Interior View, Showing Life-Saving Equipment.
It was not long, however, before it became evident that there was a limit to the usefulness of the respirators. Excellent as they were for exploring galleries filled with poisonous gas, it was difficult to do fast digging in them. The work slowed down.
"Look here, Mr. Owens," protested Otto, "if we don't go no faster'n we're goin' now, it'll be a month afore we get through. Let us go in! If the gas is bad, we'll take hour shifts, or half-hour shifts, or ten-minute shifts, if it comes to that! The men'll tough it out as long as they can!"
"What about it?" said the superintendent, to the Director of the Bureau of Mines car.
"If the men are willing to take the risk! But we can purify the air to some extent, anyway. I've a man down there with a Burrell gas detector, which is several hundred times more sensitive than any canary, so that we can keep a close watch on the air changes, and there are plenty of tanks of compressed oxygen to be got. I've some here in the car, and a telegram to Pittsburgh will bring us more in a few hours. We can put in another bellows, too.
"This miner's right enough, about the digging. Fast work can't be done in respirators. The men will have to use electric cap lamps, of course, but I've a big supply in the car."
Back into the poisoned air the miners went. That strain soon tested out the men, and, as the old miner had said to Clem, a week before, the young men and the single men were compelled to give up, first. Old Otto stood up to his work with the best of them, but forty minutes at a stretch was as long as any of the men could stand.
On Tuesday night, the rescuers working out from the up-take shaft broke through the obstruction into the North Gallery. The three men who had been imprisoned there were found asleep, close to the sleep that knows no waking, terribly poisoned by the lack of oxygen.