A CHILD BURIED IN THE COAL.
A third prisoner, a child, was still left. His comrades described the place where they had buried him in the coal to keep him warmer. The engineer hastened to the spot, and seized the child, who embraced him and wept; the three were taken at once to the hospital, where they soon found themselves in the company of the other two, who had already been saved.
FALLING IN OF A MINE.
Like their comrades whose story I have just told, the three last colliers had fled before the water from the first moment of its breaking in, and finding a rubbish passage stopped up, they despairingly made an opening into it. They afterwards clambered to the heading of the gallery as a last refuge. Their lamps were out, but they heard the water rise, and retreated before it. The noise occasioned by falls, and the breaking of timber, as well as the sound of explosions caused by compressed air, reached their ears distinctly, like a frightful tumult, which seemed to announce to them the last hours they had to live. One of them had a repeating watch, which he caused to strike several times; but it stopped on the morning of the 12th of October at a quarter to three o’clock. They heard the noise of the tubs plunging into the water in two adjacent shafts. They conceived the idea of reckoning the progress of time by means of the short intervals of rest caused by changing the gangs. They thus formed a very near guess at the period of their captivity, which they reckoned at fifteen days, instead of thirteen.
To satisfy their hunger, they ate the rotten wood of the timber supports, which they crumbled in water, and then devoured, having previously eaten their leather belts. They could quench their thirst at will, and that sustained them. Afterwards the water rose to where they were, and wet their feet. Subsequently it fell, and then they thought of fastening one of their boots to a string and drinking out of it. Finding the water retiring, the child resolved to go in search of an outlet. Swimming or holding on by the walls, he groped his way along, but found nothing. Exhausted and chilled with cold, he returned to his companions, who lay close to him to warm him, and then covered him with small coal, in which position he was found.
THIRTEEN DAYS IN DARKNESS.
These men were liberated after being shut up thirteen days: the temperature, the pressure, and the composition of the air in which they were found, were favorable to life, and, moreover, they had the means of quenching thirst. Under such conditions, it may be possible to live a month. Our nature can endure a great deal when it is compelled to exert itself. The energy and tenacity of life are great, and few men know how much they can undergo until they are driven to make the experiment.
Only five were saved in this catastrophe at the mines of Lalle. All the rest of the one hundred and ten perished. Drainage of the mine was steadily pushed amid innumerable accidents, and the colliery was free of water on the 4th of the following January, fifty million gallons of water having been removed. During the interval the bodies were slowly discovered, and heart-rending was the spectacle which the mouth of the shaft presented as the bodies of the victims were drawn up, relatives and friends pressing forward and endeavoring to recognize or guess at some well-known face. And the scene in the mine, as the water slowly fell and the bodies were found floating on the surface with the light thrown upon them by the lamps of the searchers, is described as horrible in the extreme.