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.

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

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.