Taking Tales: Instructive and Entertaining Reading

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Life Underground; or, Dick the Colliery Boy.

Young Dick Kempson sat all by himself in the dark, with a rope in his hand, at the end of a narrow passage, close to a thick, heavy door. There was a tramway along the passage, for small wagons or cars to run on. It was very low and narrow, and led to a long distance. Young Dick did not like to think how far. It was not built with brick or stone, like a passage in a house, but was cut out; not through rock, but what think you? through coal.

Young Dick was down a coal mine, more than one thousand feet below the green fields and trees and roads and houses—not that there were many green fields, by the bye, about there. The way down to the mine was by a shaft, like a round well sunk straight down into the earth to where the coal was known to be. Coal is found by boring, with an iron rod, one piece screwed on above another, with a place in the end to bring up the different sorts of earth it passes through. This shaft was more than a thousand feet deep; some are still deeper. Most people have heard of Saint Paul’s, the highest church in England; just place three such buildings one on the top of the other, and we have the depth down which young

Dick had to go every day to his work. In the bottom of this shaft, main passages and cross passages ran off for miles and miles to the chambers or places where men were digging out the coal.

The door near which Dick sat was called a trap, and Dick was called a “trapper.” His business was to open the trap when the little wagons loaded with coal came by; pushed, or put, by boys who are therefore called “putters.” They bring the coal from the place where the hewers are at work to the main line, where it is hoisted up on the rolleys, or wagons, to be carried to the foot of the shaft. Dick was eleven years old, but he was small of his age, and he did not know much. How should he? He had passed twelve hours of every six days in the week, for three years of his short life, under ground, in total darkness. He had two candles, but one lasted him only while he passed from the shaft to his trap, and the other to go back again. He had begun to trap at seven years old, and went on for two years, and then the good Lord Shaftesbury got a law made that no little boys under ten years of age should work in mines; and so he got a year above ground. During that time he went to a school, but he did not learn much, as it was a very poor one.

When he was ten years old, he had to go into the mine again; he had now been there every day for a year. He had heard talk of ghosts and spirits; and some of the bigger boys had told him that there was a great black creature, big enough to fill up all the passage, and that he had carried off a good many of the little chaps, once upon a time, no one knew where, only they had never come back again. Poor little Dick thought that he too might be carried away some day.

Often while he sat there, all alone in the dark, he trembled from head to foot, as he heard strange sounds, cries and groans it seemed. Was it the spirits of the boys carried off, or was it the monster coming to take him away? He dared not run away, he dared not even move. He had been there nine hours, with a short time for meals, when his father had come for him, and he would have to be three more, to earn his tenpence a day. It was Saturday, no wonder that he was sleepy, and, in spite of his fears of ghosts and hobgoblins, that he dropped asleep. He had been dreaming of the black creature he had been told of. He thought he saw him creeping, creeping towards him. He felt a heavy blow on his head. He shrieked out, he thought that it was the long expected monster come to carry him off. It was only Bill Hagger, the putter, with his corve, or basket of coals. An oath came with the blow, and further abuse. Poor little Dick dared not complain. He would only cry and pull open his door, and shut it again directly Bill was through.

Bill Hagger was black enough, all covered with coal-dust; but still it was better to have a cuff from him than to be carried off by the big creature, he did not know where, still deeper down into the earth. So he dried the tears which were dropping from his eyes and forming black mud on his cheeks, and tried to keep awake till the next putter and his loaded corve should come by, or Bill Hagger should return with his empty one.

Bill had not far to go to reach the crane, where the corve would be hoisted on the rolley, or wagon, to be dragged by a pony along the rolley-way to the foot of the shaft. Dick wished that Bill had farther to go, because he was pretty certain to give him a cuff or kick in passing, just to remind him to look out sharp the next time. There was another thing he wished, that it was time for “kenner,” when his father would come and take him home to his mother. What “kenner” means, we shall know by-and-by.