Dick shrieked out with fear. He trembled all over, and the next moment, just as a loud, hoarse laugh sounded in his ear, he went off in a faint.
“Kenner, kenner, kenner!” was shouted down the pit’s mouth, and echoed along the galleries. Samuel Kempson heard it far away, and, crawling out of the hole in which he had been hewing, threw his pick and spade over his shoulder, and took his way homeward, not over pleasant green fields as labourers in the country have to do, but along the dark, black gallery, lighted by his solitary Davy lamp, which was well-nigh burnt out. He did not forget his boy Dick. He called out to him, but got no reply. Again and again he called. His heart sank within him, for he loved the little fellow, though he made him work in a way which, to others, might appear cruel. Could anything have happened to the child? Once more he called, “Dick, Dick!” Still there was no answer. Perhaps some of the other men had taken him home. He went on some way towards the pit’s mouth, then his mind misgave him, and he turned back. To a stranger, all the traps would have looked alike, but he well knew the one at which Dick was stationed. He pushed it open, and there, at a little distance from it, he saw a small heap of clothes. He sprang forward. It was Dick. Was his boy dead? He feared so. The child neither moved nor breathed. He snatched him up, and ran on with him to the foot of the shaft, where several men stood waiting to be drawn up. The rough men turned to him with looks of pity in their faces.
“Anything fallen on the little chap?” asked one.
“Foul air, may be,” observed a second.
“Did a rolley strike him, think you?” asked a third.
“I don’t know,” answered the father; “I can’t find where he’s hurt. But do let us get up, he may chance to come to in fresh air.”
As he spoke, the “skip,” or “bowk,” used for descending and ascending the shaft, reached the bottom, and Samuel Kempson and his boy were
helped into it, and with some of the other men, began their ascent. The father held the boy in his arms, and watched his countenance as they neared the light which came down from the mouth of the pit; first a mere speck, like a star at night, and growing larger and larger as they got up higher.
An eyelid moved, the lip quivered: “He’s alive, he’s alive!” he exclaimed joyfully.