In the mean time the water got lower in the level, but it was cold there, and the two captives remained in their places where the air was dry and warm, though constantly growing more impure. At last they were recovered, and carried into the light by their comrades. By a strange phenomenon they had lost all notion of time, and thought they had not been in the mine more than twenty-four hours. Other instances of a similar nature are recorded. Some miners of Hainault, who lived twenty-five days shut up in a mine during an inundation, thought they had only been there eight or ten hours.

While the operations for saving the lives of these two men were in progress, other works were undertaken, with the view of penetrating the interior at other points. Pits were dug where the miners were suspended from ropes for fear of explosions, while other workings, which had been injured by the flood, were repaired. One of the old shafts was undergoing repairs at the time of the accident. In ordinary times, fifteen days, at the least, were required to refit the engine, put up the ropes, and get everything ready. In this instance everything was done in four days: the pumping began on the 15th of October, and was not again interrupted.

The workmen continued to bore and dig shafts. On the 24th of October, thirteen days after the accident, the men working at the bottom of the shaft heard shouts. Three men were still alive, only separated by rubbish and a vacant space of ground from the point where the workings were in progress. Disputes arose as to who should save them, each man desiring the honor of going down first. At last the favor was given to one of the overmen, who descended and found two men, who clung to him, and begged for relief. He encouraged them, and fed them from a can of broth which he carried. In a little while the timbermen made the place secure, and the captives were brought out.

[Sidenote: A CHILD BURIED IN THE COAL.]

A third prisoner, a child, was still left. His comrades described the place where they had buried him in the coal to keep him warmer. The engineer hastened to the spot, and seized the child, who embraced him and wept; the three were taken at once to the hospital, where they soon found themselves in the company of the other two, who had already been saved.

Like their comrades whose story I have just told, the three last colliers had fled before the water from the first moment of its breaking in, and finding a rubbish passage stopped up, they despairingly made an opening into it. They afterwards clambered to the heading of the gallery as a last refuge. Their lamps were out, but they heard the water rise, and retreated before it. The noise occasioned by falls, and the breaking of timber, as well as the sound of explosions caused by compressed air, reached their ears distinctly, like a frightful tumult, which seemed to announce to them the last hours they had to live. One of them had a repeating watch, which he caused to strike several times; but it stopped on the morning of the 12th of October at a quarter to three o’clock. They heard the noise of the tubs plunging into the water in two adjacent shafts. They conceived the idea of reckoning the progress of time by means of the short intervals of rest caused by changing the gangs. They thus formed a very near guess at the period of their captivity, which they reckoned at fifteen days, instead of thirteen.

To satisfy their hunger, they ate the rotten wood of the timber supports, which they crumbled in water, and then devoured, having previously eaten their leather belts. They could quench their thirst at will, and that sustained them. Afterwards the water rose to where they were, and wet their feet. Subsequently it fell, and then they thought of fastening one of their boots to a string and drinking out of it. Finding the water retiring, the child resolved to go in search of an outlet. Swimming or holding on by the walls, he groped his way along, but found nothing. Exhausted and chilled with cold, he returned to his companions, who lay close to him to warm him, and then covered him with small coal, in which position he was found.

[Sidenote: THIRTEEN DAYS IN DARKNESS.]

These men were liberated after being shut up thirteen days: the temperature, the pressure, and the composition of the air in which they were found, were favorable to life, and, moreover, they had the means of quenching thirst. Under such conditions, it may be possible to live a month. Our nature can endure a great deal when it is compelled to exert itself. The energy and tenacity of life are great, and few men know how much they can undergo until they are driven to make the experiment.

Only five were saved in this catastrophe at the mines of Lalle. All the rest of the one hundred and ten perished. Drainage of the mine was steadily pushed amid innumerable accidents, and the colliery was free of water on the 4th of the following January, fifty million gallons of water having been removed. During the interval the bodies were slowly discovered, and heart-rending was the spectacle which the mouth of the shaft presented as the bodies of the victims were drawn up, relatives and friends pressing forward and endeavoring to recognize or guess at some well-known face. And the scene in the mine, as the water slowly fell and the bodies were found floating on the surface with the light thrown upon them by the lamps of the searchers, is described as horrible in the extreme.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT MEDALS.]

From the managers to the humblest workman, everybody connected with the rescue did his full duty. Every man vied with his neighbor in doing what was needed, however difficult it might be. All the directors of mines in the Department of the Gard, assembled, and brought their overmen, surveyors, and workmen, who, in every instance, gave proof of a courage and self-denial which never failed for a single moment. The government bestowed crosses and medals upon those who rendered material assistance in the rescue, and the sad occurrence will long be remembered in and around the mines of Lalle.

XXX.

PERILS OF THE MINER.

NARROW ESCAPE OF THE AUTHOR.—CAUGHT IN A LEVEL.—SETTLING OF THE ROOF.—BREAKING TIMBERS.—A PERILOUS PASSAGE.—FALLING OF A ROOF.—THREATENING DANGERS.—ADVENTURE OF GIRAUD, THE WELL-DIGGER.—CAUGHT IN A FALL OF EARTH.—THREE WEEKS WITH A CORPSE.—ONE MONTH WITHOUT FOOD.—HOW HE WAS RESCUED.—A MINER COVERED WITH COAL.—HIS RESCUE.—AN IRISHMAN’S JOKE.—INUNDATION.—CURIOUS THEORIES OF THE MINERS.—EFFECT OF STRIKING A VEIN OF WATER.—DRAWING THE MEN IN A MINE.—THE SEA BREAKING IN.—CLOSING THE SHAFT.—A TERRIBLE STORY.—EXPERIENCE OF A FRENCH ENGINEER.—CASUALTIES AND THEIR NUMBER.—SUFFOCATION OF THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE MEN IN ONE MINE.

I was once in a mine in Colorado, when I fervently wished myself out of it. I had been there a day or two before, and found that in one of the levels I was just able to stand erect. At the visit in question I found I could not stand erect without hitting my head. I was certain that I had not grown six inches taller in the mean time, and I accordingly concluded that the roof had settled. All at once, while proceeding on my walk, I was astonished at hearing a crackling sound behind me; and on looking around, I discovered that some of the timbers were giving way.

Here was a predicament. The breaking timbers were between me and the entrance to the mine, and I knew that if they should fall, so as to close up the passage, I should be cut off from escape.

[Sidenote: AN UNPLEASANT PREDICAMENT.]

It did not take a long time for me to determine what to do. At the risk of being crushed by the falling timbers and rock, I darted backward, extinguishing my light in the rapidity of my movements, and becoming wrapped in almost complete darkness. Luckily, however, there was a light burning in the level; and as I crept among the breaking timbers, it was as welcome to me as the polar star to a man at sea, when his compass has become unreliable.

Another and another of the timbers gave way as I walked, or rather crept, beneath them. When they were broken in the centre, they had partly, but not completely, closed the passage, their ends being held firmly in the rock. I managed to reach the other side, and as soon as I considered myself safe, I turned round to see what was going on. The timbers settled very slowly; there was no one on the level beyond them; and had any persons been there, the settling of the roof was so slow, that they would have had plenty of time for escaping.

When I reached the outside, I made a vow to avoid similar dangers in future, and it was some time before I again ventured where I should be liable to a similar accident.

Falls of the roof are a kind of danger which is always thought of when underground works are considered. In certain kinds of rock there is no liability to occurrences of this sort. The roof is as solid, and as well supported, as that of any house, and there is no danger of its yielding; but where the rock is slippery and loose, or where the ground is soft, the peril that threatens is constant.

Falls of earth are not unfrequent in digging wells. Many a man has lost his life in consequence.

An exciting story is told of a well-digger, named Giraud, who was excavating a well near Lyons, about twenty years ago.

[Sidenote: TERRIBLE FATE OF A WELL-DIGGER.]

The earth caved in, and Giraud found himself dashed to the bottom of the hole by the side of a fellow-workman. Luckily, the timbers fell in such a way as to form a sort of arch above their heads, and thus saved them from being crushed at once. Some men, who were above at the time of the accident, immediately set to work to save the sufferers. It was necessary to dig a new shaft near the first, and then connect the two by a driftway, which would reach the men at the point where they were enclosed. Their efforts were constant, but in spite of them, a whole month was spent in reaching the spot, as fresh falls of earth were constantly occurring in the new workings. Giraud and his comrade could hear the noise of the pick, and could converse with the workmen, and assure them that they were alive.

At the end of a week, Giraud’s companion died of exhaustion and starvation. Giraud was a man of great strength, both of mind and body, and bore up as well as he could under his suffering. The dead body of his companion, which lay near him, poisoned the little air he had to breathe; but somehow he lived day after day for a whole month. Every moment his rescuers expected to reach him, when some fresh accident occurred, and much of the work had to be done over again. On the thirtieth day they reached the prison, and Giraud was saved.

He was wasted to a skeleton, and unable to stand. His body was a mass of sores; gangrene had attacked all his limbs, caused by the corpse which had been rotting at his side for three weeks. He was carried to the hospital, and every attention was given him; but he had suffered too much, and died within a month of the day of his rescue.

Occasionally masses of rock drop from the roof without the least warning, and fall upon the heads of the miners. Sometimes a man may escape with the loss of a limb, or he may be killed outright. In other cases, the walls and timbers give way, and men are crushed beneath their weight.

A story is told of a miner who was caught by the fall of some coal which nearly crushed him, but he had sufficient strength remaining to call for help. A comrade heard him, and gave the alarm. All the men who could work in the small space were immediately gathered; and a part of the coal having been removed from around the sufferer his head and one of his hands became visible. He was lying on his right side upon the floor of the gallery, with his legs doubled beneath him. There was a mass of broken timber above him, so that he could not move, but fortunately his chest was not compressed. Air was supplied him by means of a ventilator and a tube. The rails and some of the other timbers by which he was enclosed were cut through, and a space was opened in such a way as to reach him from below. He did not lose courage a moment; he remained perfectly cool, and gave his preservers several useful suggestions. Finally, after six hours of suffering, he was removed.

In several instances miners have been enclosed in such a way that escape was impossible. All efforts to relieve them were unavailing, and those who remained uninjured from the fall of the rock died of suffocation or starvation.

[Sidenote: AN IRISHMAN’S JOKE.]

Let us change a moment from the horrible to the ludicrous. A few months ago, an Irishman, who was digging a well in Illinois, left his work, and went to breakfast. When he returned, he found that the earth had caved in. There was a clump of trees a few yards away, and after looking around to ascertain if any one was in sight, and knowing that some friend would be there shortly, he took off his coat, hung it upon a post, and then, taking his shovel and pick, retired to the shelter of the trees. He had just concealed himself, when his friends made their appearance. They saw the coat hanging upon the post, and they saw that the earth had caved in. Immediately concluding that their friend was buried below, they set at work to rescue him.

They worked with the greatest energy for two or three hours, and at the end of that time had removed all the fallen earth. But no Pat was there. Just as they were wondering what had become of him, he walked leisurely from his place of concealment, and thanked them for what they had done. At first they were inclined to be indignant, but finally concluded that it was a good joke, and a few drams of bad whiskey removed all differences.

The danger of underground inundations is as great as that of falls of earth. Water is constantly accumulating in a mine, and sometimes in such quantities as to defy all attempts to keep it under control.

Miners have curious theories about streams of water which enter the mines. Some of the English miners believe the earth is alive, and they compare the veins of water in the earth to the veins and arteries of the human body. Sometimes they say, “When the water breaks into our working-places, it is the Earth which revenges itself upon us for having cut one of his veins.” The Belgian miners have the same belief, and they call the water which flows out of the coals, ‘_le sang de la veine_,’ that is, ‘the blood of the vein.’

[Sidenote: FLOODING A MINE.]