The Making Of A Novelist / An Experiment In Autobiography

by David Christie Murray

'Well,' said the great man with much composure, 'if I find you there I shall chuck you out of window.'

I told him that that was a game which two might play at; at which he burst into a great laugh and clapped me on the shoulder. We agreed to take bed and sofa on alternate nights, and there the matter ended; but I found out my rival's name, and would have been willing, in the enthusiasm of my hero-worship, to resign anything to him. Anything, that is to say, but my own ambitions as a journalist and the interests of the Morning News.

Here was a chance indeed. Here was a foeman worthy of any man's steel. To beat Archibald Forbes would be, as it seemed then, to crown oneself with everlasting glory, and I was not altogether without hope of doing it. For one thing, I was native to the country-side. I spoke the dialect, and that was a great matter. Forbes was incomprehensible to half the men, and three-fourths of what they said was incomprehensible to him. There was to be a descent and an attempt at rescue on the midnight of the third day after the breaking in of the waters, and I had secured permission to accompany the party.

I hired a horse at a livery-stable at Walsall, and had him kept in readiness in the back yard of a beerhouse. My giant enemy, after maintaining a strict watch on matters for eight-and-forty hours at a stretch, had gone to bed at last, convinced that nothing could be done. It was a dreadful night, and not an easy matter for one unaccustomed to the place to find his way to the pit's mouth. The iron cages of fire that burned there in the windy rain and the dark impeded rather than helped the stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in readiness, and the descent was made at once.

We were under the command of Mr. Walter Ness, a valiant Scotchman, who afterwards became the manager of her Majesty's mines in Warora, Central India. Five or six of us huddled together on the 'skip,' the word was given, and we shot down into the black shaft, which seemed in the light of the lamps we carried as if its wet and shining walls of brick rushed upwards whilst we kept stationary. In a while we stopped, with a black pool of water three or four fathoms below us.

'This 'll be the place,' said one of the men, and tapped the wall with a pick.

'Yes,' said Mr. Ness, 'that will be about the place; try it.'

The man lay down upon his stomach upon the floor of the skip and worked away a single brick, which fell with a splash into the pool below. Then out came another and another, until there was a hole there big enough for a man to crawl through. We had struck upon an old disused airway which led into the inner workings of the mine. One by one we snaked our way from the skip into the hole; and, whatever the miners thought about it, it was rather a scarey business for me. We all got over safely enough and began a journey on all fours through mud and slush five or six inches deep. Here and there the airway was lofty enough to allow us to walk with bent heads and rounded shoulders. Sometimes it was so low that we had to go snakewise. There was one place where the floor and roof of the passage had sunk so that we actually had to dive for it. This seemed a little comfortless at the time, but it saved our lives afterwards. After a toilsome scramble we came upon the stables, and found there the first dead body.

It was that of a lad named Edward Colman, who had met his death in a curious and dreadful manner. He was sitting on a rocky bench, and at his feet lay a rough hunch of bread and meat and a clasp-knife. He had heard evidently the cry of alarm, had sprung to his feet, and had struck the top of his head with fatal force against a projecting lance of rock immediately above him. There had been a speedy end to his troubles, poor fellow, and he sat there stiff and cold and pallid, staring before him like a figure in an exhibition of waxworks.

The waters barred our further descent into the mine, but there was a belief that by breaking through the earthy wall of the stable a continuation of the old airway would be found. The experiment was tried with an alarming result No sooner was the breach made than a slow stream of choke-damp flowed into the chamber, and the lights began to go out one by one. We scrambled back at once for our lives, and once past the pool were safe; the water effectually blocked the passage of the poisonous gas. I got but one whiff of it; but it gave me a painful sensation at the bridge of the nose which lasted acutely for some days. In all, our expedition had not lasted an hour; but it had proved to demonstration the impossibility of saving a single life.