Time went slowly then, for we could load a car together in less than an hour; and sometimes it took an hour and a half before the 'gathering' motor would come grinding up into the room to give us an 'empty.' In those long half-hours we would sit together on a pile of coal-dust beside the track and try to talk to each other.

Jim was a Greek, and from what I was able to gather, he came from somewhere in the southern part of the peninsula. I remembered a little Homer, and I often tried stray words on him; but my pronunciation of the Greek of ancient Athens was not the Greek of Jim Bardas; and although he recognized attempts at his own tongue and oftentimes the meaning of the words, it was not until we discovered a system of writing that we began to get along. Mixed in with the coal that had been blasted down by the shot-firers the night before, we occasionally found strips of white paper from the cartridges. We always saved these and laid them beside our dinner-pails; and when the car was filled and we had sat down again in the quiet beside the track, we would take our pit-lamps out of our caps and, rubbing our fingers in the greasy gum of oil and coal-dust that formed under the lamp-spout, we would write Greek words with our fingers on the white strips of paper.

Jim knew some English: the word for coal, car, loader—and he learned that my name was Joe, and called me 'My friend,' and 'buddie.' Then sometimes, after the fascination of writing words had worn away, we would sit still and listen to the gas or for the approach of the motor; and sometimes, when the wicks in our lamps had burned low, I would take out of my pocket the round ball of lamp-wick, and, like old women with a skein of yarn, we would wind back and forth, from his fingers to my own, sixteen strands of lamp-wick; and then, tying the end in a rude knot and breaking it off, stick the skein of wick down the spout of the lamp until only the end remained in sight. Next, lifting the little lid on the top, we would fill the body with oil, shaking it until the wick was thoroughly soaked so that it would burn.

III

To the ear accustomed to the constant sound of a living world, the stillness of a coal-mine, where the miles of cross-cuts and entries and the unyielding walls swallow up all sounds and echo, is a silence that is complete; but, as one becomes accustomed to the silence through long hours of solitary work, sounds become audible that would escape an ear less trained. The trickling murmur of the gas; the spattering fall of a lump of coal, loosened by some mysterious force from a cranny in the wall; the sudden knocking and breaking of a stratum far up in the rock above; or the scurry of a rat off somewhere in the darkness—strike on the ear loud and startlingly. The eye, too, becomes trained to penetrate the darkness; but the darkness is so complete that there is a limit, the limit of the rays cast by the pit-lamp.

There is a curious thing that I have noticed, and as I have never heard it mentioned by any of the other men, perhaps it is an idea peculiar to myself; but on days when I entered the mine, with the strong yellow sunlight and the blue sky as a last memory of the world above, I carried with me a condition of fair weather that seemed to penetrate down into the blackness of the entries and make my pit-lamp burn a little more brightly. On days when we entered the mine with a gray sky above, or with a cold rain beating in our faces, there was a depression of spirits that made the blackness more dense and unyielding, and the lights from the lamps seemed less cheerful.

Sometimes the roof was bad in the rooms, and I soon learned from the older miners to enter my room each morning testing gingerly with my pit-lamp for the presence of gas, and reaching far up with my pick, tapping on the smooth stone roof to test its strength. If the steel rang clean against the stone, the roof was good; but if it sounded dull and drummy, it might be dangerous. Sometimes, when the roof was weak, we would call for the section boss and prop up the loosened stone; but more often, the men ran their risk. We worked so many days in safety that it seemed strange that death could come; and when it did come, it came so suddenly that there was a surprise, and the next day we began to forget.

I had heard much of the dangers that the miner is exposed to, but little has been said of the risks to which the men through carelessness subject themselves. Death comes frequently to the coal-miners from a 'blown-out shot.' When the blast is inserted in the drill-hole, several dummy cartridges are packed in for tamping. If these are properly made and tamped, the force of the explosion will tear down the coal properly; but if the man has been careless in his work, the tamps will blow out like shot from a gun-barrel, and igniting such gas or coal-dust as may be present, kill or badly burn the shot-firers. The proper tamping is wet clay, but it is impossible to convince the men of it, and nine out of ten will tamp their holes with dummies filled with coal-dust (itself a dangerous explosive) scooped up from the side of the track. Again, powder-kegs are sometimes opened in a manner which seems almost the act of an insane man. Rather than take the trouble to unscrew the cap in the head of the tin powder-keg and pour out the powder through its natural opening, the miner will drive his pick through the head of the keg and pour the powder from the jagged square hole he has punched. And these are but two of the many voluntary dangers which a little care on the part of the men themselves would obviate.

A mine always seems more or less populated when the day-shift is down; for during the hours of the working day, in every far corner, at the head of every entry and room, there are men drilling, loading, and ever pushing forward its boundaries. At five o’clock the long line of blackened miners which is formed at the foot of the hoisting-shaft begins to leave the mine; and by six o’clock, with the exception of a few inspectors and fire-bosses, the mine is deserted.

The night-shift began at eight, and it was as though night had suddenly been hastened forward, to step from the soft evening twilight on the hoist, and, in a brief second, leave behind the world and the day and plunge back into the darkness of the mine.