Where the Timber Goes.
Where the Timber Goes.Whole forests are cut down to hold up the mine galleries. On the strength of this work the lives of the miners depend.Courtesy of the Wigham Coal Co.
Where the Timber Goes.
Whole forests are cut down to hold up the mine galleries. On the strength of this work the lives of the miners depend.
Courtesy of the Wigham Coal Co.
Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors.
Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors.Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.
Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors.
Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.
Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs."
Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs."Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.
Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs."
Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.
If, indeed, it were safe to blast, it might be possible to get rid of the obstruction by the use of a heavy blast and then rush through and grab the men. But this was impossible. The Burrell tester showed a large proportion of methane gas or fire damp, and a blast of any size might easily start an explosion which would not only wreck the mine, but also kill every member of the rescue parties, while affording no chance of getting the imprisoned men.
How could the wall be taken down, without allowing the gas to percolate through?
"Stand back, men," said the official, "here come the 'sand hogs,' now."
Amazed, the colliers retreated from the coal face to give place to a very different group of men. Small and wiry folk, these, dressed in an entirely different fashion from the miners. The respirators gave them the same goggle-eyed goblin faces. Not one of them had ever been in a coal mine before.
With a speed and dexterity that showed theirknowledge of the work, these men proceeded to build up, at the side of the gallery, close to the point where the last obstruction still held, a solid face of concrete, and rapidly cemented it to the somewhat elaborate construction that had been in process of making all the preceding day, and to which Otto had paid no heed.
It was not long before it became evident that a completely closed room was being made. Other gangs came along, carrying strange screw-doors of iron, and a multitude of devices new to the eyes of miners. Everything had been measured and prepared above-ground. It remained only to throw the material together, according to a prearranged plan.
By midnight, all was ready.
Three "sand hogs," with a gallant young doctor who had volunteered, prepared to enter.
A steady throbbing sound told that machinery connected with an outlet pipe—solidly embedded in the cement—had been set in motion. The newly made walls threatened to bulge inwards, and the signal was given to stop.
Then a rushing noise was heard in the inlet pipe, similarly embedded. The outer of thedouble doors was opened and the four men stepped in, entering a tiny ante-chamber. They closed the outer door, which was absolutely air-tight, opened the inner one, and passed into the chamber built against the coal face, made of solid cement except for a circle of coal a yard in diameter.
A minute or two later, could be heard, faintly, the high screech of some rapid-cutting machine.
When Otto came back on his next shift, at 2 o'clock on Friday morning, the sand hogs were still working.
Curiosity overcame the old miner's desire not to seem ignorant.
"Just what is that, sir?" he asked the Bureau official, who was still on watch.
"That you, Otto? So you want to know, now, do you? Well, that's a sort of lightly made caisson, or air-tight chamber, with an air-lock or double door. It's used a good deal for working under water, but for the job we have here, it doesn't have to be very solidly built.
"It's simple enough, when you think it out. We just cemented it up, put in an air-pump to take out the gassy air that was in it, and then turned in compressed air, with a pressure of alittle more than one atmosphere, just enough to keep any of the gas from entering the hole that is being dug through the coal pillar."
"Why can't gas get in? Gas'll go through coal."
"Because the pressure from inside is bigger than from outside. The compressed air is leaking through the coal and driving any gas away."
"Why didn't you let us get in there to finish the job, if that's all there is to it?" protested Otto, indignant that strangers should have the glory of the final rescue, after the miners had done so much.
"Because you couldn't stand it. Those men are sand hogs. They're used to working in compressed air. Just as soon as a man gets into a pressure of two or three atmospheres, unless he's mighty careful he's apt to get dangerously ill. His blood absorbs too much air. While he's under compression, he doesn't feel it so much, but if he comes out of the compression too quickly, the surplus air in his blood can't come out as slowly as it ought, and little bubbles form in the blood current. That's deadly. Sometimes these bubbles cause a terrible caisson disease known as the 'bends,' when all the muscles and joints areaffected; or it may give a paralysis known as 'diver's palsy,' because divers working in compressed atmospheres suffer the same way; all too often, it causes sudden death. So you see, Otto, it's not a chance a man ought to take who knows nothing about it."
"An' the sand hogs are diggin' in there?"
"No, they're not digging. We put in a tunnelling machine driven by compressed air, which is sometimes used for making sewers and the like. It will bore an even, round hole, just big enough for a man to crawl through, comfortably.
"As soon as that hole is pierced through into the room where the imprisoned men are, the doctor will go in, taking food, wine and medical supplies, and three respirators as well. Then, when the survivors are protected against the possible results of a sudden inrush of gas, it'll be up to you men to get the rest of the wall down as quick as you can."
"So that's how it is! We'll be ready, sir, as soon as you give the word."
At 6 o'clock, on the Friday morning, the outer door of the caisson clanged and the foreman of the sand hogs came out.
"We've pierced through," he said. "The doctor's in there. He says all the men are alive, as yet, but he doesn't know if they'll recover. There's not much time to lose, judging by what he says."
"At the wall, men!" came the order.
The miners cheered. They were to have the glory of getting their comrades out, after all.
The picks hammered on the rock like hail. The cars roared through the galleries once more. The cages shot upward with their loads.
At 8 o'clock, a miner's pick went through the wall into the space leading to the room beyond, but there was still a lot of rock to move before a clear passage could be made.
Otto remembered the warning of the Mine Bureau official, and realized that, had he been left to himself, he would have killed his comrades at the very moment of rescue.
At 9 o'clock, the hole was big enough for one of the rescuers to pass. As before, a doctor was the first to scramble through the opening.
The excitement above ground was enormous. Each car might bring a survivor!
Every time that the cage was a few seconds late, hope rose high.
"Keep silence, now," said the Mine Bureau'ssurgeon to the waiting crowd. "No cheers or shouts remember! The nerves of the men are apt to be at the breaking point."
The silence added to the tension. The atmosphere was electric with anxiety.
What was happening?
The cage was rising slowly, slowly!
Surely the men were there!
It reached the surface.
A limp form was borne out and laid on a waiting stretcher.
It was Anton, his face pinched, his lips blue.
In the next cage, Jim Getwood was brought up. On seeing his condition, the mine doctor shook his head dubiously. Artificial respiration was begun, then and there.
The cage rose for the third time, bearing Clem Swinton, unconscious like his comrades, but clearly in better case.
He stirred as he reached the open air, and his glance encountered that of the mine owner.
"I said American mine pluck would get us," he gasped, "if we stuck out long enough!"
And he relapsed into unconsciousness.
The three comrades were saved, indeed, but it was none too soon. Eight days below ground without food or light and without any sure hope of rescue, had brought them to a low ebb.
Clem, owing to his longer experience in the mine and his more prudent conserving of the scanty supply of food that fell to his share, had withstood the strain better than the two other survivors. He was badly shaken, however, and his nerves were on the edge of collapse. His efforts to help his companions had held him tense during those unending hours of darkness and famine, and his optimism had kept him from the ravages of despair.
Anton had received a terrible shock, both to body and mind. His hands and feet had become deadened, as though frozen, and the most vigorous treatment failed to restore the circulation. Fromtime to time he was seized by convulsive fits; resembling those of epilepsy, and characteristic of white damp poisoning. His speech remained thick and mumbling, and he repeated the same word over and over, a score of times, without being conscious that he had spoken it.
Jim Getwood, the prospector, was in the weakest condition of the three. He lacked the degree of immunity that Clem possessed through his half-dozen years below ground, and that Anton possessed, in a minor degree, through heredity. His former life of adventure in the open air made him all the more susceptible to the poison gases. Violent headaches brought him to the verge of madness, and alternated with periods of delirium. He could retain little or no food, and, several times, the doctor despaired of saving his life.
Yet, in the history of coal-mining, there are several cases on record in which men have been even a longer time below ground and recovered. In a French colliery, two out of thirty men who were buried for fourteen days, recovered; in a Welsh colliery, one man survived out of seventy who had been entombed for seventeen days.
A still more astonishing case occurred in a Scotch coal-mine. A big roof-fall in a pit in Ayrshire had blocked off all the outlets to the shaft, save one, by which all the miners were able to escape. One man, however, finding that the way to the shaft was clear, returned to the face of the coal where he had been working, in order to get his coat.
On his way back to the shaft, a second fall occurred, blocking him in. This happened in 1835, when rescue work was still done in a primitive fashion. It was not until the twenty-third day that the miner was reached. He was alive, but in a dying state, his body being covered with a species of fungus that grows upon decaying mine timbers. He lived three days after being brought to the surface.
The longest record of endurance under such conditions occurred in France, some years later. A well-digger, near Lyons, was buried alive with a comrade, the sides of a deep well caving in after such a manner that an air-space of 37 feet was left above the entombed men.
It was impossible to try to remove the obstruction, for any effort to do so would only cause the earth and stones to fall on them and crush the men. In order to attempt rescue, it was necessary to sink a well as deep as the first, and,when the full depth was reached, to drive an underground gallery from one to the other.
Up to the very last day, the rescuers were able to hear tappings, sure sign that at least one of the men was alive. On the thirtieth day the rescue was effected. The oldest of the two well-diggers was found alive, but he was in a terrible condition because of the infection caused by the corpse of his comrade, who had died two weeks before. He, also, lived three days after his rescue, but the doctors were unable to save his life.
None of these men, however, had to withstand the effects of white damp in the air; on the other hand, none of them had any supply of food, however small, to begin with.
Clem's account of the experiences of the three men in the mine was awaited with a great deal of interest. Reporters from various newspapers hung around the mine for several days, waiting for a chance to get his story. The mine doctor refused permission, however, until he was assured that the young miner was well on his way to health, fearing that a reawakening of the memories of that terrible week might bring about a relapse. Finally he admitted the reporters to the hospital ward where the three survivors lay,though forbidding Anton and Jim to speak.
Clem was willing enough to tell his tale.
He began with the incident in the cage, on the morning of the accident, when he had joked with Otto, to the old miner's manifest objection. He told of Otto's refusal to work that day, according to the account given him by Jim. He described, also, how Anton had gallantly abandoned his own chance of safety to come and warn him, and explained how they had vainly searched an outlet in the direction of the North Gallery.
"Right after we met Jim," he went on, "we ran as fast as we could towards the old workings, to see if we could get out there. I didn't think there was much chance, because, so far as I could make out, the fall had happened between where we were working and the shafts. But it was worth trying, anyway. When we found the wall down, in that section, and the rock piled up clear to the roof, I knew we were trapped, sure.
"Thanks to what I had learned in the night-school classes, I had a pretty good idea of the general lay-out of the mine. I knew how the faults lay, and miners, who'd been in this mine a long time, had told me how gassy the old workings were.
"In a lesson I'd had on mine ventilation, we'd been told that the ventilating plant, here, had been enlarged twice over to try to keep the mine clear of gas. It wasn't hard to figure out that, with the ventilation stopped, gas would soon begin to collect, and that would be the end of us.
"There was a big-enough cap on our safety lamps, as it was, and it seemed to me that the blue cone grew longer as I looked. I told Jim that it wasn't safe for us to hang around those old workings, we'd get poisoned before we knew it and lose any chance we had of rescue.
"Jim didn't see it my way, at first.
"'Might as well die here as anywhere!' he said.
"I didn't like that spirit. I'd read in a book, somewhere, that if a chap gives up hope, he dies a whole lot quicker than if he keeps up his spirits. It was about Anton that I was worrying most. I was bent on trying to get the youngster cheerful if I could, because he was moping over Otto's prophecy that there was going to be an accident. You've heard about that, I suppose?"
The reporters nodded, and Owens, who was listening, added:
"We've heard a lot about it. The old man called the turn, all right. But maybe you don'tknow that he told me, too, that you'd be rescued and that you'd come out of it, alive?"
"Did he?" queried Clem, in amazement.
"Point-blank. It's a good thing for you he did, too, for a whole lot of first-class men volunteered for the rescue work who couldn't have been persuaded to enter the mine again, otherwise. The old man stuck to his belief, even after most of us thought you would be dead. The geophone expert backed him up, by saying he heard tapping, but it was Otto's persistence that did the most."
"It's a queer thing he should guess so closely," commented Clem thoughtfully.
But a reporter from a Pittsburgh evening paper, who was anxious to get the survivor's story on the telegraph wires, broke in impatiently:
"What was the first thing you did, after you'd found you were trapped?"
"We got busy and made a barricade," Clem answered. "I showed Jim and Anton that, in the old workings where we were, there was a lot of gas. Our lamps showed it up, good and strong. Now, back in the rooms where Jim and I had been hewing, there wasn't any gas to speak of. We could go back there, of course, and that was what Jim wanted to do.
"But I figured out that, since the ventilation was shut off from our rooms, the gas which had accumulated in the old workings and which was steadily seeping through the coal in that section would gradually creep along the galleries our way. If that happened, we'd be down and out, before the rescuers had a chance to cut their way through. We could put up a barricade, though, and cut off the gassy part of the mine.
"Jim didn't want to work, at first. If he was going to die, he said, he might as well die of gas as of hunger. He talked a lot of rot about its being the easiest death. I was that sore, I could have kicked him.
"Anton was willing enough to work, though, and when Jim saw the two of us actually at work, he got over his grouch, went and got his pick and shovel and slaved as hard as any of us. We piled up the coal and rock, good and thick, and then scraped up all the fine dust we could find and made a thick blanket of that to keep the gas from coming through, as best we could.
"Putting up that barricade made us mighty hungry. We were working fast because the gas there was bad, and we knew the quicker we got away from it, the better for us. Being hungrydidn't do us much good. There wasn't much grub.
"We had only two pails of dinner, Jim's and mine. Anton's dinner pail was out by the entry where he took the loaded cars. So we pooled the food, and divided it into three exactly equal parts, each one of us to hide his share, and to eat it as quickly or as slowly as he pleased.
"Jim ate his at once, said he'd rather have one good meal than a lot of little bites which didn't mean anything. Anton made his last longer, he still had some food left when the lamps burned out. I only took a bite or two of mine, at that time, and managed to make eight meals of it, though, of course, I couldn't tell how many hours or days apart those meals were."
"How long did the safety-lamps burn?" asked the reporter.
"Eight hours after we were caught. They all went out within a few minutes of each other—and we had them pretty well turned down, too. I looked at my watch, just as the last one flickered out. It wasn't quite a quarter past eight."
"You had no matches?" the reporter asked.
"Matches? What a fool idea!" exclaimed Clem, amazed at the reporter's ignorance. "Ishould say not! Even the lamps are locked. We could have had light three times as long, if it wasn't for that, burning first one and then the other, but there's no way to light a lamp below ground.
"Before the lamps went out, each of us had scraped up a pile of coal dust to sleep on. It was plenty warm down there, and getting warmer all the time. The lack of air made us all heavy and drowsy. We were all asleep pretty soon after the lamps went out.
"We woke up in the dark. It was black as pitch, a blackness which weighed on you. It hurt. One's eyes wanted to fight against it.
"How long had we been asleep? An hour, ten hours, or the whole twenty-four? Not one of us could tell.
"But the sleep had done one good thing. It had helped Jim a lot. He was full of pep, again. The old prospecting optimism had come back. He was dead sure that he could find a way out. All it needed was looking for, he thought.
"Anton wasn't awake yet, and I didn't want to wake him up. The longer he slept, the better. I tried to reason with Jim that we'd already gone to all the openings there could be, but hewouldn't listen to reason. He wouldn't stay with us. He was restless. He just had to be up and wandering.
"'How are you going to find your way back?' I asked him. 'It's easy to get lost in the dark, and you don't know much about the mine.'
"'I'll be back with a full dinner-pail while you're sitting there doing nothing!' he boasted, and off he started. I'd have gone with him, quick enough, but I didn't want Anton to wake and find himself alone.
"After a while Anton woke up. I heard him munching, so I knew he was at his grub. I warned him not to finish it all at once, but he was so hungry he couldn't stop. I couldn't blame him much, at that. I was so ravenous that my stomach seemed to be tying itself up in knots, and the flesh inside seemed to crawl.
"I had to tell him that Jim had gone off by himself. Anton didn't say much to that. In fact, he didn't want to talk at all. He was brooding all the time. Twice I overheard him muttering to himself, and both times he was talking about Otto and his warning.
"I could see he was blaming me, but I'll saythis for the boy—he never once said that he regretted having come back to warn me."
"That," interrupted the superintendent emphatically, "shows the boy is good stuff. It takes a good deal of moral courage to keep from blaming some one else, when you're in a pinch. I remember, once, in West Australia—" He checked himself. "Go ahead with your story, lad."
Clem resumed.
"Some time after—it seemed about an hour, though it may have been a good deal less or a good deal more—we heard shouting.
"'Jim's found the way out!' cried Anton, and scrambled to his feet.
"I grabbed him as he rose.
"'Don't run off in that fool fashion,' I said to him. 'Make sure where the shouts are coming from, first. You've been down in a mine long enough to know that the echoes are apt to make a noise sound as if it comes in a directly opposite direction from the right one.'
"'I'm going to find Jim!' he insisted.
"'If you must run chances, why, I suppose you must,' said I. 'But I'm going to stay here,where the air's good. Try to get back here. Keep in touch. You take ten paces forward, then stop and shout. I'll answer. If you don't hear me, come back.'
"He promised and started off. For the first fifty yards or so—supposing that he shouted at every ten paces—I heard him clear enough.
"Then—not another sound! What had happened to him?
"I shouted again and again.
"No reply!
"What was I going to do? Both Jim and Anton were wandering around loose in the mine galleries, and they might stray until they dropped, without ever finding the way back. I yelled till I was hoarse.
"Then I got another idea. I took my pick, and kept on hitting the roof in three regular strokes: 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' and then a pause—just like that." He illustrated on the head-rail of his hospital bed. "I knew that the vibration would carry along the rock, farther than the voice."
"That's what the geophone man heard," Owens commented to the reporter. "Go on, lad!"
"I kept that up," Clem went on, "until my arms ached. I was so tired in my back and soweak with hunger that bright violet spots kept dancing before my eyes. But I kept on, just the same.
"Then I heard a shout, and, presently, Anton came staggering along, dead beat. He'd been guided back by the sound of the tapping.
"'No sign of Jim?' I asked
"'Nothing!'
"He lay down on the coal dust, and, pretty soon, I heard him breathing hard. He'd gone right off to sleep, exhausted, poor kid!"
"How long do you suppose he'd been wandering?" queried the reporter.
"No way of knowing. But I'm pretty husky, and I can stand an eight hours' shift of coal hewing without getting too tired. And, I tell you, I was about done out, just from reaching up and tapping that roof with a pick. Of course, I was weak. But I reckon it must have been eight hours, good, that the youngster was straying in those mine galleries, in the dark, alone. Maybe it was more.
"I must have gone to sleep, too, but it didn't seem for long. Half-asleep, I heard Anton say,
"'There's a rat gnawing at my stomach!'
"I woke up right quick, at that, for thoughmine rats are ugly customers, I thought if we could catch a rat or two, that might give us food. But what the boy meant was that he was so hungry that it felt as if a rat were there.
"I wasn't exactly hungry, leastways, not all the time. The pain came in cramps, that were bad enough while they lasted, but I didn't feel anything much between. My tongue was getting swollen, though. I knew what that meant. Drink of some sort we must have.
"'Look here, Anton,' I said, 'you tap on the rock, in threes, the same as I did, and I'll go try to find water. I know the lay-out of this mine better than you do, and there used to be a sump (hole) near the goaf (waste rock taken from the main gallery roofs). Maybe there'll be water there.'
"I started off, cheerfully enough. I reckoned I knew the mine. So I do, with a lamp, but I didn't have any idea what it meant to wander in the pitch-dark. The galleries were low there, too, not more than four feet high. I had to keep one hand stretched out in front of me to keep from going headlong into the wall, and the dinner pail that I was carrying in that hand struck the side more times than I could count; I keptthe other hand above my head, to keep me from cracking my skull against the cross-timbers holding up the low roof.
"Before I'd gone a hundred yards, I was so mixed up that I didn't know which way I was going or where I'd come from. It's a horrible feeling. The dark is like a trap that you can't feel and you can't see, but you know it's there. It's being blind with your eyes open.
"Then it was so ghastly silent, too. A blind man can always hear something. There's life around him. Down there, not a sound! I'd lost all hearing of the 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' I'd told Anton to make.
"All sorts of nasty things came into my head. I might step into a hole and get crippled. I might walk straight into a pocket of gas, and, without any safety lamp to tell me of the danger, be poisoned then and there. The roof might be bulging down, right over my head, ready to fall and I'd have no warning.
"I tried to reason it out that all these ideas were just imagination. Reasoning didn't do much good. Fright got a grip of me. I was in a cold sweat all over. My heart thumped so that it hurt. I was just horribly scared, rightthrough, and I had to bite my lips till they were raw to keep from screaming.
"I'd have gone under, sure, if I'd been alone, but I had the kid to think of, and every time the tin dinner pail banged against the wall, it reminded me of what I'd come to look for. Anton would die of thirst in a few hours, if I didn't find water. As for Jim, I reckoned he was probably done for, anyway.
"I think—I'm not sure but I think so—I had a spell of running crazily round and round in a circle, trying to get away from something—I don't know what. It was then I gave my head a bang," he pointed to the bandage still on his head, "and while that stunned me a bit, it steadied me, too.
"By that time, I was lost for fair. I couldn't hear Anton's tapping. I couldn't hear anything. I tried to turn back and got all mixed up in the run of the galleries. I wandered this way and that, as blindly as if I'd never been in the mine before.
"And then I heard a sound like the ticking of a big clock.
"That scared me more than anything.
"I remembered all Otto's' stories about the 'knockers,' and, though I didn't believe them, I couldn't get them out of my head. Somebody, something, was knocking softly underground!
"It wasn't human, that was sure!
"It couldn't be Anton, because he'd been told to tap in threes. It couldn't be Jim, for the ticks were too close together to be the strokes of a pick; besides, I knew that Jim had left his tools behind. It couldn't be rescuers, because the sound was near me. Near me? It was almost at my ear.
"Sometimes breaking timber cracks. It might be a prop gradually giving way, I thought, just ready to let down a new fall of rock on my head. But a creaking timber is sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and this ticking, as I said, was regular, like a big clock.
"Then I guessed!
"It was drops of water falling!
"I could have shouted with relief, but down there, in the dark and the stillness, the silence was so heavy that I was afraid to shout.
"I felt my way forward, one step and then a second, and the ticking stopped.
"I took a third step and it began again. I stepped backward, and a little to one side, and the drop fell on my bare shoulder.
"I took my dinner-pail, moved it forward, backward, this way and that, until at last I heard the drops falling in the tin.
"I was too thirsty to wait long. As soon as there was a teaspoonful of water in the pail, I moistened my tongue with it. That was a relief! I was able to hold out the tin pail, the next time, until there was a reasonable drink.
"Ugh, it was bitter! It tasted coppery and twisted up my mouth, but it was liquid, at least. After I had a drink or two, I felt better. My scare passed away.
"Then I began to think a bit. If water was dropping as quickly as that, it must be running somewhere. But where? I got down on my hands and knees and began to feel along the floor. Here it was damp; there, dry. I crawled along for a few minutes, following the line of the damp floor, and, sure enough, came to a hollow where a good-sized puddle had collected. There I was able to half-fill the pail.
"So far, I was all right. I'd found the water.But how was I to get back to Anton? And where was Jim, if he were still alive? I hadn't any idea, any more, of which way to turn.
"Then I got a scheme. Suppose I just walked straight ahead, keeping my right hand against the wall, and turning to the right at every opening I came to? I knew that we were hemmed in at every point. Therefore, I figured, we must be inside some kind of an irregular circle. The place where we had made our beds was in the room where I had been working, which was in the end gallery, and, at that rate, somewhere on the circumference of that circle. If I kept on going, long enough, I'd be bound to strike the place.
"Off I started with the pail half-full of water. I walked, in and out, up one gallery and down another, coming back to the rock falls which had blocked the way, and on again. I tried to count my paces, and, though I forgot sometimes, I figured that I'd done about seven thousand paces when I heard, faintly:
"'Tap! Tap! Tap!'
"It seemed to come from behind me.
"I wasn't to be fooled by the echoes, though,and so I kept on as I had been going. Just a little further and I turned a corner and came to the place where we had made our beds.
"Anton was down.
"He hadn't been able to keep on tapping on the roof, as I had told him to. He hadn't the strength. But the kid's pluck was holding, though his vitality wasn't. He'd taken his maul (a large hammer used for driving wedges in the coal) and was lifting this from the ground and then dropping it, three strokes at a time, like I'd told him to do.
"When I spoke to him he couldn't answer. His tongue was so swollen that it just about filled up his whole mouth.
"I gave him some water, a sip or two at a time, and then, when I thought he could stand it, a real drink. Even then, I had to go slow, for my dinner pail was only half-full.
"I still had a few bites of food left, but I wasn't hungry, I'd gone too far for that. My mouth was sore, too. The copperas water screwed up my palate and my tongue like eating unripe bananas does, only a lot worse. It worked the same way on Anton."
"It was that water that helped you, though,"put in the mine doctor. "The sulphate of iron in it lowered the activity of the body, drying it up, so that you could go on with less loss of tissue."
"It tasted nasty enough to have anything in it! Just the same, it was water. When I woke up from a nap, I found the pail empty. The youngster had finished it, but when I rowed him for doing it, he couldn't remember having drunk it at all. He was only half-conscious, any way.
"My tongue was beginning to swell again. I saw we'd have to shift our headquarters so as to be near that water, or the time would come when we'd be too weak to go hunting it. So, following the same scheme of making a whole circle of the part of the mine where we were trapped, I went back the way I'd come, making sure that Anton was following right behind me.
"It seemed a whole lot farther off than I'd thought, I suppose because I was afraid of passing the place. After a couple of hours, though, I heard the sound of the dropping water. It was great to hear it again! We took some long drinks there, I can tell you. Then we scooped up with our hands some coal dust to lie on, and slumped down again. I was beginning to feel pretty weak."
"About what day do you suppose that was?" the reporter asked.
"I haven't any idea. Sometimes I thought we'd only been down there a few hours, sometimes it seemed like weeks. I suppose, really, it was about the third or the fourth day.
"I woke up suddenly.
"Somebody was laughing!
"It was a queer high-pitched laugh, and half-choked, something like the neighing of a horse.
"Anton heard it, too.
"'The knockers are coming for us!' he said to me, hoarsely. 'It's just like Father said. They're laughing at us!'
"Well, I don't mind telling you my blood ran a bit cold. I'm not superstitious, but, for the second time in that mine, I was scared enough to run. But where to?
"Anton was gasping horribly; it made me worse to hear him. I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. He was trembling and shaking, like as he had a chill.
"The laughing came nearer, and louder.
"The louder it got, the less I was scared. After the first few seconds of fright, I got all rightagain, and started to think quietly. Then the real reason came to me.
"It must be Jim!
"I let out a loud shout.
"The laughing stopped dead.
"Then I knew it was Jim; things that weren't human wouldn't care if I shouted or not.
"'Keep quiet!' I said to Anton. 'It's Jim, and he's coming this way.'
"Presently the laughter began again, a sort of half choked scream, like I said, but it was laughing just the same. It made my flesh creep to hear it. Somehow it wasn't quite human, more like an animal trying to laugh like a man.
"It was quite close to us, now. I got up, for I could hear steps shuffling along the gallery.
"Suddenly, something bumped into me, though I thought the steps were several yards away.
"It was Jim, sure enough.
"He gave a sort of screech and both his hands went up to my throat, in a strangling grip.
"I'm a good deal bigger than Jim, but I was like a baby in his hands. He had me like in a vise.
"'Help! Help! Anton!' I called. 'He's throttling me! It's Jim!'
"At that, the kid got up, tottering. He was weak enough, but, as you know, he's really got muscles of iron. In spite of his scare—for he was dead sure that it was something supernatural—he came to my help.
"The minute he got his hands on Jim and found that it was really flesh and blood that he was tackling, and not any sort of goblin, he got furious. He wrenched at his opponent savagely, and the more furious he got, the more his strength came back. I could hear his sinews cracking.
"But Jim's grip was that of a madman.
"It was a good thing for me that Anton was the son of the champion wrestler of the mine. Despite his powerful muscles, he could do nothing, absolutely nothing against the madman. I felt him let go, and thought that was the end. My head was bursting, my heart fluttering.
"Then, with a swift change of hold, the youngster took Jim in a wrestler's grip, one he had learned from his father. It's a death hold, unless the other weakens. I heard Jim gasp. The clutch loosened. At last I could breathe and I shook myself free.
"But the madman was not tamed. His fists shot out like flails. One blow took Anton fullin the chest. I heard his body crash against the wall. I could do little to help him, that choking grip had taken away every ounce of force I had.
"There wasn't any need for my help. That blow had roused Anton to a rage but little less than that of his mad foe. He knew nothing of boxing, but he could wrestle. It was a grim fight, down there in the dark!
"Despite the madman's blows, Anton ran in, clutched him in some kind of a wrestler's grip, lifted him clear off his feet and threw him over his shoulder.
"The madman fell heavily on the rock floor and lay like a log.
"For a minute or two we panted, saying nothing. Then,
"'Have you killed him, Anton?' I asked.
"'I don't know. I hope so,' he answered savagely.
"I felt pretty much that way, myself, at first, for my throat felt as if it were twisted clear out of shape. But, as I began to feel a bit better, I thought of Jim lying there.
"After all, he hadn't had any water! Small wonder he'd gone mad.
"Staggering—for that grip had nearly donefor me—I got over beside him and knelt down. His heart was still beating, pretty rapidly, at that. But his jaws were almost locked upwards, forced apart by his thickened and swollen tongue.
"I got some water into his mouth, but with difficulty. I couldn't pry his tongue down far enough to get more than a drop or two in. But I kept at it—hours, I reckon—and kept on giving him sips of water until he began to breathe a bit more naturally.
"Then I reckon I fainted, for, when I came to, I was lying right across Jim. He was still unconscious, but the tongue was a whole lot better and he was nearly able to close his mouth. I poured a lot more water into him. Then I tried to give him a bite from the bread I had left, but he couldn't swallow. So I gave it to Anton, who was moaning a good bit.
"Me, I was getting less and less hungry. The gnawing pain that I'd felt at the beginning, especially that first time that I was hunting water, only came back at longer and longer intervals. In between, I felt quite all right, rather jolly, in fact. I caught myself laughing, once, the way I'd heard Jim, and I had hard work to stop it. Hysterical, I reckon.
"I must have slept a lot, or fainted, I don't know which. I remember having dreamed that I was rescued, oh, a score of times! Always, when I was asleep, there seemed plenty of light, generally a bright violet. It was only when I woke up that it was dark. The blackness was like a rock lying on my chest. The air I breathed seemed to taste black.
"Jim got violent, more than once. To end up, I had to tie his feet with my belt, so he couldn't get up on his feet. I wasn't going to risk any more fights like we'd had with him at the start.
"When he wasn't struggling, he was talking. He talked nearly all the time, and mostly about some gold mine that he'd found, that he knew would make him a millionaire and that he wanted to go back to. He described the place, over and over again. I believe I could go right there, just from hearing him. The only thing that quieted him was when I answered. Then he'd shut right up, only to begin again, after a while.
"What worried me the most about Jim was that he couldn't keep the bitter water on his stomach. He'd vomit it up, almost as soon as I'd get it down. I kept pouring it into him, just the same.
"When I put the last bite of grub into Anton—he was dead unconscious—it seemed like the end of everything. I lost all track of time. I don't know what happened, after that. I got quite light-headed, I think.
"Half the while, I didn't know whether the time I was dreaming was real, or the time I was awake. I knew somehow that the air was getting bad, and I remember thinking that this might be because a rescue party was trying to get down the wall.
"But there was always plenty of light when I was asleep, and I liked that, so, every time I was awake, I tried to go back to sleep."
"Didn't you hear any sounds of the rescue party coming nearer?" Owens asked.
"I heard them all the time, even when they weren't there," Clem answered. "How was I to tell what was real and what was dream?
"On one side was Jim telling about his gold mine, on the other was Anton, crying out from time to time that the knockers had him. Poor kid, he seemed to be in a nightmare all the while."
"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine suggested, "you answered naturally enough."
"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.
"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.
"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."
"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting another phase of the story. "What was that?"
Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his comrade threw him a reassuring look.
"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I can't give away his secret. It might be true!"
In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure, lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:
Gold!
Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old. The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of millions, untold.
He reasoned with himself for his foolishness.Over and over again he reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done. The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once known so well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.
The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn of history as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliest laws as yet known—the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B. C. 3000—both gold and silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal and priestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buried with the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.
There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who kept unlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus, the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits near Mt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge of gold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.
The Phœnicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on long expeditions to distantlands in search of gold. Cadmus, the Phœnician, in B. C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established a regular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happen on the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancient historian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of gold near Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.
One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest of the Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest in the oared shipArgo—and hence called the Argonauts—have given their name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales in all the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.
The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harks back to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefest form, runs the tale:
In a minor kingdom of what is now Northern Greece, there lived a king, Athamas, son of the god of the sea, who had married Nephele, the goddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in love with Ino, grand-daughter ofAphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The cloud-goddess, indignant at this neglect, disappeared, leaving behind her two children, Phrixus and Helle.
It was not long before the stepmother conceived a violent hatred for the children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty, she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the king refused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine in the land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sown and thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, she persuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeased if he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sake of his country, the king agreed.
All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priest had the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over the scene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads of gold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out all vision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer see his victim to deal the fatal blow. Then came a rift in the fog, and, through the swirl of mist, Athamas and Ino saw Phrixus and hissister leap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.
Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plunged into the waters of the strait that lies between Europe and Asia Minor, breasting the waves with ease. Helle fell from the back of the ram and was drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) was known to the Greeks as the Hellespont.
Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of his cloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and took the fleece to Æetes, king of Colchis. Æetes at first received him with honor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and made Phrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in the grove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there the mystic treasure was guarded by a dragon which never slept.
Now Pelias, brother of Athamas, had usurped the throne of Thessaly. When Jason, son of the true king, Aeson, had grown to man's estate, he presented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender the kingdom.
The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would side with Jason, did not refuseoutright. He demanded, only, that Jason should show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act of heroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, and Jason agreed.
"This will I do," said Jason, "name the deed!"
Cunningly the king answered,
"Bring me the Golden Fleece!"
Jason, high-hearted, set out on the quest. Since he must cross the sea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of the cloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess of wisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. The fifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prow a piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.
The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and none but heroes were members of the crew. Such men—demigods, most of them—had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of the charmed lyre; Zetes and Calaïs, sons of the North Wind; Castor and Pollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar; Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son of Zeus, whose twelvelabors were famous in all antiquity; and others of little lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.
Many and strange were their adventures in theArgo, of which there is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the voyage of theArgois a story that will never die.
Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months—or it may have been years—Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought. There they presented themselves before Æetes and demanded the Golden Fleece.
The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the bulls of Hephæstus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.
Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it, Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the witch-daughter of Æetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly from hatred of Æetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.
Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the task Æetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field of Ares and sowed it with thedragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil, which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.
There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept. Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at last!
Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward, Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in theArgo, and she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words and could not retract.
TheArgohad not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that Æetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The anguished fatherstopped to collect the fragments and to return them to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the Argonauts escaped.
So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing. At the first land where theArgostopped, he married her.
At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey of theArgowas not less wild and difficult than her coming.
Yet, at the last, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece to Thessaly, only to find that the false Pelias had slain Aeson and Jason's mother and brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was not left unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut their father into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot with certain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by this means the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jason and Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and their deaths were not long delayed.
Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record of the European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, and to the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring to Greece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift of gold was regarded as the favor of the gods.