The underworld: The story of Robert Sinclair, miner

by James C. Welsh

Robert, thereupon, sat down in silence at the table, though there were a hundred different things he wanted to ask about the pit. He could not understand why everyone felt and looked so sleepy, nor divine the cause of the irritable look upon each face, which in the dim light of the paraffin lamp gave a forbidding atmosphere to the home at this time of the day.

At last, however, the meal was over, and when Geordie had lit his pit lamp and stuck his pipe in his mouth, all three started off with a curt "Good morning" to Mrs. Sinclair, who looked after her boys with a smile which chased away the previous irritability from her face.

Arrived at the pit-head, they found a number of miners there squatting on their "hunkers," waiting the time for descending the shaft. As each newcomer came forward, the man who arrived immediately before him called out: "I'm last." By this means—"crying the benns,"—as it was called—the order of descent was regulated on the principle of "First come, first served." Much chaffing was leveled at little Robert by some of the younger men regarding his work and the things which would have to be done by and to him that day.

At last came the all important moment, and Robert, his father and two men stepped on to the cage. After the signal was given, it seemed to the boy as if heaven and earth were passing away in the sudden sheer drop, as the cage plunged down into the yawning hole, out of which came evil smells and shadows cast from the flickering lamps upon the heads of the miners. The rattling of the cage sent a shiver of fear through Robert, and with that first sudden plunge he felt as if his heart were going to leap out of his mouth. But by the time he reached the "bottom," he had consoled and encouraged himself with the thought that these things were all in the first day's experience of all miners.

That morning Robert Sinclair was initiated into the art of "drawing" by his brother John. The road was fairly level, to push the loaded "tubs," thus leaving his father to be helped with the pick at the coal "face." After an hour or two, Robert, though getting fairly well acquainted with the work, was feeling tired. The strange damp smell, which had greeted his nostrils when the cage began to descend with him that morning, was still strong, though not so overpowering as it had been at first. The subtle shifting shadows cast from his little lamp were becoming familiar, and his nervousness was not now so pronounced, though he was still easily startled if anything unusual took place. The sound of the first shot in the pit nearly frightened him out of his wits, and he listened nervously to every dull report with a strange uneasiness. About one o'clock his father called to him.

"Dinna tak' that hutch oot the noo, Robert. Just let it staun', an' sit doon an' tak' yir piece. Ye'll be hungry, an' John an' me will be out the noo if we had this shot stemmed."

"A' richt," cheerfully replied the boy, withdrawing down to the end of the road, where his clothes hung upon a tree, and taking his bread from one of his pockets, he sat down tired and hungry to await his father and John.

Geordie's "place" was being worked over the old workings of another mine which had exhausted most of the coal of a lower seam many years previously, except for the "stoops" or pillars, which had been left in. This was supposed to be the barrier beyond which Rundell's lease did not go. It would be too dangerous to work the upper seam with the ground hollow underneath, so the "places" had all been stopped as they came up, with the exception of Geordie Sinclair's. Sinclair was puzzled at this, and he often wondered why his place had not been stopped with the others. He was more uneasy, too, when he began to find large cracks or fissures in the metals, and spoke of this to Andrew Marshall a few nights before; but he did not like to seem to make too much of it, and the matter was passed over, till the day before, when Walker visited the place for a few minutes, when Geordie accosted him.

"What way is my place going on?" he asked, and was told that it was a corner in the barrier, which extended for one hundred yards and must go on for that distance, and that there was really no danger, as the ground below was solid.

So, busily working away, and finding still more rents in the floor and roof, Sinclair thought it must just be as he had seen it in other places of a like kind, the weight of the upper metals which were breaking over the solid ground by reason of the hollow beneath between the stoops, though in this case it did not amount to much as yet.