The space was widening steadily, but very, very slowly.
After a time he threw down the pick and passed his head through the opening, but it was not yet large enough to receive his body.
The air that was now coming up the chamber was very bad, and it was blue with smoke, besides.
The boy bent to his task with renewed energy; but every blow exhausted him, and he had to wait before striking another. He was chipping the coal away, though, piece by piece, inch by inch.
By and by, by a stroke of rare good-fortune, a blow that drew the pick from the lad's weak hands and sent it rattling down upon the other side, loosened a large block at the top of the opening, and it fell with a crash.
Now he could get through, and it would be none too soon either. He dropped his oil-can down on the other side, then his lamp, and then, after a single moment's rest, he crawled into the aperture, and tumbled heavily to the floor of the old mine.
It was not a great fall; he fell from a height of only a few feet, but in his exhausted condition it stunned him, and he lay for some minutes in a state of unconsciousness.
The air was better in here, he was below the line of the poisoned current, and he soon revived, sat up, picked up his lamp, and looked around him.
He was evidently in a worked-out chamber. Over his head in the side-wall was the opening through which he had fallen, and he knew that the first thing to be done was to close it up and prevent the entrance of any more foul air.
There was plenty of slate and of coal and of dirt near by, but he could not reach up so high and work easily, and he had first to build a platform against the wall, on which to stand.