[17]Enough.
[17]Enough.
Turning from this sketch, let us set in order a few stories of the pits. In some of the mines the coal is blasted out by the dynamite which is fired by electricity from a battery on the surface. Two men place the charges, and then signal to be drawn up in the cage which hangs in the pit-eye. Once two natives were intrusted with the job. They performed their parts beautifully till the end, when the vaster idiot of the two scrambled into the cage, gave signal, and was hauled up before his friend could follow.
Thirty or forty yards up the shaft all possible danger for those in the cage was over, and the charge was accordingly exploded. Then it occurred to the man in the cage that his friend stood a very good chance of being, by this time, riven to pieces and choked.
But the friend was wise in his generation. He had missed the cage, but found a coal-tub—one of the little iron trucks—and turning this upside down, crawled into it. When the charge went off, his shelter was battered in so much, that men had to hack him out, for the tub had made, as it were, a tinned, sardine of its occupant. He was absolutely unhurt, but for his feelings. On reaching the pit-bank his first words were, "I do not desire to go down to the pit withthatman any more." His wish had been already gratified, for "that man" had fled. Later on, the story goes, when"that man" found that the guilt of murder was not at his door, he returned, and was made a mere surface-coolie, and his brothers jeered at him as they passed to their better-paid occupation.
Occasionally there are mild cyclones in the pits. An old working, perhaps a mile away, will collapse: a whole gallery sinking bodily. Then the displaced air rushes through the inhabited mine, and, to quote their own expression, blows the pitmen about "like dry leaves." Few things are more amusing than the spectacle of a burly Tyneside foreman who, failing to dodge round a corner in time, is "put down" by the wind, sitting-fashion, on a knobby lump of coal.
But most impressive of all is a tale they tell of a fire in a pit many years ago. The coal caught light. They had to send earth and bricks down the shaft and build great dams across the galleries to choke the fire. Imagine the scene, a few hundred feet underground, with the air growing hotter and hotter each moment, and the carbonic acid gas trickling through the dams. After a time the rough dams gaped, and the gas poured in afresh, and the Englishmen went down and leeped the cracks between roof and dam-sill with anything they could get. Coolies fainted, and had to be taken away, but no one died, and behind the first dams they built great masonry ones, and bested that fire; though for a long time afterwards, whenever they pumped water into it, the steam would puff out from crevices in the ground above.
It is a queer life that they lead, these men of the coal-fields, and a "big" life to boot. To describe one-half of their labours would need a week at the least, andwould be incomplete then. "If you want to see anything," they say, "you should go over to the Baragunda copper-mines; you should look at the Barakar ironworks; you should see our boring operations five miles away; you should see how we sink pits; you should, above all, see Giridih Bazaar on a Sunday. Why, you haven't seen anything. There's no end of a Sonthal Mission hereabouts. All the little dev—dears have gone on a picnic. Wait till they come back, and see 'em learning to read."
Alas! one cannot wait. At the most one can but thrust an impertinent pen skin-deep into matters only properly understood by specialists.
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Use the phase to find the text referenced.
Page 290
rate will know what I mean.
'known' changed to 'know'.
Page 353
lanquer stands
'lanquer' may be 'lacquer'. Unchanged.
Page 382
if they show the least disposition
'dispositon' changed to 'disposition'.
Page 393
door withcloisonnéehinges,
cloisonnée also spelled cloissonnée in this book. No change.
Part 2
Page 74
jet of steam
'stream' changed to 'steam'.
Page 80
black-yellow, and pink pools
'link' changed to 'pink'.
Page 105
Lord forgie us
'forgie' may be a form of dialect meaning 'forgive'. Unchanged.
Page 114
the final book of Mononi
'Mononi' may be 'Moroni'. Unchanged.
Page 193
maidan also spelled maidân and maidàn. No change.
Page 231
pan also spelled pân. No change.
Page 292
seam has gone up or down.
'beam' changed to 'seam'.