Not Demons, but Saviors.

Mine rescue crew, equipped with oxygen-breathing apparatus, exploring mine after a disaster.

Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.

U. S. SERVICE SERIES.

THE BOY WITH
THE U. S. MINERS

BY
FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER

With Thirty-six Illustrations

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Copyright, 1922,
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

All Rights Reserved

The Boy With the U. S. Miners

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

BERWICK & SMITH CO.,
NORWOOD PRESS,
NORWOOD MASS.

PREFACE

No walk of life is more wild and adventurous than that of the questing miner, whom neither Arctic cold nor tropic heat can bar in his mad race for the buried treasures of the Earth; no profession is more hazardous than that of the working miner, whose every step underground is full of peril.

Wealth is not all. The thrill of the miner's life lies not in the making of millions. It lies in the ruggedness of his manhood, in the vigor of his partnerships, in the roaring ways of the mining camps, and the life of open spaces.

Heroism and daring mark the miner. From the waterless deserts of California to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, from the loftiest peaks of the snow-capped Sierras to the stifling depths of the Carson Sink, the prospector has prowled. Lonely and forgotten, his discoveries have brought great states into being; hungry and poor, he has opened vaults of riches thousandfold vaster than the treasuries of kings.

To give a glimpse of the lives of such men, to reveal the amazing wealth which the Earth yields to those who are willing to dare, and to set forth what an incalculable debt of gratitude the United States owes to the miner, is the aim and purpose of

The Author

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BOY WITH THE U S. MINERS

CHAPTER I
UNDERGROUND TERRORS

"Ay, lad," said the old miner, the pale flame of his cap-lamp lighting up his wrinkled face and throwing a distorted shadow on the wall of coal behind, "there's goin' to be a plenty of us killed soon."

"Likely enough, if they're all as careless as you," Clem retorted.

"Carelessness ain't got nothin' to do with it," the old man replied. "The 'knockers' has got to be satisfied! There ain't been an accident here for months. It'll come soon! The spirits o' the mine is gettin' hungry for blood."

"Nonsense, Otto! The idea of an old-timer like you believing in goblins and all that superstitious stuff!"

"It's easy enough for you to say 'nonsense,' Clem Swinton, an' to make game o' men who were handlin' a coal pick when you was playin' with a rattle, but that don't change the facts. Why, even Anton, here, youngster that he is, knows better'n to deny the spirits below ground. The knockers got your father, Anton, didn't they?"

Anton Rover, one of the youngest boys in the mine, to whom the old miner had turned for affirmation, nodded his head in agreement. Like many of his fellows, the lad was profoundly credulous.

From his Polish mother—herself the daughter of a Polish miner—Anton had inherited a firm belief in demons, goblins, gnomes, trolls, kobolds, knockers, and the various races of weird creatures with which the Slavic and Teutonic peoples have dowered the world underground. From his earliest childhood he had been familiar with tales of subterranean terror, and he knew that his father had often foregone a day's work and a day's pay rather than go down the mine-shaft if some evil omen had occurred.

Yet Anton was willing to accept modern ideas, also. Clem was both his protector and his chum, and the boy had a great respect for his older comrade's knowledge and good sense. He was aware, too, that Clem was unusually well informed, for the young fellow was a natural student and was fitting himself for a higher position in the mine by hard reading. This Ohio mine, like many of the American collieries, maintained a free school and an admirable technical library for the use of those workers who wished to better themselves.

How Anton's Father Was Killed.

Miner, failing to test for vibration when tapping roof-slate, goes to work and is crushed by falling slate.

Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.

Coal-Hewers at Work.

Holing or Undercutting in a typical seam not high enough for men to stand upright.

From "Mines and Their Story."

Where the Branch Line Forks.

Loaded car of coal switched to main line and on its way to the shaft.

From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams.

The young student miner was zealous in his efforts to promote modern ideas among his comrades, and knew that the old superstitions bred carelessness and a blind belief in Fate. Despite their differences in age and in points of view, he and Otto were warm friends, and he returned the old man's attack promptly.

"So far as Anton's father is concerned, Otto," he said, "it was Jim Rover's carelessness that killed him. He was caught by a falling roof just because he wouldn't take the trouble to make sure that the draw slate overhead was solid before setting to work to undercut the coal. I know that's so, because he told me, just before he died. I was the first one to reach him, after the fall, for I was working in the next room, just around the rib."

"An' who made the draw slate fall, just when Jim Rover was a-standin' right under it? Answer me that, Clem Swinton!"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Every man who's ever handled a coal pick knows that draw slate is apt to work loose. That's one of the dangers of the business. And the danger can be avoided, as you know perfectly well, Otto, if a chap will feel the roof for vibration, with one hand, while he uses the other to tap on the slate with the flat side of a pick. If he won't take the trouble—why, it's his own fault if he gets killed.

"Blaming the 'knockers,' Otto, doesn't hide the fact that nearly a thousand miners get killed in the United States every year, just through their own carelessness."

The old man shook a finger ominously.

"It isn't always the careless ones what get taken," he declared. "Look out for yourself, Clem Swinton; look out for yourself! It's you the knockers'll be after, next, an' much good all your readin'll do you, then! I warned Jim Rover less'n a week afore he got killed, an' I'm warnin' you now."

Anton looked up, fearfully, for old Otto had a reputation as a seer, in the mine, but Clem only laughed.

"I put my faith in following out the safety rules, Otto," he replied, "not in charms and tricks to keep the goblins away."

The old man, however, was not thus to be set aside. He was as ready to defend his old-fashioned beliefs as was Clem to advance his modern theories.

"Experience goes for somethin'," he affirmed stubbornly. "Boy an' man, I've been below ground for over forty years. I've worked in Germany, Belgium, France, and all over this country. Just eight years old I was, when I went down the shaft for the first time; there weren't no laws, then, to keep youngsters out of a mine.

"I was a door-boy to start off with, openin' doors for the coal-cars to come through. That meant keeping one's ears open. The loaded cars come a-roarin' down the slopin' galleries, an', if a kid didn't hear them, he'd get smashed between the coal car an' the door. Even when he did hear them, he had to jump lively, or he'd get nipped, anyhow.

"On the other side o' the door it wasn't much better, for the empty cars were hauled up the slope o' the mine galleries by donkey power, an', if a kid didn't hear the whistle o' the donkey driver, he'd get his head clouted an' would be fined two days' pay beside.

"There warn't no eight-hours' day, then. We worked a shift o' twelve hours, an' the miners didn't stop between for meals—just took their grub in bites while they went on holin' coal. All piece-work it was in them days, an' every miner holed, spragged (or timbered), picked and loaded his own coal. The more stuff he got out, the more pay. The men didn't get any too much money, either, an' if a miner wanted to have a decent pay-check at the end o' the week, he warn't goin' to be hindered by havin' any trouble with cars. The poor kid at the door got it comin' to him from all sides.

"It's different now in coal-mines to what it was then. We hadn't no electric plant to run ventilatin' fans for keepin' the air fit to breathe. Nowadays, a man can be nigh as comfortable below ground as he can be above; but, when I was a kid, the air in a mine was hot, an' heavy, an' sleepy-like.

"After breathin' that air for nine or ten hours, it was hard to keep awake. You'd see the pit-boys comin' up out o' the shaft wi' their eyes all red an' swollen an' achin'. No, it warn't from gas, it was just from rubbin' em to keep em' open. An' rubbin' your eyes with hands all gritty with coal-dust ain't any too good for 'em."

"Well, Otto," the young fellow interrupted, "you can't deny that modern methods have improved all that. There aren't any door-boys in a modern mine. Most of the States in this country have passed laws requiring that all doors through which coal cars pass must be operated automatically. The United States Bureau of Mines keeps a sharp lookout, too. There aren't any donkeys, either, not in up-to-date mines; endless-chain conveyors take the coal from the face where the miner has dug it clear to the mouth of the shaft, and load it into the buckets by a self-tipping device. As for small boys in a mine, as you said yourself, there aren't any, not in the United States, anyhow."

"I'm not denyin' that minin' has got easier," was the grudging reply, "it'd be a wonder if it hadn't. What I'm sayin' is that all your newfangled schemes don't stop accidents and won't never stop accidents, not till you get rid o' the knockers an' gas sprites of a mine. An' that you'll never do!

"You're like a whole lot o' these young fellows, Clem, who believe nothin' that they don't see. You don't never stop to think that maybe it's your own blindness an' not your own cleverness that keeps you from seem'. Wait till I tell you what happened to me, one time, when I was a door-boy in Germany.

"Long afore I first went down into a coal mine, I knew about the knockers, and where they come from. Dad told me that all the coal-seams o' the world were forests, once. Long afore Noah an' the Flood. He'd seen ferns an' leaves o' trees turned into coal. One time, when digging out a seam, he'd come across the trunk of a tree standin' upright in the coal, with the roots still in the under clay."

"That's right enough," agreed Clem, "but the coal-forests were a good many million years older than Noah!"

"Maybe, maybe; but you warn't there to see," Otto retorted. "Anyhow, there were forests, an' these forests were standin' afore the Flood. Judgin' by what's left, the trees o' these forests must ha' been big.

"All those trees, Dad used to say, had spirits o' their own, just like trees have to-day. Elves an' dryads, he used to call 'em. When the Flood came an' spread deep water over the whole world, the tops o' the hills were washed into the valleys an' all these forests were covered in mud an' sand. That's how it is you never find anything but shale or slate (which is mud-rock) or sandstone above a coal seam. What's more, when pullin' down slate, you'll often find sea-shells, like mussels an' clams. Ain't that so?"

"I won't argue with you about the Flood, Otto, for that's a long story. But you're dead right in saying that all coal seams are overlaid with rocks which have been laid down by water, and that fossil shells are found in the overlying layers. But go ahead and tell us what you saw."

"When the Flood came," the old man resumed, "the elves an' dryads what used to live in the coal-trees were swallowed up in the water. They weren't drowned, because spirits can't die—at least, that was what Dad told me. They couldn't go away from their trees, because the trees were still standin' there, though all covered in mud or sand. So they had to change their ways for a new life, first under the water, an' when the waters o' the Flood dried up, under the ground. The elves, who were the men-spirits o' the forest, became knockers; the dryads, who were the women-spirits o' the trees, became the sprites o' the gas damps.

"In the old days, folks used to be able to see these spirits o' the forests. They used to build temples to 'em, an' have regular festivals in the woods, always leavin' some food for 'em to eat. Dad told me never to forget that the only way to keep on the good side o' the spirits below ground was to keep out o' the mine on the first day o' spring an' the last day o' summer, an' every time I took anything to eat below ground, to leave a bite behind.

"I've always done it. In all the years I've been minin', I've never gone down the shaft on March 21st or September 20th, an' I never will. An', every time I've taken my dinner-pail to the face where I was workin', I've put a bit o' bread aside for the knockers. You can believe it or not, as you like, but when I got back to the place, on my next shift, the bread was gone."

"Probably rats," commented Clem, in an aside to Anton.

Knockers.

After a Vignette by Bottrell.

Gathon, Goblin of the Mines.

Fragment of a Composition by Phiz.

Dwarfs in the Mine.

The Other Mythical Personages are the King of the Metals and the Keeper of the Treasures of the Earth.

From a German Engraving after Froebom.

The old miner paid no heed to the interruption, if, indeed, he heard it.

"That way, I always knew that the knockers were on my side, an' I've been willin' to hole coal in mines that folks said weren't safe. What's more, in forty years o' work, I've never lost a day's time from an accident of any kind. I know I'm safe, because of what happened to me when I was still a kid.

"One day—I don't know just why, maybe the air was worse'n usual—after I'd been lookin' after the door for the bigger part o' the shift, I dropped right off asleep. Half-dreamin', I heard a loaded car come roarin' down, but I didn't wake up until it was so close as to be too late.

"I scrambled up on my feet an' was just makin' a wild jump forward to the door, when I felt a little fist—it seemed about the size of a baby's, but was strong an' hard—hit me right in the chest. It pushed me back into the corner, out o' the way o' the car, an' held me there.

"At the same minute, an' just in the nick o' time, the door swung open.

"Rubbin' my eyes—they was so gritty wi' coal that I could hardly look out o' them—I saw what looked like a little man made o' coal standin' back against the door an' holdin' it open for the car to pass through. His face was sort o' pale, like a whitewashed wall in the dark, an' his eyes were red, like sparks. I thought he had a pointed hat an' long pointed shoes, but I was so scared that I couldn't be rightly sure. I could just see his whitish face movin' up an' down, like he was noddin' his head. Then the door slammed shut, the hand suddenly lifted off my chest an' I didn't see nothin' more. I tell you, I kept awake after that."

"You must have opened the door unconsciously, while half-asleep, and dreamed about seeing the goblin," was Clem's comment.

But, before the old man could retort, Anton broke in.

"Father told me he's seen some, just like that. It was in Wales. A woman visitor had gone down to see the mine."

Otto shook his head gravely.

"Never a woman went down a coal mine yet, but an accident happened right after," he declared. "In the big explosion at Loosburg, when over four hundred miners were killed, it was found out, after, that one o' the miners was a woman who had dressed herself in men's clothes an' was pickin' coal. But what was it your father saw, Anton?"

"It happened right when the visiting party was in the mine," the boy explained. "It was in one of the main galleries, which was strongly timbered. A prop, which had been standing firmly for ever so many years, suddenly crumbled into splinters and the roof fell on the woman, hurting her so badly that she died soon after she was taken to the top.

"Just after the roof fell, so Father said, he and all the rest of the miners saw a band of knockers gathered around the pile of fallen roof and pointing at the figure of the woman crushed beneath. He said the knockers were laughing so loudly that some of the miners heard the echoes away at the other end of the mine."

"And do you believe that, Anton?" queried Clem, incredulously.

"Father saw them himself," the boy replied, in a tone of finality.

"Then there's the gas sprites," Otto went on, pleased at having found a sympathetic listener. "I've never seen 'em myself, but there's plenty that have. In a mine where I used to work, in Belgium, there was a man who could see 'em as plain as I see you or Anton. That was his job, and he was paid handsomely, too.

"He could walk through a gallery, either in a workin' or an abandoned mine, an' could tell right away if there was fire damp, or white damp, or black damp, or stink damp, in the workin's. He could see the gas sprites himself an' give warnin' where men had better not go. He didn't have to carry a safety lamp, nor chemical apparatus, nor cages of mice an' canaries, the way folks do, now. He just walked into the mine an' saw the sprites. He was friendly to 'em, an' they never did him no harm."

"What were they like, Otto?" queried Anton.

"Shadows o' women," the old man replied promptly. "Fire damp, this diviner used to say, looked like a figure veiled in red, black damp was veiled in black wi' white edges, white damp was bluish, an' stink damp was yellow. When the gas was faint, all he could see was just the glow o' the colors, very dim; but when the gas was strong then the shapes o' the women were bold an' clear.

"The gas sprites, bein' women, catch an' hold the young men an' the single men more easily than old an' married miners. You don't deny that single men are more often killed by damps than married men, do you, Clem?"

The young miner looked uncomfortable at the question.

"That's a general belief, and statistics seem to back it up," he admitted. "But I don't see that it has anything to do with your goblin ideas, Otto. It's just because the single men, generally, are the youngest, and they haven't become as immune to the poisonous gases of the mine as men who have been working below ground all their lives."

"You can explain away anything, if you have a mind to," Otto retorted scornfully. "But as long as men are workin' below ground, there's goin' to be knockers an' sprites o' the damps, an' miners is goin' to be killed. Me, I've escaped. Why? Because I'm chock-full o' science an' modern ideas? Not a bit of it! I get along because I know what the spirits o' the mine expect, an' I give it to 'em. Right now, I'm the oldest man at work, here, an' I ain't never had an accident."

"Don't you believe his stories, Anton," the young miner protested, turning to the boy. "Those antiquated notions will only lead you astray. The 'damps' are just various kinds of gases coming out of the coal, and the way to fight them is to keep a strong current of air going through the mine."

"How do they come out o' the coal, if you know so much?" questioned Otto, belligerently.

"Sure I know! But I don't suppose telling you will change your ideas."

"It won't," the old miner admitted frankly. "But I've had my say, an' it's only fair to let you have yours. The youngster, here, can believe which o' the two he pleases."

"Well, it's something this way," Clem began, casting about in his mind for a way to explain the chemistry of mine air as simply as he could. "Ordinary air—the air above ground—is made up of a little less than 21 per cent. of oxygen and a little more than 78 per cent. of nitrogen. The rest of it is a mixture of carbon and oxygen which the books call carbon dioxide or black damp, with some other rare gases beside.

"Now, all animals, including man, depend for their life on the oxygen in the air. If the oxygen drops to 15 per cent., a man will suffer. That's not likely to happen where miners' lamps or safety-lamps are used, because the flame of a lamp goes out when there's less than 17 per cent. oxygen. Even at 19 per cent., a lamp will burn so dimly as to warn of danger. The nitrogen in the air is inert, that is, it does neither good nor harm to man. But what I want you to remember, Anton, is that even in the purest air above ground, there's always some 'black damp,' so it's a bit hard to see where Otto's goblin women come in!

"Now, when pure air comes down a coal shaft, a lot of changes happen to it. Some of the oxygen is consumed by the breathing of the men and animals in the mine—if there are any donkeys or such—some is taken up by the burning of lamps, some more by the explosion of blasting powder, a little is lost by the rusting of iron pyrites—which is found in many coal mines—and a lot of it is taken up by the coal, just how, we don't quite know."

"It's good to hear o' somethin' you don't know," the old miner remarked sarcastically. "But you're talkin' about dry air, an' the air in most mines is moist."

"Quite right," Clem agreed. "It has to be. Mine air is made moist, on purpose, especially in winter."

"It is?" Otto's voice expressed unqualified astonishment.

"It certainly is! In most coal-mines—this one, for instance—all the air that passes down the intake shaft is moistened by a spray of mixed water and air, so finely atomized that it floats like a cloud."

"What for? It's easier to work in dry air'n moist air."

"It's easier to get blown up, too! In winter time, Otto, the air above ground is a lot colder than the air in the mine. Cold air can't hold as much moisture as warm air, and as soon as air gets warmed up a bit, it tries its hardest to absorb any moisture with which it happens to come in contact.

"What happens in a mine, in such a case? Why, as the cold air from above passes through the galleries of a mine, it gets warmed up. As it warms up, it draws out from the roofs, the ribs, and the floors all the water that there is to draw, and makes the mine dead dry. When coal dust is absolutely dry, it crumbles into finer and finer dust, until at last the particles are so small that they float in the air. Then comes disaster, for finely divided coal dust is so explosive that the smallest flame—even a spark from the stroke of a pick—will set the whole mine ablaze."

"I don't see that," interrupted Anton. "If dust is so bad, why do the bosses hang boards from all the gallery roofs and pile them high with dust?"

"Because the dust in those piles is stone dust, my boy," the young fellow explained. "When an explosion happens, it drives a big blast of air in front of it, so strong, sometimes, as to knock a man down. The blast of air blows all the stone dust from those boards and fills the air chock-full of it.

"This stone dust, usually made from crushed limestone or crushed shale, won't burn. The flame of the explosion can't pass through and the fire can't jump a rock-dust barrier. Even the flame of methane, which you know better as 'gas,' or fire damp, which has a terrific force, is choked back by this dense cloud of rock-dust, and, as you know, all coal mines have more or less methane gas."

"They don't, either," contradicted Otto. "I've worked in mines for years at a time an' never seen the 'cap' on the flame of the safety-lamp, tellin' there's fire damp there."

"You may not have seen it, but there was gas there, just the same. As for the cap-flame you're talking about, Otto, I'll admit that it's the surest way of telling when there's so much fire-damp that the mine is getting dangerous. But it's a risky test, just the same. You can't see the little cap of methane gas flame burning above the oil flame of the lamp until there's 2 per cent. of gas in the air of the mine, and a little more than 5 per cent. will start an explosion."

"What makes that cap?" queried Anton.

"Fire damp or methane gas burning inside the wire gauze of the safety-lamp."

"But if the gas is already burning inside, why doesn't it explode outside?"

"Just because it's a safety-lamp, my boy. That's why the flame burns inside a wire gauze. I'll explain that.

"Suppose you take a lamp with a hot flame—an alcohol or spirit lamp will do—and light it. Then hold a piece of close-meshed wire gauze right on the flame. You'll find that the flame will spread under the wire gauze but will not go through. Hold it long enough, though, until the wire gets red hot, and, quite suddenly, the flame will pass through and burn above the gauze as well as below.

"Try another trick. Put out the lamp and then hold the gauze just where it was before. You can light the flame above the wire but it will not pass below the gauze until the wire gets red-hot. That shows that gas which is not burning can pass through a wire gauze, but that gas which is aflame cannot pass until the wire is red-hot."

"Yes," said Anton, "I can see that."

"Very good. Then, if you have a lamp which is burning inside a cylinder of wire gauze, the gas of fire-damp can go through, and, if there's enough of it to burn, it will burn above the flame of the lamp, making an aureole or 'cap' just as Otto says. But the flaming gas can't get back through the wire gauze to set fire to the fire-damp outside, at least, not until the wire gets red-hot, which it's not likely to do, seeing that the gas is in the middle, not underneath it.

"That's how they test for fire-damp, nowadays. The flame of a safety-lamp is drawn down until it shows only a small yellow tip. If there's any fire-damp in the air, a light-blue halo appears over the yellow flame. At a little more than 1 per cent., an experienced man can judge that there is gas there, but the true 'cap,' which is pointed like a cone, doesn't show until there's 2 per cent. of the gas. At 3 per cent., the cap will be like a dunce's cap, and more than half an inch high. At 4 per cent., it will be over an inch high, and at 4-1/2 per cent. it'll form a column of blue flame. Then it's high time to get out of the mine, and to get out quickly.

"In the improved form of safety-lamps, the oil flame burns inside a glass, but the air which reaches the flame has to pass through two cylinders of wire gauze. The glass keeps the flame from ever touching the innermost gauze, and, if an accident happens—such as the breaking of the glass—it would still be fairly safe, for the burning gas inside wouldn't pass through the inner gauze until that got red-hot, and it wouldn't reach the outer gauze because the current of air passing down between the two layers of wire mesh would keep the outer gauze cool. This safety-lamp was invented by Sir Humphry Davy, in England, in 1815, just after a big explosion in an English colliery had cost hundreds of lives. All mines nowadays require that miners use either safety-lamps or electric lamps, and it's every miner's business to report to the boss when he sees a cap of burning gas inside his safety-lamp."

The old miner nodded his head in agreement.

"I won't use an electric lamp," he commented. "It's foolishness. The gas sprites ain't really malicious. They're willin' enough to give a warnin'. They'll put a cap on a flame if they don't want folks in that part of the mine. An electric lamp tells nothin'. It won't even give a warnin' against black damp."

"Perfectly true," Clem agreed. "With an oil safety-lamp, the flame gets dim or even goes out if there's too much black damp. The electric lamp burns on, just the same, because the light is in a vacuum. Black damp isn't so dangerous as fire damp, though. It only causes distress and hard breathing because it shows that there's too big a proportion of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the air and not enough oxygen. It's oxygen that a man misses."

"But black damp'll explode, too," put in Otto.

"No," the other corrected, "it won't. But it often happens that there's fire-damp around when black damp is present and the black damp makes a test for gas difficult. It's the gas that explodes, not the black damp.

"It isn't always the explosiveness of a damp that makes it dangerous, though," he went on. "As Otto could tell you, Anton, white damp is the worst of the three. And it doesn't give any warning at all."

"That's why we had that diviner in a Belgian mine," the old man commented, gravely. "He could see the gas sprites in their blue veils. But, if there's a lot o' white damp, you can tell it by the flame of a safety-lamp gettin' a little longer an' brighter."

"It's not safe to trust it," the young fellow advised. "You'd have trouble seeing 2 per cent, of white damp, and you'd be dead before you had much chance to look. Even with 1-1/2 per cent., a man would be likely to drop before he reached a better-ventilated part of the mine, and he couldn't see that much on the flame of his safety-lamp at all. To breathe the air with only 1 per cent. of white damp for an hour would put a man in such a state that he mightn't recover, and he wouldn't have had any warning.

"Luckily, there's much less danger of white damp in mines than there used to be. It's a gas that's formed only when there's been something burning. After an explosion in a mine, or a fire, there's sure to be a lot of it, and rescue parties have always found it their worst foe. But, in the ordinary working mine, it is rare."

"Not so rare as all that!" objected Otto. "We used to have a lot of it, on the other side."

"You wouldn't now," was the reply. "The white damp of those days was due to the heavy charges of gunpowder or low explosive that were used, explosives which are forbidden now in dangerous mines."

"They were better'n the stuff we use nowadays," grumbled Otto, "they brought down more coal an' didn't smash it up so bad."

"They smashed up men, instead," Clem retorted. "And they put a whole lot of white damp into a mine. That was really dangerous, because, in those days, people hadn't found out the value of canaries."

"I've often wondered about that," interjected Anton. "Why do the testing-parties carry canaries?"

"Because," answered Clem, with a smile, "canaries are as clever at seeing the gas sprites as was the Belgian diviner that Otto talks about. No, but seriously," he went on, "the reason is that canaries are extremely susceptible to white damp. Less than 1/4 of one per cent of white damp will cause a canary to collapse at once, and a man could breath that proportion for an hour without much harm. Even a tenth of one per cent. will cause the little bird to show signs of distress."

"It's tough on the bird," was Anton's sympathetic comment.

"Not especially! As soon as a bird begins to show collapse, it is taken back to the open air and is as frisky and lively as ever in five minutes. But its value as a warning signal is enormous, for it tells rescue parties or investigating parties when to put on gas masks or breathing apparatus containing oxygen. In a well-ventilated mine, however, where high explosive is used and handled by experienced men, there's not likely to be much danger from white damp.

"Stink damp is rare but can sometimes be dangerous. Generally, a fellow is warned away, because of the smell—which is just like rotten eggs. The worst part of stink damp is that it smells the worst when there's only a little of it. When there's so much of it around as to be deadly, it doesn't smell any worse. You get small quantities of it, sometimes, in blasting, but generally hydrogen sulphide or stink damp is found after a mine fire or an explosion. Rescue parties generally carry a cage of mice as well as one of canaries."

"With the same idea?" queried Anton.

"Exactly. As little as a tenth of one per cent. of stink damp makes a mouse sprawl on his belly, his legs don't seem strong enough to hold him up; while, in the same air, a canary doesn't suffer a bit.

"The only real danger in stink damp is when there's water in the mine, for example when, after a fire, a lot of water has been pumped down into the workings to put the fire out. Water absorbs stink damp very easily and gives it up equally easily when stirred. So, if a member of a rescue party puts his foot in a puddle of water where there has been stink damp around, so much of the gas may suddenly come up in his face as to topple him over.

"But you can see, Anton, that most of the gas troubles in a mine come from the blasting. That's why, nowadays, the miners who get out the coal seldom or never fire the shots. Experienced men, trained especially for that work, are used. After a miner has undercut the coal, the shot-firer comes. He tests for gas before he begins work, bores a deep hole in the coal with a drill, tests for gas again in case he should have tapped a leak in the seam, cleans out the hole, sends the miner for the box of explosive—which is kept thirty or forty yards away from the face where the coal is being cut—and prepares the charge with a detonater which he carries in a box over his shoulder. The miner never touches either the explosive or the detonater. Then the shot-firer puts the primed charge in the hole, jams the hole full of clay with a wooden tamper—a steel bar might cause a spark and a premature explosion—tests for gas again, connects the electric wires from a portable battery around the rib corner, fires the shot, returns to the face and tests for gas again. Then, and not until then, does the miner begin to dig the coal. That way, every one in the mine is safe."

"Yes," growled the old miner, "and the shot-firer doesn't dig any coal, nor do any hard work, an' gets paid more'n we do."

"He knows more than you do," Clem responded, "and he gets better pay because his experience and prudence is worth a lot of money to the mine. Just think what an explosion costs—to say nothing of the risk of lives being lost! And you won't find experienced shot-firers or mine-managers talking about gas sprites, Otto!"

"Better for 'em if they did!" the old man warned. "For I'm sayin' to you again, what I said before—the spirits o' the mine is gettin' hungry for blood!"

CHAPTER II
ENTOMBED ALIVE

"Danger! You're plumb crazy about danger, Clem!" Anton declared impatiently.

The older lad gestured to the big building of the pit-mouth before them, above which the spider-like legs of the headgear soared high, surmounted by the huge double winding-wheels which give so characteristic a note to a modern colliery.

"Any one who forgets that a coal-mine is dangerous is a fool," he retorted sharply, "and keep that in your head, Anton, my lad. Not that danger would ever stop me from mining. I like it. I like to feel that I'm running a risk every time I go into an entry and every time there's a blast. And I like to feel that I know enough about safety methods to snap my fingers at the risk. There's excitement in that."

"There'll be excitement enough, if old Otto's warnings come true," returned Anton gloomily.

Two days had passed since the old miner's prophecy, two days without any unusual incident. Clem had all but forgotten the evil presage, but Anton was brooding over it. It was his work to load cars in the room where Clem was mining, and the boy's superstitious nature made him painfully aware that if any accident happened to his comrade, he would probably be caught, too.

Anton had been working in the mine only a few weeks and he had not yet been able to grasp the need of Clem's incessant teaching with regard to the extreme prudence needed in colliery work. He had almost caused a serious accident during his first week by not blocking his car properly. The half-loaded car had begun to move down the slope of the mine gallery, it might easily have run clear down into the entry and possibly killed some one if Clem had not dashed forward and checked the car before it had too much speed.

In general, Anton had not reasoned much about the danger or the lack of danger in coal-mining. He regarded the pit as a matter of course. It was the only life he knew. All his comrades were at work in the mine or would be at work therein, as soon as their school-days were over. The boy himself had started early, soon after his father's death, since it was the only employment to be got in the neighborhood and he had his widowed mother to support.

Clem had found a place in the mine for his friend without any difficulty, for Anton was powerfully muscled. In this he took after his father, who had been almost a Hercules and one of the champion wrestlers of the mine. Born of miner stock on both sides, Anton was short and squat, able to shovel coal all day without fatigue. He had accordingly, been taken on as a loader, Clem undertaking to keep an eye over him.

It took the older lad all his time to do so. Anton was absolutely reckless by nature, and, though he was constantly being advised as to the necessary precautions for making mining safe, he could never be persuaded to adopt them.

Instead of blocking his car with one log placed across the track and another under the car and resting on the transverse log, he would put a piece of coal under the wheel and trust to its staying there; he would wear his coat loosely, over his trousers, though he was told over and over again that he ran the risk of his coat being caught by the cars, when switching, and being dragged along the side of the rib: on another occasion, Clem found the boy starting along the haulage-way used for the coal cars instead of using the man-way reserved for the workers, in order to save a couple of minutes' time.

What exasperated Clem even more was that, since Otto's warning, Anton had become more careless than ever. It was evident that the fatalistic streak in the boy made him feel that if he were foredoomed to an accident, there was no use in trying to prevent it.

The boy's impatient exclamation and his comrade's retort about danger had occurred while they were in line in front of the lamp shack, waiting to get their safety-lamps before going down for the day shift.

As in most well-organized collieries, the safety-lamps were filled and adjusted by experts, who looked after nothing else. After the lamps were lighted, they were locked—and not one of the miners was allowed a key. Thus the lamps could not be opened below ground and there was no chance for a reckless man to expose a naked flame in a room or entry where there might chance to be gas. A safety-lamp would not go out unless the air in the mine was so vitiated that it was dangerous to life to remain therein, or unless there was some defect in the lamp which would render it perilous to use.

After the lamps had been given out, Clem and Anton got in the cage to go down the shaft. Otto happened to be descending at the same time.

"We're still waiting for your 'knockers' to show themselves!" Clem suggested jestingly.

The old man deigned no reply. Instead, he looked round the cage meaningly at the other men there, most of whom frowned at Clem's remark. Among miners, it is believed to bring bad luck to speak or even to hint of accidents when in the cage. Only Otto's personal liking for the young fellow kept him from a retort which might have brought on a quarrel.

On reaching the bottom, Clem and Anton set out along the man-way together. It was a walk of nearly a mile underground from the main shaft of the mine to the distant "room" or square hole in the seam, where Clem was to dig away the coal face, and which was one of the rooms from which Anton was loading coal.

This Ohio colliery was being worked on what is known as the pillar-and-room method. This consists in dividing the seam of coal into squares like a chessboard, taking out the coal from each alternate square, leaving the intervening squares of coal intact to act as pillars in holding up the roof. They do not look like pillars to a careless observer, often being blocks of coal thirty yards square.

"It seems silly," said Anton, after they had walked on a minute or two, "to leave all this coal near the shaft and to go digging a mile away. Why not take all the coal that is handy first?"

"And have the roof come down and block up all the coal that is beyond? That would be just throwing away the wealth of the mine."

"Timber the roof, then!"

"It would cost too much, for one thing," Clem explained, "and, for another, all the timber in the world won't hold up a roof if the excavation is made too big. There's millions of tons of rock pressing down on a mine roof. Judging by the way you talk, Anton, I don't believe you understand what a coal formation is, yet."

"Isn't it like Otto said, then?"

"Only in a way. Otto's description of the coal forests was near enough—in spite of his ideas about goblins and sprites—and he was correct in saying that the forests decayed under water and turned into coal after they were pressed down by rock. But it wasn't the Flood that did that, at least not the Flood that Otto was speaking of. The coal forests existed millions of years before Noah.

"What's more, it wasn't only just once that the forests were covered by a deluge. That happened several times, a hundred or more, in some places.

"For centuries at a time, these gloomy and steaming forests grew in boggy land, only a few inches above the level of the sea. Gradually the land sank, the sea came in, the trees fell and decayed under the water, and a layer of mud or sand was deposited over them. Then gradually the land rose again just above the level of the sea, and a new forest grew. Once more the land sank below the water, the second forest fell into decay and upon that layer a new deposit of mud or sand was laid. That gave two layers or seams of coal-forest-bog, to be turned later into coal by pressure; and two layers or strata of mud or sand, to be turned into shale and slate or into sandstone, also by pressure.

"When a long time elapsed between the swampings, several centuries of coal forests had made a deep bed of bog, which, ages after, became a thick seam of coal. When the swampings happened close together, the layer of bog was shallow, producing a thin seam of coal. In the same way, the layers of shale or sandstone are thick or thin according to the length of time that the land was under the water.

"Because of that, Anton, in nearly every colliery there is not just one layer or seam of coal, but a number of them. There are sixteen different seams in this mine, showing that the land rose and fell sixteen times, probably in the course of a million years.

"Some mines show much bigger changes. In the famous coal basin of Mons, in Belgium, there are 157 layers of coal, of which 120 are thick enough to be workable. The Saar basin, on the left bank of the Rhine, which has played so important a part in the international troubles following the end of the World War, has 164 seams, with 77 of them workable, giving a thickness of 240 feet of coal. However, as the lowest layers are nearly four miles deep, they will probably never be worked."

"Why not?"

"To start with, the cost of haulage to the top would be enormous. But, aside from that, a good many mining engineers figure that the temperature at that depth would be above boiling point. You know, in general, the farther you go down in a mine, the hotter it gets."

"What do you mean by a seam being 'workable'?" the boy queried. "Can't all coal be dug out?"

"Not by a long shot. At least not so as to be worked at a profit. Suppose a seam of coal is only a few inches thick, how is a miner going to dig it out? He couldn't crawl in such a seam, let alone using his tools there."

"He could cut out enough rock at the top and bottom to give him a chance to get in."

"A miner is paid for digging coal, not digging rock," was the answer. "What's more, according to your scheme, so much shale or sandstone would be mixed with the coal that it would be useless for burning.

"Even seams two feet thick are so hard to work that most of them are left alone, and a seam three feet thick means extra expense in getting out the coal because of the difficulty of labor in hewing and transporting the coal from the face to the shaft. The ideal thickness is between six and eight feet, where a man can stand upright and can reach to the roof with a slate bar. That height, too, makes timbering easy.

"Very thick seams have their own difficulties. The worst of these is the supporting of the roof. Take a seam 30 or 40 feet thick, for example. Look at the size of the hole that is left when the coal is dug away! Timbering becomes a real problem, there, for the longer a prop is, Anton, the weaker it is. Coal managers in mines like those have to do some careful figuring, or the cost of the timber they put into the mine would be more than the value of the coal they take out."

"How do they handle it then?"

"As if it were a quarry, rather than a mine. The seam is worked on successive levels, but, even then, it is impossible to prevent constant accidents from the fall of coal or the sudden collapse of a roof. Take it the world over, and ten miners are killed every day in collieries alone. I told you coal mining was dangerous."

"But are there any of those thick seams in the United States?"

"None of the really thick ones. There's a 40-foot anthracite seam in Pennsylvania. But in France, near the famous Creusot works, there's a bed of coal which is 130 feet thick. It's a basin, though, rather than a seam.

"So you see, Anton, every coal mine is different, with its layers or seams of coal of different thicknesses and at varying distances apart. Some pits are near the surface, some are very deep; some coal is full of gas, other has very little; some coal is so hard that every bit of it has to be blasted, in other mines the coal is so soft that the hewer spends half his time spragging the face so that the coal doesn't fall on him when he's undercutting or holing. Don't you make the mistake of thinking that all a miner has to do is to use his pick! He's got to know his business thoroughly or he's useless to the mine boss and a danger to all his fellow-workmen.

"And that isn't all, Anton, not by a good deal!

"Coal mining might be bad enough, even if the coal seams always ran level. But it's very seldom that they do. They run up-hill and down-hill in all sorts of fashions and play hide-and-go-seek in a way that's fairly bewildering.

"Nearly all coal seams are broken up by faults. The coal suddenly seems to stop, and, when you go to hewing it the pick suddenly hits against a rock wall, right on the level of the seam. In the North Gallery of this very mine, there's a fault like that. You know where the 'snagger' is?"

"Sure," agreed Anton, "you mean where the cars have to be hitched on to a chain?"

"Yes, there! The coal seam jumps upwards fifty feet. That's why the cars, after rolling down nearly a quarter of a mile, by gravity, have to be pulled up fifty feet by an endless chain, to rejoin the same seam and then to go rolling on down by themselves."

"Just what are faults?"

"H'm, that's a bit hard to explain to you, Anton, because you don't know anything about geology, but maybe I can get you to see. Faults are breaks in the layers of rock, or in the stratification, as it is called. All coal seams and the rocks above and below them have been laid down by water. Since water levels everything, these layers of rock were level, once.

"In ages past, however, the crust of the earth changed a good deal. As the crust cooled, it contracted, crumpling up these different layers into all sorts of shapes. Sometimes it bulged them up, sometimes it hollowed them down so that the edges rose. Quite often a layer of rock would be cracked right across, and one half would stay level while the other shot up almost a right angle. A good many mountains show the result of this, and if you look at such rocks as are sticking up out of the ground you will see some of them standing right on edge. Once in a while, part of the broken crust slid over the other part. Then, too, though the surface may not always show it, there have been breaks in the strata below, and at the break, the layer has sunk or risen quite a distance from its former level.

"If that happens to a coal seam, you can see that where the seam breaks, suddenly, the rest of it will continue on another level, perhaps only a few feet higher or lower, perhaps a good deal more. It's up to the mine geologist to find where the coal has gone to, and it's the business of the mine engineer to remodel the entire system of working the mine in order to get at that seam."

"And are all coal mines mixed up in that funny way?" Anton queried.

"Most of them. Oh, there's no end to the tricks a coal seam can play. A deep coal seam may split into two narrow ones, too thin to work. The whole seam may quickly dwindle away to nothing, showing that, in ages past, a river came rolling over it and washed away all the forest bog. Sometimes, especially with the lowermost seams, the forest grew on rolling land, so that the bottom of the coal seam is irregular, causing all sorts of trouble in laying rails for the cars to roll on. Sometimes the layer of rock under a coal seam is so soft that when you start to timber it, the timbers sink into the floor and the roof comes toppling down.

"Among the queerest of all the things a mine geologist strikes are what are called dykes. These are great shafts of igneous rock, which were thrust up from the interior of the earth in a white-hot state and which burned away the coal as they rose. They put a dead stop to a working. I could tell you a dozen more freak things that a coal seam can do. A mine geologist has not only a new problem to tackle with every mine, but, often, with every mine gallery."

"Is that what you're studying to be, Clem?"

"No, indeed!" The young fellow's answer was emphatic. "That's 'way out of my reach. It takes a college man, with special technical training and a big experience, to be anything of a mine geologist. All I'm trying to do is to learn enough about it so that when I get to be a mine boss—if I ever do—I'll know what my chiefs are trying to do and I'll be able to help them.

"Take Otto, for example. There isn't a better worker in the mine. He gets out more coal and less broken stuff than any other man below ground. But he'll never be anything but a hewer, because he doesn't want to learn. Why, just the other day, he was growling because the mine was shut down to repair one of the shafts, though the other shaft was working all right."

"So were a lot of the men," Anton put in. "Why couldn't they go on working, with one shaft?"

"Against the law," was the crisp answer. "That's the A B C of mining. And I'll show you why! All mines are required to have two shafts, in case of accident. That law was passed because of a famous disaster that happened in England nearly a hundred years ago.

"In those days, colliers had only one shaft. One day, the beam of an engine which was directly over a shaft snapped, and a huge piece of machinery, weighing several tons, tumbled into the shaft and stuck, not far from the bottom. As it fell, it ripped away the planking which lined the shaft and a whole lot of loose rock and earth fell on top of the piece of machinery, blocking up the shaft entirely and stopping any air from passing. There were over two hundred men and boys at work below ground.

Miners Descending a Shaft.

From an Old Print.

Falling-in of a Mine.

Explosion of "Fire-Damp."

"With only one shaft, you can see what a mess that made! Before any digging could be done, the lining of the shaft had to be repaired, because dirt and rocks were falling into the shaft all the time. Miners—hundreds of them—were brought from neighboring mines, and they worked night and day on two-hour shifts, clinging to the sides of the shaft as thick as bees in a hive. Others, risking their lives with every stroke of the pick, dug away at the earth and rock that had fallen on the big chunk of machinery. With all the speed that human effort could compass, it was six days and nights before a hole had been made through the obstruction big enough for a man to pass. And, when the first rescuer reached the workings below, the 200 men were dead. Not a single one survived. The miners had been entombed alive without any air passage and could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to help themselves out of their living grave.

"Ever since then, every colliery in Europe and the United States is required to have two shafts, and the law demands that these shall be no less than fifteen yards apart and connected by a wide passage. Not only that, but each shaft must have a complete outfit of winding machinery coupled to separate engines, so that, in the event of an accident happening to one shaft, the men below ground can be rescued up the other."

"That sounds all right," said Anton, rather gloomily, "but suppose the way to both shafts is blocked?"

"Not likely," Clem responded cheerfully, "if a mine has been properly laid out. Take this one, there are half a dozen ways to get from the face to the shaft."

"But Otto said—"

The other turned upon him sharply.

"I've had about enough of that Otto business! If you can't keep from thinking about it, keep from talking about it, anyhow!"

To this rebuke Anton maintained a stubborn silence, and, without another word said, the two walked on until they reached their respective places of work.

In the gloomy world of below ground, where the dusty wall of sooty black is the only landscape to be seen, one day is very much like another. Reaching his room, Clem stood his tools in order along the rib, hung his safety lamp on a nail which he drove into a prop supporting the roof, and, reaching up so as to put one hand on the roof, tapped it with the flat side of his pick to make sure that there was no loose slate overhead. He then examined the coal face, as it had been left by the hewer who had been working on the night shift, to make sure that it had been properly spragged or timbered.

This done, Clem stripped naked to the waist, for it was hot in that hole far below ground. Then, lying down flat on his side, his bare shoulder resting on the gritty ground, he started to pick away the coal at the level of the floor and just above it, making a wedge-shaped hole extending under the seam for a distance in of three feet.

Many mines, especially in America, use mechanical coal-cutters for this back-breaking labor. These machines are especially useful in mines where the coal-seams are less than 3-1/2 feet thick, and they are well adapted to "long-wall" workings where the whole face of the coal is removed in a single operation. Some are mounted with a toothed bar which moves in and out, chipping the coal; other types are like circular saws; several forms have the same action as a miner's pick, the percussions being at the speed of two hundred strokes a minute, the motive-power being compressed air.

In pillar-and-room workings, such as this Ohio mine, chain heading machines were used. This American invention consists of a bed-plate which rests on the floor and is secured in position by screw-jacks braced against the roof and against the rib. On this bed-plate rests a sliding frame which carries a revolving chain on which cutting tools are fixed. The machine carries its own motor, which not only drives the chain, but also slides forward the frame into the cut. When the cut is made to the full depth of the machine, it is withdrawn, and the machine moved over its own width and another cut commenced. Several of these machines were at work in the mine, but chiefly in that part of it where the pillars were being cut away, and where speed in removing the coal was a prime necessity. In the more distant rooms, hand labor was used.

All these machines work on exactly the same principle as that of the miner, lying on his back or on his side, and digging at the coal with his pick. The coal must be undercut as far in as a pick or a mechanical coal-cutter will reach, for the entire width of the face. Every few feet, short props or sprags are put in from the edge of the undermined portion to the floor, to prevent a premature fall, which might bury the miner.

When the whole face is undercut and spragged, the shot-firer is summoned. One or more holes, three feet deep, are bored in the coal, close to the roof, these holes are filled with explosive and tamped shut with moist clay, and the charges are fired. This blasting brings down the coal off the face, clear from the rock roof to the undermined portion, for such a distance as it has been undercut.

The miner then shovels away the coal far enough to allow him to lie down again and continue his terribly laborious task, while the loader comes and shovels the blasted coal into cars or into endless-chain conveyors, according to the arrangement of the mine.

Day in, day out, this hewing continues. While the miner is at work, he is always in a cramped position, his body twisted, his muscles at a strain, performing his toilsome labor in the half-dark, in the heat, in poor air, choked with coal-dust constantly and menaced by death every moment. He is well paid, but most fully does he earn every cent he gets.

The morning had almost passed, and Anton was near the entry, where he heard, in the distance, a dull rumble like thunder, followed by a queer cracking sound which seemed to travel along the rock overhead.

The boy halted involuntarily in his task of pushing an empty car back to a room for loading. Little as he knew of the noises below ground, he sensed something strange. The deep silence of a coal mine is generally broken only by the sharp report of a blast or the rattle of cars, and this rumble did not resemble either sound.

A second or two later, a miner dashed past him, without his tools, his safety-lamp swinging as he ran.

"The bank is coming down!" he yelled, and disappeared down the gallery.

Almost at the same moment, another man came out of the entry, his naked back gleaming as he passed under the electric light hanging at the opening of the entry.

"Make for the shaft, kid!" he shouted, when he saw the shine of Anton's lamp.

A sudden babble of excited cries, borne on the strong current of the ventilating air, reached the boy's ears.

It was the doom of Otto's warning!

Shoving a lump of coal under the car-wheel, Anton whirled on his heel to follow the escaping miners, when, like a blow, came the stunning thought:

"Clem!"

He hesitated an instant, and, while he halted, a second and a louder crash told him that the fall of rock—wherever it might be happening—was not over. Every fraction of a second that he delayed might ruin his chances of escape.

But Anton was of sturdy miner stock, and, in addition, was thoroughly fatalistic. That very feature of his character which his older comrade had blamed so often, now was to show its good side. If he were going to be caught by the fall, there was no use in his trying to prevent it, he thought.

In any case, no matter what might come, though the roof cracked above him and the coal-ribs crushed beside him, he must warn his friend.

Turning his back to the way of hope, he tore at his utmost speed towards the room where Clem was working, taking some small comfort, as he ran, that the rumbling sounded farther and farther away.

"Clem!" he cried, panting, as he turned into the room where his friend was digging coal, "run for your life!"

By the terror in Anton's voice, the young fellow realized the peril. In his isolated room, he had not heard a sound.

Leaping to his feet and grabbing his safety-lamp from the prop, he ran after Anton, who had started back on the road leading to the shaft. Fleeter of foot than the boy, he caught up with him in a few yards.

"What is it?" he queried.

"The bank's down!"

"Where?"

"I don't know. Everywhere. The whole mine's smashing! Every one else has got out long ago!"

An ominous creaking sounded over their heads.

Clem caught his comrade by the arm and pulled him into a narrow entry near by.

"Go slow! We don't want to get smashed!"

He held up his safety-lamp.

"Look at that prop!"

The heavy timber was bending like a twig.

"Get on quick!" cried Anton, struggling against the grasp, but the young fellow held him fast.

"Don't lose your head!" he warned. "The current of air has stopped, sure sign that the way to the shafts is blocked. The nearer we get to the goaf (waste ground), the more likely we are to get crushed. Listen!"

The creaking grew louder, and then, suddenly, with a rush of sound, the gallery in front of them, into which Anton had been about to plunge, sagged. The bending prop went into splinters, and, with a roar, the whole roof fell, the broken rock coming to within a few yards of where they were standing.

"Close shave, that!" remarked Clem coolly.

Anton made no answer, but shivered as he looked. He realized that his comrade's warning had saved his life.

The trembling and the creaking recommenced, but farther away; then, with a gigantic noise of tearing, there came a rending crash, followed by utter silence.

"Now!"

He let go the boy's arm and turned sharp off to the right.

"That's not the way to the shaft," protested Anton.

"We'll try the North Gallery," answered Clem. "Likely enough the fall has followed the line of the fault."

A sharp run of a hundred yards brought them to a pile of rock blocking up the passage. Clem licked his hand to make it moist, and then slowly passed it across the entire face of the obstruction.

"No!" he said. "There's not a breath of air coming through. That way's blocked."

He turned in another direction. With all the ventilation stopped, the air was growing heavy. Fifty yards' run, and then—

Blocked again!

This time Clem made no comment. He turned back to try the farther side of the mine. As they wheeled round a corner, and saw a gleam of light he cried, with a note of relief:

"There they are! I knew they'd send in a rescue party, right away!"

Then his voice dropped.

"No," he added, "there's only one lamp."

A single miner came running towards them.

"The North Gallery?" he queried.

"No good, Jim," Clem answered, who recognized him as a new-comer in the mine. "Blocked solid!"

"So's the entries to the goaf! I've been there! How about the old workings I've heard the boys talk of?"

The student miner shook his head.

"Not much chance that way, I'm afraid. They'll be full of gas, sure. The ventilation has been cut out of there for months. But we can try it, anyway."

"I'd ought to ha' known better'n to work this shift," declared Jim, as they ran. "You mind when you talked to Otto in the cage, comin' down?"

"Yes."

"Well, Otto wouldn't go to work, nohow. Said the knockers had been riled an' he wouldn't take the risk o' goin' agin 'em. The boss swore at him some, but that didn' faze Otto. He went to the top, just the same. He had the right hunch. Wish I'd followed him!"

They ran on, and Jim broke out again:

"I'd no business to come coal minin', anyway. I'm a prospector, by rights. Gold's my end, not coal. You're s'posed to know this game. What chance ha' we got?"

Clem made no answer in words. He held up his safety-lamp, already showing a marked blue cap of gas over the flame.

"I'd seen it a'ready! That means gas, don't it?"

"We may get through it," said Clem, but his tone was not hopeful.

They turned into a long gallery leading to the old workings, and, as they sped along, the cones of gas on the safety lamps grew longer and longer.

Presently lumps of slate and rock on the floor heralded the end.

Quite suddenly, the gleam of the lamps shone on a wall before them. The roof had fallen in.

"That's the last chance?" queried Anton, gloomily.

"The very last," said Clem, "we're buried."

CHAPTER III
THE DANGERS OF RESCUE

The midday whistle of the mine had just begun, when a violent blast of air roared up the intake shaft, followed by a portentous—

Cra-a-ack!

A terrific crash rose from the bowels of the earth.

The growling rumble of the underground disaster came rolling upward in throbbing volumes of sound.

The ground trembled, the buildings shook, the lofty skeleton of the pit-head gear wavered as though about to let fall the huge revolving wheels overhead.

From the engine-house, from the pumping-room, from the ventilation building, from the screeners and washers, from the picking-belts, from the loading-yards, from the coking-ovens, from every corner of the vast above-ground works of a modern colliery, the men came running.

Some were white of face, some sooty, but all bore an expression of the most extreme anxiety.

The mine superintendent, who was also the owner, the mine boss, and the mining engineer were among the first at the shaft. The doctor and hospital attendant—whom the law requires to be maintained at all mines employing more than a hundred men—arrived but a few seconds later.

The superintendent, a vigorous Australian, who had taken part in many a sensational mining rush in his youth, and who had inherited the ownership of this coal mine from a distant relative but a few years before, leaped into action. Orders came rattling like hail.

All haulage of coal from below was stopped. The engine on the second shaft was thrown into gear, and the cages in both shafts were sent down to bring up the men.

Would there be any to bring?

What did the crash denote? A mere fall of roof, which might cause the loss of a few lives, or a vast explosion which would sweep every man below ground to death in a few seconds?

The cages had hardly reached the bottom when there came the second crash.

The crowd around the shaft was thickening. The doors of the hundreds of cottages clustered in rows about the colliery had been thrown open; from every direction the women came running, their shawls streaming behind them. Many of them had already lost fathers or husbands or sons below ground; all knew the awful menace of that sickening rumble.

With all the speed that the winding-engines could be made to give, the cages were hauled up. They had not yet reached the top when a sudden cry of horror arose. Otto, who had not gone home, despite his abandonment of the day's work, but who had hung around the pit-head all day, pointed with his finger to the steep hillside that rose abruptly above the mine.

The hill itself was falling!

The pine forest swayed, as though the huge trees were but blades of grass, seemed to move downward a few yards, sending up a cloud of dust, and then fairly plunged down the slope in an avalanche of rocks, trees and earth mixed with tremendous bowlders. With a roar like the fall of a near-by thunderbolt, the landslide ripped away the side of the hill, the ground settling with a shiver like that of an earthquake, and sagging perceptibly.

"Sound the emergency whistle!" came the command.

A minute or two later, a series of shrill screeches gave the signal for summoning the rescue corps. Nearly all American mines, following the requirements and suggestions of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, maintain elaborately equipped rescue stations, manned by picked miners who are regularly drilled in the use of the apparatus.

Before the emergency signal had finished sounding the second time, both the rescue team and the first-aid team were at their places. Simultaneously, the cages containing the first load of miners came to the top.

A great sigh of relief went up.

"Well?" queried the superintendent to one of the mine foremen, who was in the first cage.

"A big roof-fall, sir," was the reply. "It was still fallin' when I came up. I left Lloyd to handle the men at the bottom while I came up to report."

"Gas?"

"None showin' as yet, sir. But I came right away. It might gather a bit later."

"How many missing?"

"Can't tell, sir. Most o' the men seemed to be gettin' clear."

"Ready to go down again?"

"Sure!"

"All right, get in the cage, then."

The assistant superintendent, the mining engineer, the safety inspector, and the fire boss were already in. The foreman jumped in beside them, and the cage rattled down to the bottom.

Already the word had spread to the gathering crowd that the accident was but a roof-fall, not an explosion, that two cages full of miners had come and that there was a likelihood that most of the men were safe.

Volunteers clustered around the mine-owner, clamoring to be allowed to go down.

"We'll dig 'em out, sir!" they cried cheerily.

"Keep back, men!" was the answer. "Wait till we know just what has to be done. Maybe every one below ground will have a chance to get out."

There was need for caution. While mine disasters are numerous—over two thousand men being killed every year in United States collieries alone—such an accident as this one had rarely happened before. The landslide above, combined with the sinking of the strata below, produced a condition which might be of the extremest danger.

The foreman of the pumping plant was the first to find evidence of this trouble. He hurried forward, consternation on his face.

"Mr Owens, the pumps have quit working!"

"What's wrong?"

"Pipes busted, sir, probably. The turbine's goin' all right, but she's suckin' air."

"How much water were you throwing this morning?"

"Over three thousand gallons an hour, sir."

"H'm, it won't take long to drown the mine at that rate. And if there are any poor fellows cut off—"

He turned to the store-house keeper.

"Got plenty of spare pipe?"

"Lots of it, sir."

"Get it out!"

Then, to the mine boss:

"Murchison, get a new pipe down the uptake shaft as quick as you know how! Double pay for every man working on the job! Put them on the jump!"

As fast as his eye could travel round the circle of eager men, the boss picked his workers, miners of tried worth.

Almost as though by magic a line was formed from the storehouse to the shaft. Mechanics, with their tools ready, were on the ladders by the time the first joint of pipe reached the shaft, and the first nine-foot length was flanged on in less than five minutes after the giving of the order. So fast were the joints thimbled and braced against the side of the shaft that the long pipe seemed to grow like a living thing. In an hour's time, the pumps were going again.

Meanwhile, the time clerk, not needing to wait for his orders, had checked the names of all the men who had come up the shaft, until the cage came up empty save for the foreman.

"That's the last," he said.

The time clerk closed his book and nodded, then went to the superintendent.

"Eight missing, sir."

"That's bad enough, though it might have been a good deal worse. Make out a detailed list and bring it here."

Truly it was bad enough. The fire boss and safety engineer had reported that fire had broken out in some part of the mine, probably, for white damp was leaking through. The report of the mining engineer was graver still. The first subsidence of the mine had caused the landslide, and the shock of the landslide had crushed all the galleries leading from the shafts.

"You mean that all the workings are smashed in?"

"I wouldn't say that. They can't be, the way the workings are laid out. But there's more rock to be cleared away than I like to think about. How many men are caught?"

"Eight."

"Do you know whereabouts, Mr Owens?"

"I'll tell you in a minute. Here's the clerk now." He scanned the list. "Well, three of them were working in the end galleries."

"They might be safe," interjected the mining engineer. "That's under the hill."

"Two of them," the superintendent continued, "were working in the broken, out towards the old workings, and the other three were near the North Gallery."

"We might get at the last three, but, judging from the lie, the old workings section will be choked until Doomsday."

"You mean we can't try to get those two men out?"

The mining engineer looked his chief full in the face.

"No, you can't," he said bluntly. "There's a fair chance of rescue in the North Gallery section, and, as for the others, we might drive galleries through to the rooms under the hill—though it'll take some time. The two men in the old workings are gone. They're probably smashed under the fall, anyway."

"I'll get all those men out or break my neck trying!" burst out the owner of the mine.

"If you scatter your forces, you won't do anything," the mining engineer retorted. As an expert in his profession, he was prepared to back his own opinion against all the officials of the mine, from the owner down, the more so as he knew that his chief had not spent his life in coal mining.

Owens glared at him, but he knew that the engineer was right.

"Lay out the work, then, since you know so much! I'll have the gangs ready, by the time you are. You think the men in the end galleries can be got at?"

"I'm sure of it, if they hold out long enough, and if they're lucky enough to escape the damps. Our main trouble is going to be the timbering. Now, the farther in we go, the farther we get from the break. The roof will be solid back there, most likely. That's why I think a good chance of rescue lies that way."

"Get at that end first, then. Clem Swinton's in that group of men. I'd be sorry to lose him. He's the most promising young fellow in the mine."

The mining engineer nodded.

"I know him. He's been attending the night school. You're right. We can't afford to lose him. It's easy enough to find miners—especially foreigners—but a young American who wants to learn the colliery business thoroughly is rare. I've had my eye on him, too."

At this point, Otto, who had been edging near his superiors and who had overheard the conversation, broke in.

"You don't need to worry over Clem Swinton, Mr. Owens," he said. "Clem'll get a good scare out o' this, an' that's about all."

"How do you know, Otto?" The superintendent spoke good-humoredly, for he knew and liked the old man. On more than one occasion, when a strike was threatened Otto's good sense had held back his fellow-miners from violent measures, and his chiefs recognized both his popularity and his loyalty. "Did your friends the 'knockers' tell you so?"

"They did, Mr Owens," was the unperturbed answer. "You'll see if I ain't right!"

"I hope you are. I'll put you in charge of one of the gangs at that end, if you like."

"I was a-goin' to," responded Otto, who had never doubted that he would be chosen for the post.

By four o'clock in the afternoon, work had been thoroughly organized. The pumps had got control of the water, a temporary ventilating circuit had been established in an effort to keep the mine air pure—for the main system had been destroyed by the fall, and the mining gangs were at work, digging away the obstruction and loading with feverish haste.

This was a very different matter from hewing coal, which is always laid out in regular seams and naturally divided by splitting planes. The rock from the strata above had fallen into the galleries at all angles, and was mixed up with the crushed and partly splintered timbers of the roof and sides. Blasting had to be done on a small scale and with extreme caution, for there was fire damp in the mine, due to the lack of complete ventilation.

The road-bed and rails, on which the cars for the transporting of the débris must run, were flattened and twisted. It was necessary to lay down new rails, however shakily. Moreover, since all the coal conveyors and electric haulage systems were a tangle of wreckage, the loaded cars had to be pushed by hand all the way along the underground galleries, to the bottom of the shaft.

The timbering gangs had a desperate job to do, for there was no solid flat roof overhead under which props could be put, nor could enough time be given to build a stable timber roof. Yet, upon the ability of the timber boss hung the lives of all the rescuers.

Night came, but without any slacking of the work. The electrical engineer and his staff strung temporary wires, and, both below ground and above ground, the colliery workings were as bright as day.

The scene was one of furious rush. Neighboring mines sent gangs to help. Cars loaded with mine timbers came from all the near-by collieries. The news of the accident, published in the local evening papers, had brought offers of help from every quarter. Before midnight, officials from the Bureau of Mines were on the scene.

At 3 o'clock in the morning, one of the great Rescue Cars maintained by the Bureau rolled into the railroad yards of the colliery. In this car were experts whose principal work was the direction of rescue operations in mining disasters, and the car contained a complete equipment of all the most modern scientific appliances.

The first rays of Saturday's dawn showed the crowd still gathered around the shaft. Owens, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and from watching, was still directing the operations, but with the advice and assistance of government officials.

The work was proceeding apace. The miners' picks rang incessantly, without a second's pause, each man streaming with perspiration as he toiled. Rails were put down as fast as the obstruction was dug away. The timber gangs strove like madmen. Each shift was for two hours only, with no pause between, for there were men and to spare.

So the day and the night passed.

At ten o'clock on Sunday morning, there came a cry—

"She's fallin' again!"

A tremor ran through the mine.

Another shifting of the strata imperilled all the excavation that had been done.

A few minutes' hesitation might have been fatal, but the timber gangs rushed forward, though the props were bending on every side of them and threatened, from second to second, to engulf them in falling rock. In a haste that approached to panic, timbers were thrust up and braced, so that but a small section of the roof fell.

Some of the miners quit, the more readily as a couple of them were badly hurt in the little fall, but for every man who showed the white feather, there were a score to volunteer. They were led by Owens himself, who was at the bottom of the shaft when the fall came. With all the fire of his adventurous youth, he seized a pick and ran forward to the most dangerous place, crying:

"Those men are to be got out, or I'll die down here with them! Who follows?"

There was no farther talk of quitting.

On Monday there arrived from Washington a Bureau of Mines expert, with a new listening-device, known as a geophone. This is an instrument worked on the microphone plan, so sensitive that it responds to the slightest vibration, even through dense rock-strata, hundreds of feet thick.

"Stop work, all!" came the order. "Not a word, not a whisper! Keep your feet and hands as still as if you were frozen!"

There was a tense five minutes as the geophone expert listened.

Presently he detached from his head the ear-clamps leading to the microphone receiver.

"The men are alive!" he declared. "I hear them knocking!"

"To work, men!" cried the boss, and the picks rang with redoubled zest.

It was Tuesday, shortly before dawn, when the rescuers pierced the first obstruction, only to find another and a worse break beyond.

A draft of air sucked through. Almost immediately the caps of the safety lamps showed blue. At the same time, the safety inspector called, "Back from the face, men! Back, all!"

He pointed to the little cage he had been holding.

The canaries had collapsed!

Carbon monoxide was pouring out, the deadly white damp, that kills as it strikes!

The hewers retreated, grumbling.

"We can stand it, with reliefs!" they declared.

But the Bureau man was adamant.

"Get back when you're told," he said shortly. "We'll get those men out all right. Bring the gas gang here!"

Then it was that the researches of the trained workers of the Bureau of Mines showed to their best advantage.

Along the gallery came a line of strange-eyed and humped figures, inhuman of appearance, wearing the newly devised respirators by which men can work in the most vitiated air without harm.

There are several types of these "gas masks," most of them based on the principle of carrying compressed oxygen for breathing, and bearing chambers containing chemicals which absorb the carbonic acid gas and moisture of the exhaled breath. These masks proved their utility at the great explosion at Courrières in 1906, the greatest mining disaster on record, when 1100 miners were killed.

Into the Poison-Filled Air!

Rescue-Crew of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, equipped with oxygen-breathing apparatus, facing the deadly "damps."

Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.

U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car.

Interior View, Showing Life-Saving Equipment.

It was not long, however, before it became evident that there was a limit to the usefulness of the respirators. Excellent as they were for exploring galleries filled with poisonous gas, it was difficult to do fast digging in them. The work slowed down.

"Look here, Mr. Owens," protested Otto, "if we don't go no faster'n we're goin' now, it'll be a month afore we get through. Let us go in! If the gas is bad, we'll take hour shifts, or half-hour shifts, or ten-minute shifts, if it comes to that! The men'll tough it out as long as they can!"

"What about it?" said the superintendent, to the Director of the Bureau of Mines car.

"If the men are willing to take the risk! But we can purify the air to some extent, anyway. I've a man down there with a Burrell gas detector, which is several hundred times more sensitive than any canary, so that we can keep a close watch on the air changes, and there are plenty of tanks of compressed oxygen to be got. I've some here in the car, and a telegram to Pittsburgh will bring us more in a few hours. We can put in another bellows, too.

"This miner's right enough, about the digging. Fast work can't be done in respirators. The men will have to use electric cap lamps, of course, but I've a big supply in the car."

Back into the poisoned air the miners went. That strain soon tested out the men, and, as the old miner had said to Clem, a week before, the young men and the single men were compelled to give up, first. Old Otto stood up to his work with the best of them, but forty minutes at a stretch was as long as any of the men could stand.

On Tuesday night, the rescuers working out from the up-take shaft broke through the obstruction into the North Gallery. The three men who had been imprisoned there were found asleep, close to the sleep that knows no waking, terribly poisoned by the lack of oxygen.

The mine doctor, who had been waiting at the face until the moment of breaking through, was the first through the hole. Rapidly he examined the unconscious men.

"One's nearly gone," he shouted back, "but I reckon we can save all three!"

A mighty cheer rolled through the galleries at the news that the North Gallery men were saved. It was echoed at the shaft and above ground.

Without loss of time, the men were brought to the open air and rushed to the mine hospital. Two hours passed before the first of them recovered consciousness.

The geophone expert was at his bedside, waiting impatiently.

"Have you been knocking any signals lately?" he asked, eagerly, as soon as the survivor was able to speak.

"No," the miner answered feebly, "we'd gave up. Thought it wasn't no use."

"I heard knocking again this morning," the expert announced. "The men at the far galleries must be alive still!"

Wednesday saw no diminution of the endeavor, but more than half the miners of the rescue crews were down and out, suffering to a greater or lesser degree from the terrible strain of the short shifts in the deadly mixture of fire damp and white damp. Yet volunteers were as plentiful as ever, for both the mine managers and the miners of neighboring collieries stood ready to help.

By Wednesday night came the cheering news that the roof overhead was more solid and that the rock fall had not broken in the floor. The cars rattled in and out, a car to each shaft in less than three minutes, loaded and pushed by willing hands. With the North Gallery men saved, both shafts had been set hauling the débris from the galleries leading to where Clem, Anton, and Jim were imprisoned.

At breakfast time, Thursday morning, just at the change of shift, the geophone expert reported voices.

The message was sped aloft:

"The men are still alive! We have heard them talking!"

The news seemed too good to be credited. Seven days the three men had been entombed, seven days without food, water or light, seven days in foul air, probably impregnated with noxious vapors.[1]

[1] A very similar accident, wherein a landslide accompanied the fall of the coal bank, occurred at Blue Rock, Ohio, in 1856. There, also, four entombed men were rescued after an imprisonment of eight days. (F. R-W)

Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the signal came from below to the pit-head to cease hauling.

What had happened?

There could be but one explanation. The cars must have stopped.

There had been another fall in the mine, blocking off the gallery.

The rescuers were caught!

Like wild-fire the news spread through the mining village.

Great and excited as had been the crowd before, it was ten times more excited now. Women, whose husbands were in the rescue gang, shook their fists at Owens, clamoring that he had sent fifty men to death in order to save three. The animosity spread to the miners who had lacked the nerve to volunteer, and all sorts of wild rumors passed among the crowd.

There might have been serious trouble, but the gates of the high fences around the pit-head enclosure had been closed, and the mine guards, armed with rifles, patrolled the place. Ever since the days of the "Molly Maguires,"—and many much more recent bloody outbreaks among coal miners—colliery owners have maintained armed guards.

Happily there was no actual trouble, though the crowd was getting ugly, for, a little more than two hours later, there came the cheering news that a supporting gang of rescue workers had driven a new gallery through one of the pillars of coal, and that union with the old line was effected.

Again a faint rumble!

Hopes dropped once more, but, after a brief inspection, the mining engineer reported that the fall had taken place in another part of the mine and that there was no immediate danger.

At 8 o'clock that evening, voices could be faintly heard. An hour later, using a megaphone, the rescuers made the survivors hear that help was near them.

"How many of you are there?"

Thinly, so thinly that the voice could scarcely be heard, came back the answer:

"Three."

"All alive and well?"

"We are all alive. Jim Getwood and Anton Rover are unconscious. This is Clem Swinton talking."

"How is the air?"

"Getting bad, now."

"Keep your courage up! We'll have you out soon!"

The hewers set to work in high spirits, hoping that every blow of the pick would drive through.

Then:

"Stop work, men!" said the Bureau chief suddenly.

The men stared at him, amazed at the order. All stopped, however, except old Otto, who continued to use his pick-axe steadily.

The official grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round with none too gentle a hand.

"Stop, you thick-head, when you're told!"

"What for? We'll be through this wall in an hour!"

"You'll have a hole through it, maybe. But what good will that do?"

Otto stared at the official amazed, and the Bureau of Mines man went on:

"You've had to start working in a respirator, after all, haven't you? Why? Because of white damp! Haven't you got sense enough to see what would happen as soon as you drove a hole through big enough to let the white damp in and not big enough to get the men out? How long do you think they'd last in this air, in their weakened state?"

Otto looked at him a moment, and then nodded his head.

"You're right, boss," he admitted. "I'm a fool. I'd never ha' thought o' that. But what are you goin' to do?"

"You don't seem to know enough to use your eyes," the official answered, shortly, "and they told me you were one of the best men in the mine! What do you suppose we've been doing all this cement construction along this gallery for the last couple of shifts?"

"I hadn't stopped to think," admitted Otto, taken aback.

"Well, you'll have a chance to do some thinking, now."

In effect, it was not surprising that Otto should not be able to see a way out of the difficulty, for the problem was a serious one.

The proportion of white damp, or carbon monoxide, in the air where the rescuers had now been compelled to work in respirators, was strong enough to kill a man in ten or fifteen minutes. In the undoubtedly weakened state of the three survivors, a lesser time than this would suffice to be fatal.

If, in the course of digging away the obstruction which remained between the rescuers and the entombed men, a small hole were made, or if the rocks should lie in such a manner that there were interstices between, Clem and his comrades would succumb before a sufficiently large breach could be made in the wall whereby they might be dragged through to liberty.

Where the Timber Goes.

Whole forests are cut down to hold up the mine galleries. On the strength of this work the lives of the miners depend.

Courtesy of the Wigham Coal Co.

Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors.

Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.

Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs."

Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines.

If, indeed, it were safe to blast, it might be possible to get rid of the obstruction by the use of a heavy blast and then rush through and grab the men. But this was impossible. The Burrell tester showed a large proportion of methane gas or fire damp, and a blast of any size might easily start an explosion which would not only wreck the mine, but also kill every member of the rescue parties, while affording no chance of getting the imprisoned men.

How could the wall be taken down, without allowing the gas to percolate through?

"Stand back, men," said the official, "here come the 'sand hogs,' now."

Amazed, the colliers retreated from the coal face to give place to a very different group of men. Small and wiry folk, these, dressed in an entirely different fashion from the miners. The respirators gave them the same goggle-eyed goblin faces. Not one of them had ever been in a coal mine before.

With a speed and dexterity that showed their knowledge of the work, these men proceeded to build up, at the side of the gallery, close to the point where the last obstruction still held, a solid face of concrete, and rapidly cemented it to the somewhat elaborate construction that had been in process of making all the preceding day, and to which Otto had paid no heed.

It was not long before it became evident that a completely closed room was being made. Other gangs came along, carrying strange screw-doors of iron, and a multitude of devices new to the eyes of miners. Everything had been measured and prepared above-ground. It remained only to throw the material together, according to a prearranged plan.

By midnight, all was ready.

Three "sand hogs," with a gallant young doctor who had volunteered, prepared to enter.

A steady throbbing sound told that machinery connected with an outlet pipe—solidly embedded in the cement—had been set in motion. The newly made walls threatened to bulge inwards, and the signal was given to stop.

Then a rushing noise was heard in the inlet pipe, similarly embedded. The outer of the double doors was opened and the four men stepped in, entering a tiny ante-chamber. They closed the outer door, which was absolutely air-tight, opened the inner one, and passed into the chamber built against the coal face, made of solid cement except for a circle of coal a yard in diameter.

A minute or two later, could be heard, faintly, the high screech of some rapid-cutting machine.

When Otto came back on his next shift, at 2 o'clock on Friday morning, the sand hogs were still working.

Curiosity overcame the old miner's desire not to seem ignorant.

"Just what is that, sir?" he asked the Bureau official, who was still on watch.

"That you, Otto? So you want to know, now, do you? Well, that's a sort of lightly made caisson, or air-tight chamber, with an air-lock or double door. It's used a good deal for working under water, but for the job we have here, it doesn't have to be very solidly built.

"It's simple enough, when you think it out. We just cemented it up, put in an air-pump to take out the gassy air that was in it, and then turned in compressed air, with a pressure of a little more than one atmosphere, just enough to keep any of the gas from entering the hole that is being dug through the coal pillar."

"Why can't gas get in? Gas'll go through coal."

"Because the pressure from inside is bigger than from outside. The compressed air is leaking through the coal and driving any gas away."

"Why didn't you let us get in there to finish the job, if that's all there is to it?" protested Otto, indignant that strangers should have the glory of the final rescue, after the miners had done so much.

"Because you couldn't stand it. Those men are sand hogs. They're used to working in compressed air. Just as soon as a man gets into a pressure of two or three atmospheres, unless he's mighty careful he's apt to get dangerously ill. His blood absorbs too much air. While he's under compression, he doesn't feel it so much, but if he comes out of the compression too quickly, the surplus air in his blood can't come out as slowly as it ought, and little bubbles form in the blood current. That's deadly. Sometimes these bubbles cause a terrible caisson disease known as the 'bends,' when all the muscles and joints are affected; or it may give a paralysis known as 'diver's palsy,' because divers working in compressed atmospheres suffer the same way; all too often, it causes sudden death. So you see, Otto, it's not a chance a man ought to take who knows nothing about it."

"An' the sand hogs are diggin' in there?"

"No, they're not digging. We put in a tunnelling machine driven by compressed air, which is sometimes used for making sewers and the like. It will bore an even, round hole, just big enough for a man to crawl through, comfortably.

"As soon as that hole is pierced through into the room where the imprisoned men are, the doctor will go in, taking food, wine and medical supplies, and three respirators as well. Then, when the survivors are protected against the possible results of a sudden inrush of gas, it'll be up to you men to get the rest of the wall down as quick as you can."

"So that's how it is! We'll be ready, sir, as soon as you give the word."

At 6 o'clock, on the Friday morning, the outer door of the caisson clanged and the foreman of the sand hogs came out.

"We've pierced through," he said. "The doctor's in there. He says all the men are alive, as yet, but he doesn't know if they'll recover. There's not much time to lose, judging by what he says."

"At the wall, men!" came the order.

The miners cheered. They were to have the glory of getting their comrades out, after all.

The picks hammered on the rock like hail. The cars roared through the galleries once more. The cages shot upward with their loads.

At 8 o'clock, a miner's pick went through the wall into the space leading to the room beyond, but there was still a lot of rock to move before a clear passage could be made.

Otto remembered the warning of the Mine Bureau official, and realized that, had he been left to himself, he would have killed his comrades at the very moment of rescue.

At 9 o'clock, the hole was big enough for one of the rescuers to pass. As before, a doctor was the first to scramble through the opening.

The excitement above ground was enormous. Each car might bring a survivor!

Every time that the cage was a few seconds late, hope rose high.

"Keep silence, now," said the Mine Bureau's surgeon to the waiting crowd. "No cheers or shouts remember! The nerves of the men are apt to be at the breaking point."

The silence added to the tension. The atmosphere was electric with anxiety.

What was happening?

The cage was rising slowly, slowly!

Surely the men were there!

It reached the surface.

A limp form was borne out and laid on a waiting stretcher.

It was Anton, his face pinched, his lips blue.

In the next cage, Jim Getwood was brought up. On seeing his condition, the mine doctor shook his head dubiously. Artificial respiration was begun, then and there.

The cage rose for the third time, bearing Clem Swinton, unconscious like his comrades, but clearly in better case.

He stirred as he reached the open air, and his glance encountered that of the mine owner.

"I said American mine pluck would get us," he gasped, "if we stuck out long enough!"

And he relapsed into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER IV
EIGHT DAYS OF DARK

The three comrades were saved, indeed, but it was none too soon. Eight days below ground without food or light and without any sure hope of rescue, had brought them to a low ebb.

Clem, owing to his longer experience in the mine and his more prudent conserving of the scanty supply of food that fell to his share, had withstood the strain better than the two other survivors. He was badly shaken, however, and his nerves were on the edge of collapse. His efforts to help his companions had held him tense during those unending hours of darkness and famine, and his optimism had kept him from the ravages of despair.

Anton had received a terrible shock, both to body and mind. His hands and feet had become deadened, as though frozen, and the most vigorous treatment failed to restore the circulation. From time to time he was seized by convulsive fits; resembling those of epilepsy, and characteristic of white damp poisoning. His speech remained thick and mumbling, and he repeated the same word over and over, a score of times, without being conscious that he had spoken it.

Jim Getwood, the prospector, was in the weakest condition of the three. He lacked the degree of immunity that Clem possessed through his half-dozen years below ground, and that Anton possessed, in a minor degree, through heredity. His former life of adventure in the open air made him all the more susceptible to the poison gases. Violent headaches brought him to the verge of madness, and alternated with periods of delirium. He could retain little or no food, and, several times, the doctor despaired of saving his life.

Yet, in the history of coal-mining, there are several cases on record in which men have been even a longer time below ground and recovered. In a French colliery, two out of thirty men who were buried for fourteen days, recovered; in a Welsh colliery, one man survived out of seventy who had been entombed for seventeen days.

A still more astonishing case occurred in a Scotch coal-mine. A big roof-fall in a pit in Ayrshire had blocked off all the outlets to the shaft, save one, by which all the miners were able to escape. One man, however, finding that the way to the shaft was clear, returned to the face of the coal where he had been working, in order to get his coat.

On his way back to the shaft, a second fall occurred, blocking him in. This happened in 1835, when rescue work was still done in a primitive fashion. It was not until the twenty-third day that the miner was reached. He was alive, but in a dying state, his body being covered with a species of fungus that grows upon decaying mine timbers. He lived three days after being brought to the surface.

The longest record of endurance under such conditions occurred in France, some years later. A well-digger, near Lyons, was buried alive with a comrade, the sides of a deep well caving in after such a manner that an air-space of 37 feet was left above the entombed men.

It was impossible to try to remove the obstruction, for any effort to do so would only cause the earth and stones to fall on them and crush the men. In order to attempt rescue, it was necessary to sink a well as deep as the first, and, when the full depth was reached, to drive an underground gallery from one to the other.

Up to the very last day, the rescuers were able to hear tappings, sure sign that at least one of the men was alive. On the thirtieth day the rescue was effected. The oldest of the two well-diggers was found alive, but he was in a terrible condition because of the infection caused by the corpse of his comrade, who had died two weeks before. He, also, lived three days after his rescue, but the doctors were unable to save his life.

None of these men, however, had to withstand the effects of white damp in the air; on the other hand, none of them had any supply of food, however small, to begin with.

Clem's account of the experiences of the three men in the mine was awaited with a great deal of interest. Reporters from various newspapers hung around the mine for several days, waiting for a chance to get his story. The mine doctor refused permission, however, until he was assured that the young miner was well on his way to health, fearing that a reawakening of the memories of that terrible week might bring about a relapse. Finally he admitted the reporters to the hospital ward where the three survivors lay, though forbidding Anton and Jim to speak.

Clem was willing enough to tell his tale.

He began with the incident in the cage, on the morning of the accident, when he had joked with Otto, to the old miner's manifest objection. He told of Otto's refusal to work that day, according to the account given him by Jim. He described, also, how Anton had gallantly abandoned his own chance of safety to come and warn him, and explained how they had vainly searched an outlet in the direction of the North Gallery.

"Right after we met Jim," he went on, "we ran as fast as we could towards the old workings, to see if we could get out there. I didn't think there was much chance, because, so far as I could make out, the fall had happened between where we were working and the shafts. But it was worth trying, anyway. When we found the wall down, in that section, and the rock piled up clear to the roof, I knew we were trapped, sure.

"Thanks to what I had learned in the night-school classes, I had a pretty good idea of the general lay-out of the mine. I knew how the faults lay, and miners, who'd been in this mine a long time, had told me how gassy the old workings were.

"In a lesson I'd had on mine ventilation, we'd been told that the ventilating plant, here, had been enlarged twice over to try to keep the mine clear of gas. It wasn't hard to figure out that, with the ventilation stopped, gas would soon begin to collect, and that would be the end of us.

"There was a big-enough cap on our safety lamps, as it was, and it seemed to me that the blue cone grew longer as I looked. I told Jim that it wasn't safe for us to hang around those old workings, we'd get poisoned before we knew it and lose any chance we had of rescue.

"Jim didn't see it my way, at first.

"'Might as well die here as anywhere!' he said.

"I didn't like that spirit. I'd read in a book, somewhere, that if a chap gives up hope, he dies a whole lot quicker than if he keeps up his spirits. It was about Anton that I was worrying most. I was bent on trying to get the youngster cheerful if I could, because he was moping over Otto's prophecy that there was going to be an accident. You've heard about that, I suppose?"

The reporters nodded, and Owens, who was listening, added:

"We've heard a lot about it. The old man called the turn, all right. But maybe you don't know that he told me, too, that you'd be rescued and that you'd come out of it, alive?"

"Did he?" queried Clem, in amazement.

"Point-blank. It's a good thing for you he did, too, for a whole lot of first-class men volunteered for the rescue work who couldn't have been persuaded to enter the mine again, otherwise. The old man stuck to his belief, even after most of us thought you would be dead. The geophone expert backed him up, by saying he heard tapping, but it was Otto's persistence that did the most."

"It's a queer thing he should guess so closely," commented Clem thoughtfully.

But a reporter from a Pittsburgh evening paper, who was anxious to get the survivor's story on the telegraph wires, broke in impatiently:

"What was the first thing you did, after you'd found you were trapped?"

"We got busy and made a barricade," Clem answered. "I showed Jim and Anton that, in the old workings where we were, there was a lot of gas. Our lamps showed it up, good and strong. Now, back in the rooms where Jim and I had been hewing, there wasn't any gas to speak of. We could go back there, of course, and that was what Jim wanted to do.

"But I figured out that, since the ventilation was shut off from our rooms, the gas which had accumulated in the old workings and which was steadily seeping through the coal in that section would gradually creep along the galleries our way. If that happened, we'd be down and out, before the rescuers had a chance to cut their way through. We could put up a barricade, though, and cut off the gassy part of the mine.

"Jim didn't want to work, at first. If he was going to die, he said, he might as well die of gas as of hunger. He talked a lot of rot about its being the easiest death. I was that sore, I could have kicked him.

"Anton was willing enough to work, though, and when Jim saw the two of us actually at work, he got over his grouch, went and got his pick and shovel and slaved as hard as any of us. We piled up the coal and rock, good and thick, and then scraped up all the fine dust we could find and made a thick blanket of that to keep the gas from coming through, as best we could.

"Putting up that barricade made us mighty hungry. We were working fast because the gas there was bad, and we knew the quicker we got away from it, the better for us. Being hungry didn't do us much good. There wasn't much grub.

"We had only two pails of dinner, Jim's and mine. Anton's dinner pail was out by the entry where he took the loaded cars. So we pooled the food, and divided it into three exactly equal parts, each one of us to hide his share, and to eat it as quickly or as slowly as he pleased.

"Jim ate his at once, said he'd rather have one good meal than a lot of little bites which didn't mean anything. Anton made his last longer, he still had some food left when the lamps burned out. I only took a bite or two of mine, at that time, and managed to make eight meals of it, though, of course, I couldn't tell how many hours or days apart those meals were."

"How long did the safety-lamps burn?" asked the reporter.

"Eight hours after we were caught. They all went out within a few minutes of each other—and we had them pretty well turned down, too. I looked at my watch, just as the last one flickered out. It wasn't quite a quarter past eight."

"You had no matches?" the reporter asked.

"Matches? What a fool idea!" exclaimed Clem, amazed at the reporter's ignorance. "I should say not! Even the lamps are locked. We could have had light three times as long, if it wasn't for that, burning first one and then the other, but there's no way to light a lamp below ground.

"Before the lamps went out, each of us had scraped up a pile of coal dust to sleep on. It was plenty warm down there, and getting warmer all the time. The lack of air made us all heavy and drowsy. We were all asleep pretty soon after the lamps went out.

"We woke up in the dark. It was black as pitch, a blackness which weighed on you. It hurt. One's eyes wanted to fight against it.

"How long had we been asleep? An hour, ten hours, or the whole twenty-four? Not one of us could tell.

"But the sleep had done one good thing. It had helped Jim a lot. He was full of pep, again. The old prospecting optimism had come back. He was dead sure that he could find a way out. All it needed was looking for, he thought.

"Anton wasn't awake yet, and I didn't want to wake him up. The longer he slept, the better. I tried to reason with Jim that we'd already gone to all the openings there could be, but he wouldn't listen to reason. He wouldn't stay with us. He was restless. He just had to be up and wandering.

"'How are you going to find your way back?' I asked him. 'It's easy to get lost in the dark, and you don't know much about the mine.'

"'I'll be back with a full dinner-pail while you're sitting there doing nothing!' he boasted, and off he started. I'd have gone with him, quick enough, but I didn't want Anton to wake and find himself alone.

"After a while Anton woke up. I heard him munching, so I knew he was at his grub. I warned him not to finish it all at once, but he was so hungry he couldn't stop. I couldn't blame him much, at that. I was so ravenous that my stomach seemed to be tying itself up in knots, and the flesh inside seemed to crawl.

"I had to tell him that Jim had gone off by himself. Anton didn't say much to that. In fact, he didn't want to talk at all. He was brooding all the time. Twice I overheard him muttering to himself, and both times he was talking about Otto and his warning.

"I could see he was blaming me, but I'll say this for the boy—he never once said that he regretted having come back to warn me."

"That," interrupted the superintendent emphatically, "shows the boy is good stuff. It takes a good deal of moral courage to keep from blaming some one else, when you're in a pinch. I remember, once, in West Australia—" He checked himself. "Go ahead with your story, lad."

Clem resumed.

"Some time after—it seemed about an hour, though it may have been a good deal less or a good deal more—we heard shouting.

"'Jim's found the way out!' cried Anton, and scrambled to his feet.

"I grabbed him as he rose.

"'Don't run off in that fool fashion,' I said to him. 'Make sure where the shouts are coming from, first. You've been down in a mine long enough to know that the echoes are apt to make a noise sound as if it comes in a directly opposite direction from the right one.'

"'I'm going to find Jim!' he insisted.

"'If you must run chances, why, I suppose you must,' said I. 'But I'm going to stay here, where the air's good. Try to get back here. Keep in touch. You take ten paces forward, then stop and shout. I'll answer. If you don't hear me, come back.'

"He promised and started off. For the first fifty yards or so—supposing that he shouted at every ten paces—I heard him clear enough.

"Then—not another sound! What had happened to him?

"I shouted again and again.

"No reply!

"What was I going to do? Both Jim and Anton were wandering around loose in the mine galleries, and they might stray until they dropped, without ever finding the way back. I yelled till I was hoarse.

"Then I got another idea. I took my pick, and kept on hitting the roof in three regular strokes: 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' and then a pause—just like that." He illustrated on the head-rail of his hospital bed. "I knew that the vibration would carry along the rock, farther than the voice."

"That's what the geophone man heard," Owens commented to the reporter. "Go on, lad!"

"I kept that up," Clem went on, "until my arms ached. I was so tired in my back and so weak with hunger that bright violet spots kept dancing before my eyes. But I kept on, just the same.

"Then I heard a shout, and, presently, Anton came staggering along, dead beat. He'd been guided back by the sound of the tapping.

"'No sign of Jim?' I asked

"'Nothing!'

"He lay down on the coal dust, and, pretty soon, I heard him breathing hard. He'd gone right off to sleep, exhausted, poor kid!"

"How long do you suppose he'd been wandering?" queried the reporter.

"No way of knowing. But I'm pretty husky, and I can stand an eight hours' shift of coal hewing without getting too tired. And, I tell you, I was about done out, just from reaching up and tapping that roof with a pick. Of course, I was weak. But I reckon it must have been eight hours, good, that the youngster was straying in those mine galleries, in the dark, alone. Maybe it was more.

"I must have gone to sleep, too, but it didn't seem for long. Half-asleep, I heard Anton say,

"'There's a rat gnawing at my stomach!'

"I woke up right quick, at that, for though mine rats are ugly customers, I thought if we could catch a rat or two, that might give us food. But what the boy meant was that he was so hungry that it felt as if a rat were there.

"I wasn't exactly hungry, leastways, not all the time. The pain came in cramps, that were bad enough while they lasted, but I didn't feel anything much between. My tongue was getting swollen, though. I knew what that meant. Drink of some sort we must have.

"'Look here, Anton,' I said, 'you tap on the rock, in threes, the same as I did, and I'll go try to find water. I know the lay-out of this mine better than you do, and there used to be a sump (hole) near the goaf (waste rock taken from the main gallery roofs). Maybe there'll be water there.'

"I started off, cheerfully enough. I reckoned I knew the mine. So I do, with a lamp, but I didn't have any idea what it meant to wander in the pitch-dark. The galleries were low there, too, not more than four feet high. I had to keep one hand stretched out in front of me to keep from going headlong into the wall, and the dinner pail that I was carrying in that hand struck the side more times than I could count; I kept the other hand above my head, to keep me from cracking my skull against the cross-timbers holding up the low roof.

"Before I'd gone a hundred yards, I was so mixed up that I didn't know which way I was going or where I'd come from. It's a horrible feeling. The dark is like a trap that you can't feel and you can't see, but you know it's there. It's being blind with your eyes open.

"Then it was so ghastly silent, too. A blind man can always hear something. There's life around him. Down there, not a sound! I'd lost all hearing of the 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' I'd told Anton to make.

"All sorts of nasty things came into my head. I might step into a hole and get crippled. I might walk straight into a pocket of gas, and, without any safety lamp to tell me of the danger, be poisoned then and there. The roof might be bulging down, right over my head, ready to fall and I'd have no warning.

"I tried to reason it out that all these ideas were just imagination. Reasoning didn't do much good. Fright got a grip of me. I was in a cold sweat all over. My heart thumped so that it hurt. I was just horribly scared, right through, and I had to bite my lips till they were raw to keep from screaming.

"I'd have gone under, sure, if I'd been alone, but I had the kid to think of, and every time the tin dinner pail banged against the wall, it reminded me of what I'd come to look for. Anton would die of thirst in a few hours, if I didn't find water. As for Jim, I reckoned he was probably done for, anyway.

"I think—I'm not sure but I think so—I had a spell of running crazily round and round in a circle, trying to get away from something—I don't know what. It was then I gave my head a bang," he pointed to the bandage still on his head, "and while that stunned me a bit, it steadied me, too.

"By that time, I was lost for fair. I couldn't hear Anton's tapping. I couldn't hear anything. I tried to turn back and got all mixed up in the run of the galleries. I wandered this way and that, as blindly as if I'd never been in the mine before.

"And then I heard a sound like the ticking of a big clock.

"That scared me more than anything.

"I remembered all Otto's' stories about the 'knockers,' and, though I didn't believe them, I couldn't get them out of my head. Somebody, something, was knocking softly underground!

"It wasn't human, that was sure!

"It couldn't be Anton, because he'd been told to tap in threes. It couldn't be Jim, for the ticks were too close together to be the strokes of a pick; besides, I knew that Jim had left his tools behind. It couldn't be rescuers, because the sound was near me. Near me? It was almost at my ear.

"Sometimes breaking timber cracks. It might be a prop gradually giving way, I thought, just ready to let down a new fall of rock on my head. But a creaking timber is sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and this ticking, as I said, was regular, like a big clock.

"Then I guessed!

"It was drops of water falling!

"I could have shouted with relief, but down there, in the dark and the stillness, the silence was so heavy that I was afraid to shout.

"I felt my way forward, one step and then a second, and the ticking stopped.

"I took a third step and it began again. I stepped backward, and a little to one side, and the drop fell on my bare shoulder.

"I took my dinner-pail, moved it forward, backward, this way and that, until at last I heard the drops falling in the tin.

"I was too thirsty to wait long. As soon as there was a teaspoonful of water in the pail, I moistened my tongue with it. That was a relief! I was able to hold out the tin pail, the next time, until there was a reasonable drink.

"Ugh, it was bitter! It tasted coppery and twisted up my mouth, but it was liquid, at least. After I had a drink or two, I felt better. My scare passed away.

"Then I began to think a bit. If water was dropping as quickly as that, it must be running somewhere. But where? I got down on my hands and knees and began to feel along the floor. Here it was damp; there, dry. I crawled along for a few minutes, following the line of the damp floor, and, sure enough, came to a hollow where a good-sized puddle had collected. There I was able to half-fill the pail.

"So far, I was all right. I'd found the water. But how was I to get back to Anton? And where was Jim, if he were still alive? I hadn't any idea, any more, of which way to turn.

"Then I got a scheme. Suppose I just walked straight ahead, keeping my right hand against the wall, and turning to the right at every opening I came to? I knew that we were hemmed in at every point. Therefore, I figured, we must be inside some kind of an irregular circle. The place where we had made our beds was in the room where I had been working, which was in the end gallery, and, at that rate, somewhere on the circumference of that circle. If I kept on going, long enough, I'd be bound to strike the place.

"Off I started with the pail half-full of water. I walked, in and out, up one gallery and down another, coming back to the rock falls which had blocked the way, and on again. I tried to count my paces, and, though I forgot sometimes, I figured that I'd done about seven thousand paces when I heard, faintly:

"'Tap! Tap! Tap!'

"It seemed to come from behind me.

"I wasn't to be fooled by the echoes, though, and so I kept on as I had been going. Just a little further and I turned a corner and came to the place where we had made our beds.

"Anton was down.

"He hadn't been able to keep on tapping on the roof, as I had told him to. He hadn't the strength. But the kid's pluck was holding, though his vitality wasn't. He'd taken his maul (a large hammer used for driving wedges in the coal) and was lifting this from the ground and then dropping it, three strokes at a time, like I'd told him to do.

"When I spoke to him he couldn't answer. His tongue was so swollen that it just about filled up his whole mouth.

"I gave him some water, a sip or two at a time, and then, when I thought he could stand it, a real drink. Even then, I had to go slow, for my dinner pail was only half-full.

"I still had a few bites of food left, but I wasn't hungry, I'd gone too far for that. My mouth was sore, too. The copperas water screwed up my palate and my tongue like eating unripe bananas does, only a lot worse. It worked the same way on Anton."

"It was that water that helped you, though," put in the mine doctor. "The sulphate of iron in it lowered the activity of the body, drying it up, so that you could go on with less loss of tissue."

"It tasted nasty enough to have anything in it! Just the same, it was water. When I woke up from a nap, I found the pail empty. The youngster had finished it, but when I rowed him for doing it, he couldn't remember having drunk it at all. He was only half-conscious, any way.

"My tongue was beginning to swell again. I saw we'd have to shift our headquarters so as to be near that water, or the time would come when we'd be too weak to go hunting it. So, following the same scheme of making a whole circle of the part of the mine where we were trapped, I went back the way I'd come, making sure that Anton was following right behind me.

"It seemed a whole lot farther off than I'd thought, I suppose because I was afraid of passing the place. After a couple of hours, though, I heard the sound of the dropping water. It was great to hear it again! We took some long drinks there, I can tell you. Then we scooped up with our hands some coal dust to lie on, and slumped down again. I was beginning to feel pretty weak."

"About what day do you suppose that was?" the reporter asked.

"I haven't any idea. Sometimes I thought we'd only been down there a few hours, sometimes it seemed like weeks. I suppose, really, it was about the third or the fourth day.

"I woke up suddenly.

"Somebody was laughing!

"It was a queer high-pitched laugh, and half-choked, something like the neighing of a horse.

"Anton heard it, too.

"'The knockers are coming for us!' he said to me, hoarsely. 'It's just like Father said. They're laughing at us!'

"Well, I don't mind telling you my blood ran a bit cold. I'm not superstitious, but, for the second time in that mine, I was scared enough to run. But where to?

"Anton was gasping horribly; it made me worse to hear him. I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. He was trembling and shaking, like as he had a chill.

"The laughing came nearer, and louder.

"The louder it got, the less I was scared. After the first few seconds of fright, I got all right again, and started to think quietly. Then the real reason came to me.

"It must be Jim!

"I let out a loud shout.

"The laughing stopped dead.

"Then I knew it was Jim; things that weren't human wouldn't care if I shouted or not.

"'Keep quiet!' I said to Anton. 'It's Jim, and he's coming this way.'

"Presently the laughter began again, a sort of half choked scream, like I said, but it was laughing just the same. It made my flesh creep to hear it. Somehow it wasn't quite human, more like an animal trying to laugh like a man.

"It was quite close to us, now. I got up, for I could hear steps shuffling along the gallery.

"Suddenly, something bumped into me, though I thought the steps were several yards away.

"It was Jim, sure enough.

"He gave a sort of screech and both his hands went up to my throat, in a strangling grip.

"I'm a good deal bigger than Jim, but I was like a baby in his hands. He had me like in a vise.

"'Help! Help! Anton!' I called. 'He's throttling me! It's Jim!'

"At that, the kid got up, tottering. He was weak enough, but, as you know, he's really got muscles of iron. In spite of his scare—for he was dead sure that it was something supernatural—he came to my help.

"The minute he got his hands on Jim and found that it was really flesh and blood that he was tackling, and not any sort of goblin, he got furious. He wrenched at his opponent savagely, and the more furious he got, the more his strength came back. I could hear his sinews cracking.

"But Jim's grip was that of a madman.

"It was a good thing for me that Anton was the son of the champion wrestler of the mine. Despite his powerful muscles, he could do nothing, absolutely nothing against the madman. I felt him let go, and thought that was the end. My head was bursting, my heart fluttering.

"Then, with a swift change of hold, the youngster took Jim in a wrestler's grip, one he had learned from his father. It's a death hold, unless the other weakens. I heard Jim gasp. The clutch loosened. At last I could breathe and I shook myself free.

"But the madman was not tamed. His fists shot out like flails. One blow took Anton full in the chest. I heard his body crash against the wall. I could do little to help him, that choking grip had taken away every ounce of force I had.

"There wasn't any need for my help. That blow had roused Anton to a rage but little less than that of his mad foe. He knew nothing of boxing, but he could wrestle. It was a grim fight, down there in the dark!

"Despite the madman's blows, Anton ran in, clutched him in some kind of a wrestler's grip, lifted him clear off his feet and threw him over his shoulder.

"The madman fell heavily on the rock floor and lay like a log.

"For a minute or two we panted, saying nothing. Then,

"'Have you killed him, Anton?' I asked.

"'I don't know. I hope so,' he answered savagely.

"I felt pretty much that way, myself, at first, for my throat felt as if it were twisted clear out of shape. But, as I began to feel a bit better, I thought of Jim lying there.

"After all, he hadn't had any water! Small wonder he'd gone mad.

"Staggering—for that grip had nearly done for me—I got over beside him and knelt down. His heart was still beating, pretty rapidly, at that. But his jaws were almost locked upwards, forced apart by his thickened and swollen tongue.

"I got some water into his mouth, but with difficulty. I couldn't pry his tongue down far enough to get more than a drop or two in. But I kept at it—hours, I reckon—and kept on giving him sips of water until he began to breathe a bit more naturally.

"Then I reckon I fainted, for, when I came to, I was lying right across Jim. He was still unconscious, but the tongue was a whole lot better and he was nearly able to close his mouth. I poured a lot more water into him. Then I tried to give him a bite from the bread I had left, but he couldn't swallow. So I gave it to Anton, who was moaning a good bit.

"Me, I was getting less and less hungry. The gnawing pain that I'd felt at the beginning, especially that first time that I was hunting water, only came back at longer and longer intervals. In between, I felt quite all right, rather jolly, in fact. I caught myself laughing, once, the way I'd heard Jim, and I had hard work to stop it. Hysterical, I reckon.

"I must have slept a lot, or fainted, I don't know which. I remember having dreamed that I was rescued, oh, a score of times! Always, when I was asleep, there seemed plenty of light, generally a bright violet. It was only when I woke up that it was dark. The blackness was like a rock lying on my chest. The air I breathed seemed to taste black.

"Jim got violent, more than once. To end up, I had to tie his feet with my belt, so he couldn't get up on his feet. I wasn't going to risk any more fights like we'd had with him at the start.

"When he wasn't struggling, he was talking. He talked nearly all the time, and mostly about some gold mine that he'd found, that he knew would make him a millionaire and that he wanted to go back to. He described the place, over and over again. I believe I could go right there, just from hearing him. The only thing that quieted him was when I answered. Then he'd shut right up, only to begin again, after a while.

"What worried me the most about Jim was that he couldn't keep the bitter water on his stomach. He'd vomit it up, almost as soon as I'd get it down. I kept pouring it into him, just the same.

"When I put the last bite of grub into Anton—he was dead unconscious—it seemed like the end of everything. I lost all track of time. I don't know what happened, after that. I got quite light-headed, I think.

"Half the while, I didn't know whether the time I was dreaming was real, or the time I was awake. I knew somehow that the air was getting bad, and I remember thinking that this might be because a rescue party was trying to get down the wall.

"But there was always plenty of light when I was asleep, and I liked that, so, every time I was awake, I tried to go back to sleep."

"Didn't you hear any sounds of the rescue party coming nearer?" Owens asked.

"I heard them all the time, even when they weren't there," Clem answered. "How was I to tell what was real and what was dream?

"On one side was Jim telling about his gold mine, on the other was Anton, crying out from time to time that the knockers had him. Poor kid, he seemed to be in a nightmare all the while."

"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine suggested, "you answered naturally enough."

"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.

"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.

"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."

"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting another phase of the story. "What was that?"

Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his comrade threw him a reassuring look.

"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I can't give away his secret. It might be true!"

CHAPTER V
THE LURE OF GOLD

In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure, lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:

Gold!

Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old. The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of millions, untold.

He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again he reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done. The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once known so well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.

The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn of history as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliest laws as yet known—the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B. C. 3000—both gold and silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal and priestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buried with the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.

There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who kept unlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus, the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits near Mt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge of gold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.

The Phœnicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on long expeditions to distant lands in search of gold. Cadmus, the Phœnician, in B. C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established a regular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happen on the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancient historian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of gold near Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.

One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest of the Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest in the oared ship Argo—and hence called the Argonauts—have given their name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales in all the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.

The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harks back to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefest form, runs the tale:

In a minor kingdom of what is now Northern Greece, there lived a king, Athamas, son of the god of the sea, who had married Nephele, the goddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in love with Ino, grand-daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The cloud-goddess, indignant at this neglect, disappeared, leaving behind her two children, Phrixus and Helle.

It was not long before the stepmother conceived a violent hatred for the children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty, she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the king refused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine in the land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sown and thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, she persuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeased if he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sake of his country, the king agreed.

All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priest had the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over the scene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads of gold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out all vision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer see his victim to deal the fatal blow. Then came a rift in the fog, and, through the swirl of mist, Athamas and Ino saw Phrixus and his sister leap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.

Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plunged into the waters of the strait that lies between Europe and Asia Minor, breasting the waves with ease. Helle fell from the back of the ram and was drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) was known to the Greeks as the Hellespont.

Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of his cloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and took the fleece to Æetes, king of Colchis. Æetes at first received him with honor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and made Phrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in the grove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there the mystic treasure was guarded by a dragon which never slept.

Now Pelias, brother of Athamas, had usurped the throne of Thessaly. When Jason, son of the true king, Aeson, had grown to man's estate, he presented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender the kingdom.

The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would side with Jason, did not refuse outright. He demanded, only, that Jason should show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act of heroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, and Jason agreed.

"This will I do," said Jason, "name the deed!"

Cunningly the king answered,

"Bring me the Golden Fleece!"

Jason, high-hearted, set out on the quest. Since he must cross the sea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of the cloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess of wisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. The fifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prow a piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.

The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and none but heroes were members of the crew. Such men—demigods, most of them—had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of the charmed lyre; Zetes and Calaïs, sons of the North Wind; Castor and Pollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar; Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son of Zeus, whose twelve labors were famous in all antiquity; and others of little lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.

Many and strange were their adventures in the Argo, of which there is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the voyage of the Argo is a story that will never die.

Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months—or it may have been years—Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought. There they presented themselves before Æetes and demanded the Golden Fleece.

The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the bulls of Hephæstus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.

Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it, Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the witch-daughter of Æetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly from hatred of Æetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.

Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the task Æetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil, which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.

There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept. Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at last!

Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward, Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the Argo, and she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words and could not retract.

The Argo had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that Æetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the Argonauts escaped.

So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing. At the first land where the Argo stopped, he married her.

At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey of the Argo was not less wild and difficult than her coming.

Yet, at the last, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece to Thessaly, only to find that the false Pelias had slain Aeson and Jason's mother and brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was not left unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut their father into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot with certain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by this means the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jason and Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and their deaths were not long delayed.

Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record of the European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, and to the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring to Greece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift of gold was regarded as the favor of the gods.

[2] One book that should be in every boy's library is Charles Kingsley's "The Heroes," in which the "Quest of the Golden Fleece" is related with a beauty unequaled in the English language. The books of A. J. Church, also, especially his "Stories from Homer," make the old Greek demigods live once again.

There is good reason to believe that the Siege of Troy—the subject of Homer's Iliad—was not waged alone because of the beauty of Helen of Troy, but also because the Greeks coveted Mycenæan gold. Excavations made on the site of ancient Troy have revealed many thin plates of beaten gold.

Divining-Rods.

A, Twig; B, Trench.

From an Old Print.

The World's Oldest Picture of Gold-Seekers.

The three ships of Queen Hatshepsut sent to the Land of Punt (possibly Somaliland) in 1503-1481, B.C.

From a wall-painting in the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri, near Thebes.

Nor was the Argo the only ship to set sail to unknown lands for gold. As early as the fabled voyage of the Argonauts, or even earlier, Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt—a mighty woman monarch of whom all too little is known—sent an expedition to Punt (possibly Somaliland) for incense and for gold. On the walls of the great temples built during her reign are found paintings telling the story of this expedition, picturing, among other things, the bags of gold that the three-masted, thirty-oared ship brought home.

Hiram, King of Tyre, who was engaged by King Solomon to bring treasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to some distant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three years away, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, and peacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]

[3] For the theory of this early voyage to America, see the author's "The Quest of the Western World."

The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also as workers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" were washed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbial wealth of Crœsus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remain as historic memories of the gold mines of Asia Minor and Arabia, worked by the Lydian kings.

When Persia became the mistress of the world, most of this gold was taken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, but not all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great, when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were required to carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.

Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principal gold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians, colonists from Phœnicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populated Spain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroes and shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. The Carthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.

Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessed by Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result of her victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured the three islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.

The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the mines of Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus were found to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In the Second Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there, worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury of the Roman Empire.

To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, the long story of civilization seemed to unroll before his eyes and, everywhere, possession of gold brought power and fame. In every case, also, that same possession led to luxury and decline.

When Rome fell, beneath the impact of the barbarian hordes, the Byzantine Empire, holding the gold-mines of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, rose to a bought magnificence. It crumbled easily, because it depended on gold to buy its mercenary armies, even as Carthage had crumbled before Rome.

The same story was repeated in the Saracenic power, when the Caliphates of Bagdad and of Damascus rose to that wealth of which the "Arabian Nights" gives a picture. The mines of Arabia, Egypt, and Spain were in their hands, and the luxury of such Moorish towns as Granada was made possible by the final workings of the almost exhausted alluvial deposits of Spain. It was not until the days of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile that the Moors were conquered, and, in those days, Cortés tapped the gold-stores of Mexico, and Pizarro, those of Peru.

As ever, the gold of the Aztecs and the Incas, ruthlessly seized so soon after the voyages of Columbus, made Spain the mistress of the world. While the Conquistadores were fighting, Spain remained strong. When the gold was acquired, Spain began to fall.

England was a frugal country, then. But, like Rome, as soon as her neighbor began to acquire vast stores of gold, she sought a pretext for a war. English pirates and privateers commenced to harry the treasure-ships of Spain, to plunder the Spanish settlements in America, and to sack every town that was thought to contain American gold. Upon this stolen treasure, England rose to wealth and power, as did also Holland and France, the three nations having made a naval alliance for greed of Spanish gold.

Nor was England content with her ill-gotten gains. Through commercial companies which only thinly disguised colonization projects, she sought possession of gold-bearing regions. The gold of India, of Australia, and of South Africa, changed the Kingdom of England into the British Empire, during the reign of a single queen. No one will seriously dispute that the annexation of the Transvaal and even the Boer War of recent years were based on England's desire to control the enormous gold resources of the Rand, as well as the diamond fields.

The gold history of the United States is little less striking. The Louisiana Purchase was based largely on the mineral wealth known to exist in that territory, the annexation of California and her rise to statehood were built on gold. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 was largely due to the discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857, 1859 and 1860, and to the discoveries on the Stikine River, Alaska, in 1863.

The 146 years of life of the United States may be sharply divided into two equal periods, that before the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the period following. The amazing strides forward which the United States has made during this last period are not to be ascribed only to her virgin soil, to her geographic isolation, or to her form of government, but more, a thousand times more, to her mining development. Coal, iron, silver, copper, and above all—gold, opened up the continent with passionate swiftness and hurled the United States into the position of one of the great powers of the modern world.

So Owens sat a-thinking in his library and racking his brain about Jim. There, not a stone's throw away, lay a sick man, possibly possessed of a secret that might change the face of history anew.

How many times it had happened that a lonely prospector, weary, ragged and hungry, had, with a stroke of a pick or the flick of a pan, revealed such sources of wealth as to change a burning desert, a fetid swamp or a bleak mountain range into a hive of industry! What statesman has ever wrought as many wonders for his country as has that questing nomad with his shovel and his shallow pan?

The spirit of rugged honesty and of fair play which so sharply distinguishes the real miner from the mere mining speculator lay deep in Owens. He had worked in the gold diggings, himself, and his standards of principle were those of the great outdoors. He scorned to take advantage of the opportunity given him by his position as owner of the mine to overhear the delirious ravings of the sick man. That he might not be tempted, he kept away from the hospital ward, except for a short daily visit of inquiry.

When Jim grew better, however, and evinced a marked liking for Owens' company, the mine-owner yielded to his interest in the prospector. Even then he restrained himself from making so much as an indirect reference to the secret of his employe, though the matter was seldom out of his mind.

He had no thought of filching Jim's secret from him. Honest to the core, Owens' thoughts were on a larger scale. As a mining man, he thought naturally what personal profit he could turn, should the secret prove to be worth while; but he thought far more of Jim. He rejoiced in the hope that, perhaps, he could bring to fulfilment the prospector's hidden dream. And, most of all, he wished to play a part in adding another treasure-hunt to the golden glory of the world.

CHAPTER VI
NUGGETS!

Weeks had passed since the accident, and Jim was still in the hospital. The disaster had been costly to the colliery, but not crippling. The shafts—always the most costly portion of mine development—had not been injured. Many of the galleries had been reopened. The great ventilation fans were working again at full speed. The cages of coal were whirling up the shaft as of old.

Otto, after a short rest, had gone to work. The old miner was well satisfied with the fulfilment of his prophecies. The "knockers" had indeed tasted blood, for the two men in the old workings had never been found. As the mining engineer had supposed, that section of the mine must be abandoned forever. Moreover, Otto's forecast that Clem would be rescued, uninjured, also had come true.

Clem, indeed, was recovering, but the doctor declared him as yet unfit to resume the arduous work of hewing below ground. Accordingly, Owens had given him a temporary position as assistant to the safety inspector of the mine, for the accident had awakened the interest of the men in safety work, and the young fellow was quite competent to help in the simpler forms of instruction.

Anton was still in a weak state. His lungs were affected. He was living at home with his mother, Owens having granted the boy leave on full pay until he was entirely well again.

As the mine fell more and more into its old routine, Owens found himself oftener at the hospital. The remembrance of old times was strong in him, and the mine owner seemed to renew his youth in the rude speech of the prospector, sprinkled as it was with mining terms once so familiar to his ear.

Jim's liking for his employer was rapidly growing into comradeship. He was fully conscious of Owens' delicacy in never referring to the secret and began to feel that here, at last, was a rich man he could trust. In the course of time, it was the old prospector who brought the matter up, first.

"Has Clem ever said anything more to you about my mine?" he asked abruptly.

Owens started, but he got a grip on himself at once. When he answered, it was in as casual a tone as he could assume.

"Not another word. I don't suppose he has, to anybody. He seems to know enough not to talk. You heard how he snubbed the reporter!"

"I know. I heard him. He's square, is Clem. But I ain't never yet asked him what I said, down there in the mine. It's been eatin' me, all the time I've been lyin' here. To think I kep' it quiet all these years, an' then go blurt it out, jest 'cos I was hungry!"

"You haven't any reason to blame yourself for that, you were unconscious. And, like you, I believe Clem is as straight as a string."

"Ay," agreed Jim, "he shows color in every pan (specks of gold in every handful of washed sand). I'd ha' gone West, judgin' from what he said the other day, if it hadn't been for him."

"You certainly would."

"An' that makes us pards (partners) in a way, don't it?"

Jim paused, and then burst out again, "But I can't help wonderin' jest how much I told!"

"You'll have to ask Clem that. You remember, he said nothing to the reporter except that, in your delirium you were talking about gold."

"Gold! Did I say gold? Are you dead sure that I said gold?"

"That's what Clem told, anyway."

"Then I must sure ha' been dreamin'!" Jim's tone was both embarrassed and evasive.

Owens saw, at once, by the prospector's manner that he was nervously fearful of having betrayed himself and that he wanted to drop the subject. This seemed a sure sign that the hinted discovery was true.

It was a ticklish moment. The mine-owner realized that if the matter were dropped, now, he might never have another chance to get back to it. Any attempt on his part to renew the subject would be sure to arouse Jim's suspicion. If he were to be of any service to the old prospector, he must seize the present opportunity.

"Too bad that it isn't gold then," he said, half commiseratingly. "There's nothing in all the world that can make a man rich in a minute, as gold can. I saw that, often enough, in Australia. That's the land of nuggets, Jim, big ones! Most of them were found by sheer luck, and it was poor men who found them, too, mostly.

"The Australian black-fellows—pretty much savages, those fellows—knew gold, long before the white men came. They used to make their javelin-heads of gold because it's the easiest metal to work, when cold, and is found pure.

"So it was not so surprising, Jim, that one of the first big gold finds was made by a black-fellow, a husky tattooed chap who owned no property except a small apron of matting for his middle, a bunch of feathers for his hair, a long-handled stone hatchet, and a boomerang.

"This Cl'ck, as he was called, was employed as a shepherd by Dr. Kerr, a large sheep-owner in New South Wales. Cl'ck was a fairly intelligent fellow and had learned to talk a few words of English. He knew gold when he saw it. Just at the time I'm speaking of, the whole world was excited over gold, for it was just after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the great gold rush of '49."

"My father was one of the 'forty-niners,'" put in Jim, eagerly.

"So you're of the real Argonaut breed, then!" exclaimed Owens, but he did not push the enquiry, preferring to allow Jim to tell his story in his own way and in his own time. In order, however, to keep the subject of gold present in Jim's mind, he continued:

"For some time there had been vague hints that there might be gold in Australia, but, before the time of the 'forty-niners' no attention had been paid to it.

"For example! Once, in 1834, a ticket-of-leave man (convict out on parole), working in New South Wales, found a small nugget of pure gold in the earth and brought it to the nearest town to sell. Being a convict, he was at once arrested for having possession of the gold, and not being able to explain how he had got it. His story that he had found it in the earth was laughed at, for never—so far as the Australians knew, then—had gold been found in nuggets. As it happened, a white settler had lost a gold watch a little time before. The weight of the nugget was just about that of the weight of the case of a gold watch. The ticket-of-leave man was accused of having stolen the watch, thrown away the works and melted down the case. He was found guilty and punished with a hundred and thirty lashes."

"Whew, that was pilin' it on heavy!" commented Jim.

"They had to be severe in those days," Owens explained. "Botany Bay and Port Jackson were penal stations. In those days there were about fifty thousand white folks in New South Wales and three-quarters of them were convicts. That meant ruling with an iron hand, if mutiny was to be prevented.

"Twice, after that, white settlers found signs of gold, but in such small quantities that the deposits were not worth working by the primitive means employed at that time. In 1841, signs of gold were found not far from Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, but the Governor personally asked the finder to keep the matter a secret for there were 45,000 convicts in the colony by that time, and he was afraid that news of a gold-find might start a revolt that the military would not be able to quell.

"Two years later an even more curious discovery was made. Mr. H. Anderson, who owned a sheep-station where now are found the great gold-fields of Ballarat—in the province of Victoria, south of New South Wales—threw away the finest chance to become a multi-millionaire that ever came to any man.

"While walking from the home kraal (corral) to his house, in company with a neighbor, he saw on the ground a small piece of white quartz shining in the sun and noticed a few thin streaks of yellow in the quartz.

"He picked it up in a casual way, cast a glance at it, and handed it to his companion.

"'We're the richest men in the world,' he said, jokingly. 'You and I are running sheep over a gold-mine.'

"This jesting statement was literally true.

"But the other, who knew just enough about such matters to be really ignorant, wanted to display his small store of knowledge.

"'Gold!' he said contemptuously, 'that's what they call fool's gold. It's pyrites of some sort. Tut, tut, man! Golden nonsense! The only gold in this country is what grows on the backs of sheep.'

"Mr. Anderson, trusting to his companion's supposed better knowledge, threw the piece of quartz at a pair of wallabies (small kangaroos) that were leaping about, near by, and thus lost the chance of becoming the richest man in Australia. Five years later came the news of the gold-finds in California, and the more thoughtful men in New South Wales remembered these vague stories about gold having been found in the island continent.

"Now, let us get back to Cl'ck. His employer, Dr. Kerr, had bidden him keep his eyes open for any signs of gold, during his wanderings over the wild pasture land with his flocks. He promised to give him five pounds—a large sum for a black-fellow, in those days—for any piece of gold he should bring in, no matter how small.

"One day, in February, 1851, while leading his flocks to water at Meroo Creek, Cl'ck happened to see what looked like a smudge of yellow on the surface of a good-sized bowlder of quartz. He chipped at it with his long-handled hatchet, and there, solidly embedded in the bowlder, was a huge chunk of gold. It weighed over 102 pounds and was sold for over $20,000.

"This accidental discovery, which made Kerr rich, and which, incidentally, gave Cl'ck a hut and a sheep-kraal of his own, was amazing enough in itself. Even in California, which was then regarded as the very fountain-head of gold, no such nugget had been found. Yet, a couple of weeks later, a strike was made of such importance as to throw even the Black-fellow Nugget in the shade. This second strike determined the fortunes of Australia.

"One of the 'forty-niners,' who went to the California gold-fields in the first ship that sailed from Sydney after the news of the Sacramento discoveries had reached Australia, was a prospector called E. H. Hargraves. He got to California in the middle of the rush, but luck was against him.

"As happened so often with the men who knew only a little mining, he thought he could do better than merely follow the crowd. He staked a claim that looked more promising than the ground on the outskirts of the established mining camps. The claim proved worthless, or nearly so.

"Seeing the vast crowds streaming into California, and being convinced that there would not be gold enough for all, Hargraves decided to go home, rather than to stay in the California gold-diggings and die of hunger—as so many of the forty-niners did."

Jim nodded assentingly. He knew those stories. Many a one had his father told him. He was well aware that the trail of gold is a line of graves.

"On his way back home," Owens continued, "Hargraves remembered that he had seen ground in New South Wales which bore a marked resemblance to the regions where gold had been found in California. It was not ordinary alluvial gold land, such as prospectors were apt to seek, and no one had ever suspected that gold might be found there. Hargraves had kept his eyes open, when in California, and had realized that alluvial gold was but a beginning, that the biggest amount of wealth lay in a reef.

"Reaching Sydney in December, 1850, Hargraves made his way towards what is now the town of Bathurst. He was out in the field, prospecting, when the Black-fellow Nugget was found, and heard nothing about it.

"Near the end of February, 1851, working in Summerhill Creek, he discovered sure signs of gold, though in no such alluring quantity as had been found on the creeks leading into the Sacramento River. He worked steadily up the creek, not only panning as he went, but also striking off to right and left to see if the ground gave promise of a reef. There, on the last day of the month, he found a bowlder of quartz and gold, or, to speak more correctly, a detached piece of quartz from a reef, the greater part of which was almost pure gold and weighed 106 pounds.

"Hargraves was a man of sense. Instead of hurrying back to the nearest town with his find, selling it and blowing the money, he did some further prospecting. He collected specimens from different parts of the neighborhood, realizing that he had made a discovery not less sensational than when Sutter found the first gold in his mill-race in California.

"Then he went straight to the government authorities of New South Wales, and, in addition to establishing his own claims, he asked that a reward be given him by the government. The governor, anxious to stop the emigration from New South Wales to California, and realizing that a gold-find would bring enormous wealth and prosperity to the colony, made him a grant of $50,000 and a pension, providing that he would reveal the gold-bearing locality to the authorities, first, and providing the territory should produce a million dollars' worth of gold.

"Hargraves was as good as his word. He showed not only the famous Lewis Ponds, Summerhill, but also another and even bigger field on the upper waters of the Macquarie River. Owing to their prior information, the authorities were able to establish mining laws and good government before the rush set it, and Bathhurst was freed from the wild orgy of lawlessness which marked the days of the 'forty-niners.'

"All this, Jim, was a wonderful jump forward for New South Wales, and the town of Sydney boomed. But it was equally bad for the other provinces of Australia, and Victoria, being the nearest, suffered most. Almost every man able to wield a pick or rock a miner's cradle, deserted his work and rushed to Bathurst. The gold was so easy to separate from the quartz that a man could get rich using no other tool than an ordinary hammer.

"Shepherds and even sheep-owners deserted their flocks, farmers let their land go to weed, merchants abandoned their shops, manufacturers allowed their machinery to rust, school-teachers locked the doors of schools, and workmen of every line of labor flocked to Sydney and toiled along the widely beaten track to Bathurst.

Australia's Treasure-House.

One of the shafts of the Kilgoorlie Gold Mine, more than 1000 feet below the surface.

From "Mines and Their Story," by Bernard Mannix Sidgwick and Jackson.

Courtesy of Kilgoorlie Gold Mining Co.

In the Richest Gold Mine in the World.

Drilling the rock for blasting on the Rand Reefs of South Africa; the compressed-air drills give a million blows a day, each with the force of half a ton.

"The authorities of the province of Victoria were in despair. The colony was plunging into ruin. Something must be done at once. They offered a huge reward to any one who should find gold within two hundred miles of Melbourne. On the very same day, two men came to claim the reward. One had made a strike on the Plenty River, the other on the Yarra-Yarra. In August, 1851, came the discovery of gold at Ballarat, gold in its pure form and in large grains. The Bendigo fields developed immediately after.

"Then came a rush unparalleled! Money came easy, just as it comes easy to any man who has the good luck to be first at a strike. Every one got rich in Ballarat. There were no blanks. It was the richest ground that ever was found. The grains of gold were so big that they stuck out and looked at you!

"Geelong, which was the nearest town to Ballarat, was deserted. Three months after the discovery of gold the mayor of Geelong complained that there were only eleven men and over three thousand women and children in the town."

"Ay," agreed Jim, "and I remember in Pot-Luck Camp, the first time a decent woman came into the town, a miner offered her a bag of gold-dust to just shake hands with him. I've seen seven camps in a string, wi' maybe a thousand men in each an' nary a woman in the lot!"

"A camp like that becomes right wild," Owens agreed. "Ballarat, for a while, was about as dangerous a place as ever the world saw. Ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales, escaped or paroled convicts from Tasmania, roughs that had been run out of camps by vigilance committees in California, Chinese and Malays swarmed there. The diggers refused to take out licenses, fired on the police, charged the military stockade, and when the troops charged back and took 125 prisoners, a jury acquitted every one of the mutineers as upholders of individual liberty. If a man did not find gold, he starved at the exorbitant prices demanded for food; if he did make a strike, the chances were ten to one he would be murdered the next day. Colorado, at is worst, could not be compared with early days at Ballarat.

"Bendigo followed right after. That was a nugget corner. During the year 1852, alone, three big nuggets were found there, one of 24 pounds, one of 28 pounds, and one of 47 pounds. All these nuggets revealed outcrops and the finders all became rich men.

"One of them was found in a queer way. A prospector, or 'fossicker' as they call them back there, had been panning all along a small creek, finding hardly enough color to pay him for his day's work. He was walking on the very edge of the bank, scanning every stone he came to, but seeing no prospects. Suddenly the bank caved in under him, throwing him into the water. He came up, spluttering, and there, right in front of him, the water was washing off the dirt, was one of the purest nuggets that Australia ever produced. That was probably the most profitable bath in history."

"Some men are born lucky!" declared Jim, enviously.

"That's true," Owens agreed, "and it has been a characteristic of Australia that all the big finds have been made by lucky accidents. Even recent discoveries are no exception. Did you ever hear the story of Pilbarra and the crow?"

"Never did."

"It's a classic in Australian gold mining. It's as queer a story as I know. It doesn't sound true, a bit, but all the documents in the case are on record.

"One fine day, a youngster in West Australia—clear across the other side of the continent from Bathurst and Ballarat—was idling along a narrow track, as youngsters will, even when sent on a hurried message. On his way, he saw a black crow hopping some distance away. With a natural boy movement, he picked up a stone and shied it at the crow. The bird gave a loud croak and flew away a little distance, but in the same direction in which the boy was walking. Presently the crow was within throwing distance, again. The boy stooped to pick up another stone.

"Just as he was about to let fly, however, he noticed some gold specks in it and took it home. There he showed it to his father, who was an employe in the convict prison there. His father showed it to the Warden, as he was compelled to do, for he was also a convict, though a 'trusty.'

"The much-excited Warden knew that the governor of the colony ought to be notified at once, but how was he to do so without the secret leaking out through the telegraph office? Forgetting, in his excitement, that the governor did not know as much about the matter as he did, he sent the following message:

"'Boy here has just thrown stone at crow.'

"He entirely neglected to mention that there was anything special in either the stone or the crow.

"The telegram puzzled the governor not a little. But he had a sense of humor, and he replied to the Warden's telegram with the following message:

"'Yes; but what happened to the crow?'

"The Warden realized his former omission, and risking discovery, telegraphed:

"'Stone, gold.'

"The telegraph operator, not seeing how this could be a reply to the governor's question thought an error had been made and forwarded the message:

"'Stone cold.'

"The governor thought his friend the Warden must have gone crazy, but he was not to be outdone. He wired back:

"'Forward crow.'

"This time it was the turn of the Warden to be puzzled, and, as soon as his duties would permit, he went to the capital—almost a thousand-mile journey—taking, not the crow, but the stone filled with specks of gold. This was in 1888. Over half-a-million dollars' worth of gold was taken from Pilbarra before the end of the year.

"The richest gold field in Australia was hit on by accident four years later. This was Kimberley. Signs of gold had been found there in 1882, and again in 1886 but not enough to be worth working. In 1892 two prospectors started out to explore the region. They worked for weeks and found nothing. One of them, thoroughly disgusted, gave up the search and started for home.

"Two nights after, while camping, his horse became restless and started to plunge and kick at a wombat, near by. The prospector got up to quiet the beast, fearing he would break the picket-rope. On his way, he stumbled over a stone, which, in the light of early dawn, he saw to be rich in gold. He pegged out a claim at once, fetched his partner, and the two men took out $50,000 worth of gold in three weeks. This was the beginning of the great Coolgardie field.

"In the same region, about 24 miles away, not long after the opening of the Coolgardie field, a miner just missed wealth. There was a small camp there, but one man had no luck. While sitting dispiritedly in his dog-tent, just before going to sleep, he began to burrow with his fingers in the loose soil on which he was slouching and discovered a small pocket of gold. He was so excited that he shouted out the news to the camp.

"Before he could realize what was happening, the other miners crowded round, and pegged out claims to the very borders of his tent. All he got out of it was the small bit of ground on which his tent stood. The pocket only yielded a hundred dollars' worth of gold, his neighbors to right and left, got more than ten times that amount in the first three days.

"I could go on for hours, Jim, telling you about the Australian gold-fields, but I've said enough to show you that I meant what I said when I suggested that it was a pity that you hadn't found gold. The mining of every other metal needs a lot of capital to begin with—as gold does, when you begin to work a reef—but, in nearly every gold deposit, there are placers or pockets where a man can clean up quickly."

Jim's face was glowing with a lively interest. His excitement had grown as the mine-owner proceeded.

"And these here nuggets," he queried, "what makes 'em? Where do they come from? We don't find anything like that over here!"

"No," agreed Owens, "you don't. Chunks like 'The Welcome Stranger' which sold for $48,000 and which was found right in the road, the wheel of a passing wagon having cut through the soft earth and exposed it, are peculiar to Australia. Even South Africa, which is the largest gold-producing country in the world, hasn't any nuggets like that.

"As for where nuggets come from, Jim, that's a bit of a puzzle. Some say they grew in the earth, water heavily laden with gold, depositing more and more of the metal in the one place; other scientists claim that the nuggets were made in the days when the earth was all fire, and that the nuggets have been there ever since. Neither theory answers all the facts. It's truer to say that we don't know, yet, how nuggets came to be, nor why Australia has most of them.

"Some day, Jim, if you're interested, I'll try to explain to you the geology of gold. It's pretty complicated. I did a lot of study on it, when I was a young chap. Somehow, I seemed to be one of the men who didn't have any luck at the diggings. So I took to assay work (ore-testing), out there in Australia, and made more with my little assay outfit than most of the miners did with their claims."

Jim propped himself up on one elbow and stared fixedly at the mine-owner.

"You know how to make an assay, yourself?"

"Roughly, yes. Of course, only for field work, you understand. I don't pretend to be a mineralogical chemist."

"You can do it yet?"

"I suppose so. I haven't done any for years. This coal-mine business has kept me busy. But I've still got my portable assay outfit up at the house. I kept it for old-time's sake."

Jim's eyes glistened eagerly.

"You go to my cabin, Owens," he said, and it was noticeable that he dropped the "Mr.," "and five long paces due north from my kitchen window, you dig! You'll find a chunk of ore, there. Assay it, and then come back here!"

"But—"

The old prospector waved the interruption aside, impatiently.

"Do it, and then talk!"

Owens shrugged his shoulders and left, but little less excited than Jim.

That evening, during the middle of the night shift, when no one was likely to see him, the mine-owner went to the spot designated and began to dig. A foot or two beneath the surface, he found the chunk of ore. He put it in his pocket and hurried to his own house.

It was nearly dawn before he completed the assay. Then he put the ore and his memorandum of results in the safe and went to bed for a short sleep.

That morning, after breakfast, he returned to the hospital. He found Jim in an excited state.

"No, Mr. Owens, there's nothing wrong with him," the doctor explained, "only he hasn't slept all night. He's been asking for you, every few minutes."

When the mine-owner entered the ward, Jim struggled up to a sitting position.

"What about it?" he queried.

Owens closed the door carefully, came up to the sick man's bedside, and answered quietly,

"About 110 grains of gold to the ton and 800 ounces of silver. There's some native copper, too."

"It's a real find then?"

"It isn't what you'd call rich," the Australian answered cautiously.

"How about this, then?"

Jim took his old coat, which he had got the hospital attendant to bring him the night before, ripped open a seam, showing a narrow tube of buckskin running around the hem, and, opening its mouth, poured out a few grains of yellow metal into the palm of his hand.

"Free gold!" he said, triumphantly.

One glance of a trained eye sufficed.

"That's the stuff, sure enough. But you didn't find much of it, eh?"

"Where do you get that idea?"

"The grains are big enough to pan easily. If there was much of it, you wouldn't have left the place without cleaning up a good stake."

"There is plenty of it. But I had to get out."

"Why, then?"

"To save my skin. An' I couldn't get back there."

"Back where?"

"Where I found it."

"That doesn't tell me much."

"It ain't intended to."

"Then why," said Owens, showing irritation, "did you show me the ore at all?"

Jim looked at him under lowered eyelids.

"Have you ever been a prospector, honest?"

The owner of the coal mine put his hand in his breast pocket.

"I thought this might interest you," he said, "so I brought it along. That's me!"

He put his finger on one of the figures in the picture that he handed to the prospector. It showed a young fellow, bearded, in the typical Australian digger's rig-out, panning gold. The photograph was an old one, evidently, and there was no doubt that it was a resemblance of Owens in his youth.

"Ay, it's you," said Jim.

For some minutes there was silence. The mine-owner let the prospector think the matter out in his own way. Finally, with an air of desperate determination, Jim began:

"I'm gettin' old, now, an' times has changed since I found that ore. I ain't never give up hope of gettin' back there, but it don't look like it, now. I ain't the man I was. This last spell has crippled me up, pretty bad, too. I ain't never goin' to be right husky, again. The doctor says so."

"You can have a job above ground, here, as long as you want to."

Jim nodded appreciation of the offer.

"That's a square deal," he admitted. "But," he went on viciously, "I've had enough o' coal. I don't want to see a bit o' coal again, long's I live! I want to get back to God's country."

"Which is?"

"Where I found that!" replied Jim, evasively.

Owens made no protest. He kept silent, being sure that his companion would go on to talk.

"I'm gettin' old," Jim repeated, after a while, "an' it takes two things to get where I found that ore—a tough constitution an' money. I got neither. It's a job for a young fellow."

"I'm not much younger than you are," suggested Owens.

"Clem is."

"Well?"

"But he hasn't got any more money'n I have."

The mine-owner bent a level glance at the old prospector.

"Don't beat about the bush so much, Jim. If you don't want to say anything, why, drop the whole business. If you have anything to say, spit it out! You want me to grub-stake you? Is that it?"

"Me an' Clem. I won't do nothin' without Clem. A man has to have a pardner."

"I've no objection to Clem. On the contrary. But I don't grub-stake a man just because he shows me a bit of ore! I've been in the game too long for that. How do I know where that gold comes from? It might have been picked up from some mine now working at full blast. As for the gold-dust—why, it would be queer if you hadn't found some of it, somewhere.

"No," he went on, anticipating Jim's interruption, "I'm going to do the talking for a minute. You wanted to be sure I was a prospector. I showed you. You wanted to be sure I knew enough about gold to make an assay. I've done that for you.

"But confidence can't be all on the one side. You'll have to show your cards, the same way. You'll have to convince me that you're on the square, too. I'm not suspecting anything, mind, but this has got to be an open-and-shut deal, or I don't go in.

"Tell me who you are, where you've been, what you've done and what you know about gold deposits, anyway. I've got to know where you found this ore, how you came to find it, and why you haven't been able to get back there. You'll have to show me some proof, to start with, and what chances there are of taking the necessary machinery to the place, before I think about investing any capital.

"You can keep back the exact location of the strike to the last, if you like. If it sounds right, why, I'll think about it. But, mark you, Jim, I make no promises. You can talk, or not, just as you choose. I'm not hunting trouble, understand, this colliery keeps me busy enough. But if you want help, maybe I can give it to you. That ore deposit—if it's a deposit—can either be let alone or developed. If you let it alone, it's no good to anybody. If it's developed, there's a chance that it might make money for the both of us. Decide! It's up to you!"

Silence fell in the hospital ward. Jim's eyes were far away, evidently in that strange and distant land where he had made his find. Then he turned a piercing glance on the mine-owner, who returned it frankly.

The old prospector cleared his throat and swallowed hard. For a moment he seemed about to speak, and then stopped himself. At last his features settled into decision.

"Send for Clem to come here to-morrow," he said, "I'll tell the yarn."

CHAPTER VII
THE FORTY-NINERS

Several days elapsed before Jim took up his story, Owens preferring to wait until the prospector grew stronger. The mine-owner was shrewd enough to see that if he did not show too much haste, Jim would be less suspicious.

When the time arrived, Jim was up and dressed, though the doctor would only allow him out of doors for a few minutes at a time. The prospector had evidently been thinking out the beginning of his story, for, when his visitors arrived, he opened without preface.

"There's a lot o' wild yarns been told about the findin' o' gold in Californy," he began. "I've heard some, an' wild an' woolly they was; an' I've read some in books, an' they was wilder yet; an' I've seen some in the movies, an' they was a crime!

"Not but what them days wasn't tough! They was! The crowds what hit the minin' camps o' the Sierras in the fifties was out for gold an' nothin' else, an' they didn't much care how they got it. Father, he was a forty-niner himself, an' he was a rough un if anything got in his way. But he had more sense'n most, an', without any book-l'arnin' to speak of, he knew a heap about gold. If he'd been alive when I made my strike, old as he was, he'd ha' gone there, an' he'd ha' got there, too.

"I come o' Mormon stock, I do. My grand-pap, he made the trail to Salt Lake City wi' Brigham Young. Grandma, she used a rifle to defend the home camp, when the Illinois and Indiana folk came to massacre the women an' children, after the men were gone. Judgin' from what I've heard about her shootin', there wasn't many bullets wasted. Some o' these days, when you ain't got nothin' better to do, I'll tell you the story o' my grand-pap. He come to be one o' the Danites, later.[4]