Chapter III: Part 3

We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of Universal Peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House respecting the forthcoming great Exhibition of Arts and Industry, ‘Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end—to which indeed all history points—the realisation of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning.’

Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.

THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.

Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on this world—which in fact it _was_.

From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down before him, like a lost soul.

Flashley now felt a wavering motion in his descent, while an increasing current of air rose to meet him; and almost immediately after, he heard strange and confused sounds beneath. Looking down into the darkness, he not only saw a reddening light, but, as he stared down, it became brighter, until he saw the gleam of flames issuing from one side of the shaft. He fully expected to descend into the midst, and ‘there an end;’ but he speedily found he was reserved for some other fate. The fire was placed in a large chasm, and appeared to have a steep red pathway sloping away behind it. He passed it safely. From this moment he felt no current of air, but his ears were assailed with a variety of noises, in which he could distinguish the gush of waters, the lumbering of wood, the clank and jar of chains, and the voices of men—or something worse. Three black figures were distinctly visible.

In a few seconds more, his feet touched earth—which seemed to give a heave, in answer. His descent from the upper surface had not occupied longer time than has been necessary to describe it, but this was greatly magnified to his imagination by the number, novelty, and force of the emotions and thoughts that had attended it. He was now at the bottom of the William Pitt Coal Mine, nine hundred and thirty feet below the surface of the earth.

A man all black with coal-dust, and naked from the waist upwards, took hold of Flashley, and extricating him from the chain girdle and iron umbrella, led him away into the darkness, lighted only by a candle stuck in a lump of clay which his conductor held in the other hand.

Over all the various sounds, that of rushing waters predominated at this spot; and very soon they turned an angle which enabled Flashley to descry a black torrent spouting from a narrow chasm, and rushing down a precipitous gully on one side of them to seek some still lower abyss. Another angle was turned; the torrent was no longer seen and its noise grew fainter almost at every step.

The passage through which they were advancing was cut out of the solid coal. It was just high enough for the man to walk upright, though with the danger of striking his head occasionally against some wedge of rock, stone, or block of coal, projected downwards from the roof. In width the sides could be reached by the man’s extended hands. They were sometimes supported by beams, and sometimes by a wall of brick, and the roof was frequently sustained by upright timbers, and limbs or trunks of trees. In one place, where the roofing had evidently sunk, there stood an irregular row of stunted oak trunks, of grotesque shapes and shadows, many of which were cracked and gaping in ragged flaws from the crushing pressure they had resisted; showing that, without them, the roof would certainly have fallen, and rendering the passage more ‘suggestive’ than agreeable to a stranger beneath. Here and there, at considerable distances, candles stuck in clay were set in gaps of the coaly walls, in the sandstone, or against the logs and trunks. The pathway was for the most part a slush of coal-dust, mixed with mud and slates, varied with frequent nobs and snaggs of rock and iron-stone. In this path of intermittent ingredients, a tram-road had been established, the rails of which had been laid down at not more than 15 inches asunder; and moving above this at no great distance, Flashley now saw a dull vapoury light, and next descried a horse emerging from the darkness ahead of them. It seemed clear that nothing could save them from being run over, unless _they_ could run over the horse. However, his guide made him stand with his back flat against one side of the passage—and presently the long, hot, steamy body of the horse moved by, just moistening his face and breast in passing. He had never before thought a horse’s body was so long. At the creature’s heels a little low black waggon followed with docility. The wheels were scarcely six inches high. Its sides were formed by little black rails. It was full of coals. A boy seemed to be driving, whose voice was heard on the other side of the horse, or else from beneath the animal’s body, it was impossible to know which.

They had not advanced much further when they came to a wooden barricade, which appeared to close their journey abruptly. But it proved to be a door, and swung open of its own accord as they approached. No sooner were they through, than the door again closed, apparently of its own careful good will and pleasure. The road was still through cuttings in the solid coal, varied occasionally with a few yards of red sandstone, or with brick walls and timbers as previously described. Other horses drawing little black coal-waggons were now encountered; sometimes two horses drawing two or more waggons, and these passed by in the same unpleasant proximity. More _Sesame_ doors were also opened and shut as before; but Flashley at length perceived that this was not effected by any process of the black art, as he had imagined, but by a very little and very lonely imp, who was planted behind the door in a toad-squat, and on this latter occasion was honoured by his guide with the title of an ‘infernal small _trapper_,’ in allusion to some neglect of duty on a previous occasion. It was, in truth, a poor child of nine years of age, one of the victims of poverty, of bad parents, and the worst management, to whose charge the safety of the whole mine, with the lives of all within it, was committed; the requisite ventilation depending on the careful closing of these doors by the trapper-boys, after anybody has passed.

Proceeding in this way, they arrived at a side-working close upon the high-road, in which immense ledges of rocks and stones projected from the roof, being embedded in the coal. In cutting away the coal there was danger of loosening and bringing down some of these stones, which might crush the miners working beneath. A ‘council’ was now being held at the entrance, where seven experienced ‘undergoers’ were lying flat on the ground, smoking, with wise looks, in Indian fashion, and considering the best mode of attack, whereby they might bring down the coals without being ‘mashed up’ by the premature fall of the rocks and stones together with the black masses in which they were embedded.

Among all the gloomy and oppressive feelings induced by this journey between dismal walls—faintly lighted, at best, so as to display a most forbidding succession of ugly shadows and grotesque outlines—and sometimes not lighted at all for a quarter of a mile; there was nothing more painful than the long pauses of silence; a silence only broken by the distant banging of the trappers’ doors, or by an avalanche of coal in some remote working. After advancing in a silence of longer duration than any that had preceded it, Flashley’s dark conductor paused every now and then, and listened—then advanced; then stopped again thoughtfully, and listened. At length he stopped with gradual paces, and turning to Flashley, said in a deep tone, the calmness of which added solemnity to the announcement,—

‘We are now walking beneath the bed of the sea!—and ships are sailing over our heads!’

Several horses and waggons were met and passed after the fashion already described. On one occasion, the youth who drove the horse, walked in front, waving his candle in the air, and causing it to gleam upon a black pool in a low chasm on one side, which would otherwise have been invisible. He was totally without clothing, and of a fine symmetrical form, like some young Greek charioteer doing penance on the borders of Lethe for careless driving above ground. As he passed the pool of water, he stooped with his candle. Innumerable bubbles of gas were starting to the surface. The instant the flame touched them, they gave forth sparkling explosions, and remained burning with a soft blue gleam. It continued visible a long time, and gave the melancholy idea of some spirit, once beautiful, which had gone astray, and was for ever lost to its native region. It was as though the youth had written his own history in symbol, before he passed away into utter darkness.

‘You used to be fond,’ observed Flashley’s companion, with grim ironical composure, after one of these close encounters with horseflesh—‘You _used_ to be fond of horses.’

Flashley made no reply, beyond a kind of half-suppressed groan of fatigue and annoyance.

‘Well, then,’ said the other, appearing to understand the smothered groan as an acquiescence—‘we will go and look at the stables.’

He turned off at the next corner on the left, and led the way up a narrow and steep path of broken brick and sandstone, till they arrived at a bank of rock and coal, up which they had to clamber, Flashley’s guide informing him that it would save a mile of circuitous path. Arriving at the top, they soon came to a narrow door, somewhat higher than any they had yet seen. It opened by a long iron latch, and they entered the ‘mine stables.’

A strong hot steam and most oppressive odour of horses, many of whom were asleep and snoring, was the first impression. The second, was a sepulchral Davy-lamp hanging from the roof, whose dull gleam just managed to display the uplifting of a head and inquiring ears in one place, the contemptuous whisking of a tail in another, and a large eye-ball gleaming through the darkness, in another! The stalls were like a succession of narrow black dens, at each side of a pathway of broken brick and sand. In this way sixty or seventy horses were ‘stabled.’

‘This is a prince of a mine!’ said the guide; ‘we have seven hundred people down here, and a hundred and fifty horses.’

They emerged at the opposite end, which led up another steep path towards a shaft (for the mine now had four or five) which was used for the ascent and descent of horses. They were just in time to witness the arrival of a new-comer,—a horse who had never before been in a mine.

The animal’s eyes and ears became more frightfully expressive, as with restless anticipatory limbs and quivering flesh he swung round in his descending approach to the earth. When his hoofs touched, he made a plunge. But though the band and chain confined him, he appeared yet more restrained by the appalling blackness. He made a second plunge, but with the same result. He then stood stock-still, glared round at the black walls and the black faces and figures that surrounded him, and instantly fainted.

The body of the horse was speedily dragged off on a sort of sledge, by a tackle. The business of the mine could not wait for his recovery. He was taken to be ‘fanned.’ Flashley of course understood this as a mine joke; but it was not entirely so. A great iron wheel, with broad fans, was often worked rapidly in a certain place, to create a current of air and to drive it on towards the fire in the up-cast shaft, assisting by this means the ventilation of the mine; and thither, or at all events, in that direction, the poor horse was dragged, amidst the laughter and jokes of the miners and the shouts and whistles of the boys.

How silent the place became after they were gone! Flashley stepped forwards towards the spot immediately beneath the shaft. It was much nearer to the surface than any of the other shafts, and the daylight from above ground just managed to reach the bottom. Under the shaft was a very faint circle of sad-coloured and uncertain light. The palest ghost might have stood in the middle of it and felt ‘at home.’

The ‘streets’ of the mine appeared to be composed of a series of horse-ways having square entrances to ‘workings’ at intervals on either side, and leading to narrow side-lane workings. Up one of these his guide now compelled Flashley to advance; in order to do which they were both obliged to stoop very low; and, before long, to kneel down and crawl on all-fours. While moving forward in this way upon the coal-dust slush, where no horse could draw a waggon, a poor beast of another kind was descried approaching with his load. It was in the shape of a human being, but not in the natural position—in fact, it was a boy degraded to a beast, who with a girdle and chain was dragging a small coal-waggon after him. A strap was round his forehead, in front of which, in a tin socket, a lighted candle was stuck. His face was close to the ground. He never looked up as he passed.[2]

Footnote 2:

Young women and girls were also used in this way till the Report of
the Children’s Employment Commission caused it to be forbidden by Act
of Parliament.

These narrow side-lane passages from the horse-road, varied in length from a few fathoms, to half-a-mile and upwards; and the one in which Flashley was now crawling, being among the longest, his impression of the extent of these underground streets and by-ways, was sufficiently painful, especially as he had no notion of what period he was doomed to wander through them. Besides, the difficulty of respiration, the crouching attitude, the heated mist, the heavy sense of gloomy monotony, pressed upon him as they continued to make their way along this dismal burrow.

From this latter feeling, however, he was roused by a sudden and loud explosion. It proceeded from some remote part of the trench in which they were struggling, and in front of them. The arrival of a new sort of mist convinced them of this. It was so impregnated with sulphur, that Flashley felt nearly suffocated, and was obliged to lie down with his face almost touching the coal-slush beneath him, for half-a-minute, before he could recover himself. Onward, however, he was obliged to go, urged by his gruff companion behind; and in this way they continued to crawl till a dim light became visible at the farther end. The light came forwards. It proceeded from a candle stuck in the front of the head of a boy, harnessed to a little narrow waggon, who pulled in front, while another boy pushed with his head behind. A side-cutting, into which Flashley and his companion squeezed themselves, enabled the waggon to pass. The hindermost boy, stopping to exchange a word with his companion, Flashley observed that the boy’s head had a bald patch in the hair, owing to the peculiar nature of his head-work behind the waggon. They passed, and now another distant light was visible; but this remained stationary.

As they approached it, the narrow passage widened into a gap, and a rugged chamber appeared hewn out in the coal. The sides were supported by upright logs and beams; and further inwards, were pillars of coal left standing, from which the surrounding mass had been cut away. At the remote end of this, sat the figure of a man, perfectly black and quite naked, working with a short-handled pickaxe, with which he hewed down coals in front of him, and from the sides, lighted by a single candle stuck in clay, and dabbed up against a projecting block of coal. From the entrance to this dismal work-place, branched off a second passage, terminating in another chamber, the lower part of which was heaped up with great loose coals apparently just fallen from above. The strong vapour of gunpowder pervading the place, and curling and clinging about the roof, showed that a mass of coal had been undermined and brought down by an explosion. To this smoking heap, ever and anon, came boys with baskets, or little waggons, which they filled and carried away into the narrow dark passage, disappearing with their loads as one may see black ants making off with booty into their little dark holes and galleries under ground.

The naked miner in the first chamber, now crept out to the entrance, having fastened a rope round the remotest logs that supported the roof of the den he had hewed. These he hauled out. He then knocked away the nearest ones with a great mallet. Taking a pole with a broad blade of iron at the end, edged on one side and hooked at the other, something like a halbert, he next cut and pulled away, one by one, by repeated blows and tugs, each of the pillars of coal which he had left within. A strange cracking overhead was presently heard. All stepped back and waited. The cracking ceased, and the miner again advanced, accompanied by Flashley’s guide; while, by some detestable necromancy, our young visitor—alack! so very lately such a dashing young fellow ‘about town,’ now suddenly fallen into the dreadful condition of receiving all sorts of knowledge about coals—felt compelled to assist in the operation.

Advancing with great wedges, while Flashley carried two large sledge hammers to be ready for use, the miners inserted their wedges into cracks in the upper part of the wall of coal above the long chamber that had just been excavated, the roof of which was now bereft of all internal support. They then took the hammers and began to drive in the wedges. The cracks widened, and shot about in branches, like some black process of crystallisation. The party retreated several paces—one wide flaw opened above, and down came a hundred tons of coal in huge blocks and broad splinters! The concussion of the air, and the flight of coal-dust, extinguished the candles. At this the two miners laughed loudly, and, pushing Flashley before them, caused him to crouch down on his hands and knees, and again creep along the low passage by which they had entered. A boy in harness drawing a little empty waggon soon approached, with a candle on his forehead, as usual. The meeting being unexpected and out of order, as the parties could not pass each other in this place, Flashley’s special guide and ‘tutor’ gave him a lift and a push, by means of which he was squeezed between the rough roofing and the upper rail of the empty waggon, into which he then sank down with a loud ‘Oh!’ His tutor now set his head to the hinder part of the waggon, the miner assumed the same position with respect to the tutor—the boy did the same by the miner—and thus, by reversing the action of the wheels, the little waggon, with its alarmed occupant, was driven along by this three-horse power through the low passage, with a reckless speed and jocularity, in which the ridiculous and hideous were inextricably mingled.

Arriving at the main horse-road, as Flashley quickly distinguished by the wider space, higher roofing, and candles stuck against the sides, his mad persecutors never stopped, but increasing their speed the moment the wheels were set upon the rails, they drove the waggon onwards with yells and laughter, and now and then a loud discordant whistle in imitation of the wailful cry of a locomotive; passing ‘getters,’ and ‘carriers,’ and ‘hurryers,’ and ‘drawers,’ and ‘pushers,’ and other mine-people, and once sweeping by an astonished horse—gates and doors swinging open before them—and shouts frequently being sent after them, sometimes of equivocal import, but generally _not_ to be mistaken, by those whom they thus rattled by, who often received sundry concussions and excoriations in that so narrow highway beneath the earth.

In this manner did our unique _cortège_ proceed, till sounds of many voices ahead of them were heard, and then more and more light gleamed upon the walls; and the next minute they emerged from the road-way, and entered a large oblong chamber, or cavern, where they were received with a loud shout of surprise and merriment. It was the dining-hall of the mine.

This cavern had been hewn out of the solid coal, with intervals of rock and sandstone here and there in the sides. Candles stuck in lumps of damp clay, were dabbed up against the rough walls all round. A table, formed of dark planks laid upon low tressels, was in the middle, and round this sat the miners, nearly naked,—and far blacker than negroes, whose glossy skins shine with any light cast upon them,—while these were of a dead-black, which gave their robust outlines and muscular limbs the grimness of sepulchral figures, strangely at variance with the boisterous vitality and physical capacities of their owners. These, it seemed, were the magnates of the mine—the ‘hewers,’ ‘holers,’ ‘undergoers,’ or ‘pickers,’—those who hew down the coal, and not the fetchers and carriers, and other small people.

Before he had recovered from his recent drive through the mine, Flashley was seated at the table. Cold roast beef, and ham, and slices of cold boiled turkey were placed before him, with a loaf of bread, fresh dairy-butter, and a brown jug of porter. He was scarcely aware whether he ate or not, but he soon began to feel _much_ revived; and then he saw a hot roast duck; and then another; and then three more; and then a great iron dish, quite hot, and with flakes of fire at the bottom, full of roast ducks. Green peas were only just coming into season, and sold at a high price in the markets; but here were several delphic dishes piled up with them; and Flashley could but admire and sit amazed at the rapidity with which these delicate green pyramids sank lower and lower, as the great spoonfuls ascended to the red and white open mouths of the jovial black visages that surrounded him. He was told that the ‘undergoers’ dined here every day after this fashion; but only with ducks and green peas at this particular season, when the miners made a point of buying up all the green peas in the markets, claiming the right to have them before all the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood.

While all this was yet going on, Flashley became aware of a voice, as of some one discoursing very gravely. It was like the voice of the Elfin who had wrought him all this undesired experience. But upon looking forwards in the direction of the sound, he perceived that it proceeded from one of the miners—a brawny-chested figure, who was making a speech. Their eyes met, and then it seemed that the miner was addressing himself expressly to poor Flashley. Something impelled the latter, averse as he was, to stand up and receive the address.

‘Young man—or rather gent!’ said the miner—‘You are now in the bowels of old mother Earth—grandmother and great grandmother of all these seams of coal; and you see a set of men around you, whose lives are passed in these gloomy places, doing the duties of their work without repining at its hardness, without envying the lot of others, and smiling at all its dangers. We know very well that there are better things above ground—and worse. We know that many men and women and children, who are ready to work, can’t get it, and so starve to death, or die with miserable slowness. A sudden death, and a violent is often our fate. We may fall down a shaft; something may fall upon us and crush us; we may be damped to death;[3] we may be drowned by the sudden breaking in of water; we may be burned up by the wildfire,[4] or driven before it to destruction; in daily labour we lead the same lives as horses and other beasts of burden; but for _all_ that, we feel that we have something else within, which has a kind of tingling notion of heaven, and a God above, and which we have heard say is called ‘the soul.’ Now, tell us—young master, you who have had all the advantages of teachers, and books, and learning among the people who live above ground—tell us, benighted working men, how have _you_ passed your time, and what kind of thing is your soul?’

Footnote 3:

_The choke-damp_, carbonic acid gas.

Footnote 4:

_Fire-damp_, also called _the sulphur_—hydrogen gas.

The miner ceased speaking, but continued standing. Flashley stood looking at him, unable to utter a word. At this moment, a half-naked miner entered hurriedly from one of the main roads, shouting confused words—to the effect that the fire which is always placed in the up-cast shaft to attract and draw up the air for the ventilation of the mine, had just been extinguished by the falling in of a great mass of coal, and the mine was no longer safe!

‘Fire-damp!’—‘The sulphur!’—‘Choke-damp!’ ejaculated many voices, as all the miners sprang from their seats, and made a rush towards the main outlet. Flashley was borne away in the scramble of the crowd; but they had scarcely escaped from the cavern, when the flame of the candles ran up to the roof, and a loud explosion instantly followed. The crowd was driven pell-mell before it, flung up, and flung down, dashed sideways, or borne onwards, while explosion after explosion followed the few who had been foremost, and were still endeavouring to make good their retreat.

Among these latter was Flashley, who was carried forwards, he knew not how, and was scarcely conscious of what was occurring, except that it was something imminently dreadful, which he momentarily expected to terminate in his destruction.

At length only himself and one other remained. It was the miner who had been his companion from the first. They had reached a distant ‘working,’ and stopped an instant to take breath, difficult as it was to do this, both from the necessity of continuing their flight, and also from the nature of the inflammable air that surrounded them. Some who had arrived here before them, had been less fortunate. Half-buried in black slush lay the dead body of a miner, scorched to a cinder by the wildfire; and on a broad ledge of coal sat another man, in an attitude of faintness, with one hand pressed, as with a painful effort, against his head. The black-damp had suffocated him: he was quite dead.

Beyond this Flashley knew nothing until he found himself placed in a basket, and rising rapidly through the air, as he judged, by a certain swinging motion, and the occasional grating of the basket against the sides of the shaft. After a time he ventured to look up, and to his joy, not unmixed with awe, he discerned the mouth of the shaft above, apparently of the size of a small coffee-cup. Some coal-dust and drops of water fell into his eyes; he saw no more; but with a palpitating heart, full of emotions, and prayers, and thankfulness, for his prospect of deliverance, continued his ascent.

Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like 1^{st}).