Fire in the Mine

IT was about six o’clock in the evening, and the greater part of the day shift had left the mine. Out in some of the far headings of the workings a few men remained, finishing up their day’s work, and down in the motor-pits a dozen men were overhauling one of the big electric locomotives. That day the skips had hoisted from the mine an almost record tonnage. The great underground city, its railroad system, its entire plant, were in perfect order; and, as is often the case, the thought of disaster doubtless never occurred to the men who still remained in its black tunnels.

Old Man Davis, the scale-master, folded up his report for the day and was walking down the track toward bottom, when he met a trackman who came running out from a cross-cut between the main entries. ‘Mr. Davis!’ he yelled, ‘ come over this way. I think I smell fire in C entry.’ Half a dozen of us who were sitting on some sacks of plaster, waiting for the hoist to be lowered, jumped up and followed them through the cross-cut and into the parallel entry. It was a ‘return’ for the air-current, and the wind which came pressing against us had passed through the whole east section of the mine before reaching us, and would carry on its current the smoke of any fire that there might be in that part of the mine. We stood on the track for a minute and sniffed the dead, warm air. No one said anything. Then we walked down the track to where First and Second West South turned sharply and at right angles to C entry. Again we stopped, and here, of a sudden, strong on the air came the soft, pungent smell of burning wood. A half-hour before the last of the miners had probably come out through this entry, and in those scant thirty minutes whatever fire existed there must have been ignited.

About a quarter of a mile down these two entries, which ran on either side of a third entry, or ‘air-course,’ was an ‘air-split.’ Here the air from the third tunnel was divided by a door, to pass in diminished volume to the right and to the left. The air passing out of the air-course to the left entered the entry known as Second West South, and as we neared this spot the strong smell of the wood-smoke that was already visible in the air told us that the fire must be in the woodwork of the air-split itself. Then suddenly the smoke grew thick and enveloped us, and mingled with the smell of burning wood we caught for the first time the oily smell of burning coal. The fire was in the air-split and, fanned by the strong air-current from the air-course behind it, the entire framework and the door itself were in a blaze, and around the walls on either side and beside the track, the coal was already glowing, a red ring of flame.

Defective wiring might have caused the fire, but this was not likely; its location and nature suggested another possibility, but so immediate was the danger that investigation was impossible, and its origin was never conclusively explained.

So rapidly the fire increased that it was now beyond our control with such means of fighting it as were at hand, and, without stopping, a dozen of the men turned and ran back down the entry to get a motor and the water-carts. Meanwhile, the entry became choking with the heavy smoke. Down in the main bottom, at the foot of the shafts, it now hung in the air like a thin fog, and by the time that one of the big motors came pushing a couple of water-carts down the track, the men at the top of the shafts had detected the smell of smoke, and the alarm of fire was sounded.

The suddenness of the fire, and the fact that practically all of the men, and especially the head men, were at that time at supper in the town, crippled the small force who were endeavoring to stem its rapid march down the entry. Coming strong on the air-current, but a quarter of a mile separated it from the mine-bottom, the vitals of the mine. If the fire reached here, all was lost. By the time the water-carts had arrived, the volume of smoke was so dense and the heat so intense that their use seemed almost absurd, and immediately an attempt was begun to connect a hose line from the nearest water-pipes. It was almost half an hour before the couplings were made, and, blinded by the now dense smoke, and half-scorched by the heat of the flames, a dozen men endeavored ineffectually to stem the advance of the fire, which now lined the walls of the entry like an open furnace.

For an hour it seemed as though they were holding their own. Down at the mouth of the entry a gang of timbermen were already building a stopping across the mouth of the entry, in case the men with the hose-line found it impossible to check the advance of the fire. Suddenly, Tom Cox, who was holding the nozzle of the first hose, sank to his knees, and in the second that followed, four men beside him caught their hands to their necks and fell beside him along the track. The water and the fire had generated in the two hundred yards of now burning entry a wall of the invisible ‘ white-damp,’ and this, driven like the smoke by the air, suddenly overcame the men who were fighting at the edge of the flames. The question of life and death now entered, for the fire — unchecked — was rapidly marching down the tunnel toward the bodies of the unconscious men. From the mouth of the entry the timbermen, bending low to catch the clean air below the smoke, fought up into the heat and dragged out the bodies of their unconscious companions, and then, with frenzied haste, continued their work on the half-completed stopping.

It was known that in some parts of the mine men were still at work who were unconscious of the fire, and it was necessary to warn them, that they might make their escape. Besides these there was another band of a half-dozen men who had endeavored to reach the fire from the other side, and who, ignorant of the sudden danger, must also be warned. With three men, Charley Swenson determined to visit the working parts of the mine which lay to the left of the burning entry and extended far behind it. Here there were men working. Within half an hour the alarm had been given and the warning party started back. Half a mile from the main bottom, the party stopped for an instant as the sound of an explosion reached their ears, and they realized that the gas generated by the burning coal was beginning to explode somewhere in the mine. To them it was no longer a question of saving the mine, but of preserving their own lives. Beside the track stood one of the electric locomotives. Swenson noticed it and stopped behind his companions, thinking that by using the locomotive they could get more quickly to bottom. He jumped into the low driver’s seat before he noticed that the trolley-pole was turned the wrong way. Stumbling out again, he pulled the pole from the wire and turned it and then crawled back into the driver’s seat. As his hand reached for the grip of the controller, a sudden dizziness seized him and he fell forward unconscious on the frame of the machine. The white-damp was penetrating all parts of the mine. A minute later, like a hurried funeral procession, another group of men came stumbling down the entry, dragging two of their comrades who had been overcome by the gas; and to them Swenson owed his life.

The mine-bottom was now filled with smoke, and the deadly gas in diluted quantities hung invisible in the air. Attempts to stem the course of the fire were realized to be useless, and the business now became that of getting the men from the mine and sealing the shafts at the top. Like the officers of a sinking ship, the mine-manager and the pit-boss held their ground at the foot of the man-hoist; and after the last hoist had carried up the remainder of the men who were at bottom, they still waited, blinded in the smoke, for a party of three men who had gone an hour before into some of the more distant workings to carry the warning, and who had not appeared. As the smoke grew thicker, they realized how slender was the chance that these men would ever return, but, notwithstanding, they made one attempt to follow them and succeeded in groping their way into C entry. The fire was already in the entry mouth, and through the smoke they saw the yellow flames creeping over the ‘overcast’ of the air-course. As they turned back to the hoist, far-off voices came through the smoke, and two of the missing men, dragging the third, came pitching down the entry. A minute later the little party was on the hoist, and the signal from bottom to ‘hoist away’ was given. The last men were leaving the mine.

The brilliancy of the clear autumn night was dimming in the first faint light of the dawn when the work of sealing the shafts began. Up into the cloudless sky, through the tangled steelwork of the tipple, a tall tower of black smoke three hundred feet high poured up into the still air and faded into the dawn. In two hours the black pits were covered, first, with a layer of rails, and then on this was laid a solid bed of concrete; and two hours later, only a few thin wisps of smoke that poured up through cracks along the edges of the great seal, like steam beneath the lid of a tea-kettle, told of the inferno that was seething in the mine, four hundred feet below.

With the air cut off and the shaft sealed, the fire could live only so long as sufficient oxygen remained to feed the flames, and a consultation of blackened men with drawn, tired faces who gathered in the warehouse office determined that the bottom of the mine had been saved, and that the advance of the flames was already checked and had reached its farthest limit by the cutting off of the supply of air. However, the possibilities were so numerous that all seemed but conjecture. It was impossible to tell how long the fire could live on the air which filled the eighty-six miles of tunnels; and so hurried had been the final exit from the workings, on account of the men who had been overcome, that the exact limits of the fire were unknown.

After the labor and excitement of the long night, the sudden stopping of activity came like the breaking of a tightly stretched wire. There was nothing to do but wait.

The day after the shafts were sealed, as the realization came that it would be days, weeks, or possibly months before operations were resumed, men began leaving the town. Not the old miners — fortunately — or those who knew the company best, but the shifting population that always takes up the excuse of inactivity to move on to some new field. The men with families, the head men, and those of the better sort remained, and at some time each day every one in the half-deserted town walked down to examine the seals on the shafts and to ask questions of the superintendent and his assistants, who made hourly tests with thermometers as to the heat of the shafts. From these readings it soon became apparent that the sealing of the shafts had abruptly stopped the advance of the fire, and it was evident from the coolness at the shaft-bottoms — for the thermometers were lowered through small openings in the seals down to the bottom — that there was no fire anywhere around bottom.

Meanwhile the chief engineer located a spot directly over Third West South, where the fire had been hottest. From the charts showing the curves of the floor of the mine it was discovered that there was a natural declivity starting at the foot of the shaft and descending to the point where the fire had started, and from there the ground rose again to the level of the mine-bottom at the far end of Third West South entry, about three quarters of a mile from the shaft. The total drop at the air-split, where the fire had started, was only about fifteen feet, but as the height of the entry was ten feet, it was evident that if this basin could be filled with water, any fire that existed in that entry could be effectively extinguished without flooding the rest of the mine; a feat that would be impossible on account of the vast area of the workings. Meanwhile, the pipes for compressed air which threaded every tunnel throughout the mine had been filled with water, and as these pipes would naturally be red-hot wherever fire existed, they would burst and discharge the water where it was most needed.

At the spot located by the head engineer, a drill-hole was sunk and at four hundred and twelve feet the drill went through, proving that the surveyors’ calculations had been correct. The pipe line was immediately connected, and for two weeks a steady stream of water poured into the burned section of the mine. In the mean time, almost hourly observations were taken with the thermometers at the shafts, and record was made of the barometric conditions within the mine. A mine that is sealed breathes at regular intervals, like a human being, through the natural crevices in the rock; and even through the seals at the shaft-mouth the vacuum created by the burning out of the oxygen in the mine would draw in the air, and for several hours a handkerchief laid over one of the small openings in the seal would show a steady suction. Then, following, an expansion would be noticeable, and for an equal period the strong, heavy smells of ‘ black-damp ’ and smoke would exhale from the mine.

So great was the interest taken by the men in this work of examination that there was little complaining. One morning, however, as I walked back from the power-house to the town, I met Luke Davis, an old miner of about sixty, who came limping down the street toward the mine, and from him I heard the first complaint of the kind (and many like it followed) that I had yet encountered.

‘The air on top ain’t fit to live in,’ he said. ‘One day it’s cold; next day it’s hot. I’ve had rheumatism ever since the mine shut down. The only place a man keeps his health is underground.’ And there were many others who shared his views.

Four weeks after the shafts were sealed, it was determined that some sort of personal investigation should be made of the conditions in the mine. The thermometers showed that the atmosphere at bottom was reasonably cool, and the amount of water that had been pumped into Third West South was calculated to have filled that entry completely. In addition to this, the steam generated by this water must have reached out and extinguished any fire that might have existed beyond the reach of the water itself. The temperature-readings taken at the bottom of the man-hoist were a few degrees higher than those at the bottom of the air-shaft, and as the direction of the fire followed the course of the air, which led to the foot of the man-hoist, it was believed that the safest entrance into the mine could be made by means of the air-shaft, which was located on the main of B entry, about three hundred feet from the man-hoist and coal-hoisting shaft.

The second reason for the choice lay in the fact that in opening this shaft for the descent it would not be necessary to allow any air to enter the mine, as the top of the shaft was completely inclosed by a part of the fan-house — a massive dome of brick and concrete. If the main hoisting-shaft were opened, it would be necessary to construct some sort of an air-lock above it, and this would be rendered still more difficult, from the fact that this shaft, comprised not only the manhoist, but two hoisting-shafts, and was, accordingly, three times larger than the air-shaft. The principal objection to the plan lay in the fact that the facilities for reaching bottom by means of the air-shaft were very inadequate, whereas, by the other entrance, use could be made of the hoisting-cage.

One thing was apparent; and that was, that under no consideration should any air be allowed to enter the mine, as the entrance of air would not only fan up any latent fire which might exist, but the mixture of air with the almost pure gas, or ‘after-damp,’ which existed throughout the entire workings, would cause a most violent explosion, and the death of any who were within its reach. Tests of the mine-atmosphere which had been made by chemists showed less than one per cent of oxygen and the presence of enormous quantities of the various gases generated by the burning coal. So poisonous was the atmosphere — for under no consideration could it be called ‘air’ — which filled the shafts and every foot of the tunneling below the seals, that life would be extinguished in approximately ninety seconds, should any man be compelled to breathe it.

The gases which filled the mine consisted principally of carbon monoxide, or white-damp, and carbon dioxide, or black-damp, with a small additional percentage of other gases. Whitedamp is the gas most feared by the miners, for its properties render it difficult to detect, inasmuch as it is tasteless, odorless, and colorless, and when mixed in the proportion of about one part gas to nine parts air is called ‘fire-damp,’ and becomes explosive to a degree hard to realize unless one has seen its effects. Black-damp, unlike white-damp, is heavier than air: a nonexplosive gas which may be detected by its peculiar odor. Again, unlike the other, its effect is to suffocate and extinguish fire. This gas is so heavy and moves with such a sluggish flow that, occasionally, when miners have been trapped in a mine following an explosion and have detected the black-damp creeping in upon them by its smell, they have been able to stop its advance by erecting dams or barricades along the floor, building them higher as the volume of gas increased, and keeping the air within their little inclosure comparatively clear by rude, improvised fans. Following an explosion, these two gases become mingled and form a mixed gas possessing all the dreaded qualities of each, which is known as ‘after-damp,’ and it is this mixture of gases which destroys any life that may remain following a mine disaster.

To contend with these almost impossible conditions, it was determined to make the descent equipped with airtight helmets, somewhat resembling in appearance those used by deep-sea divers. This ingenious device, which enables a man to exist under such conditions and to conduct investigations for a period of two hours, consists of a steel headpiece completely covering the fore part of the head and leaving the ears exposed, made air-tight by means of a pneumatic washer which passes in a circle around the top of the head and down each side of the face in front of the ears, connecting under the chin. This washer is inflated as soon as the helmet is adjusted, and pressing out closely against the steel shell of the helmet on one side, conforms closely to the contours of the head on the other, leaving the ears exposed. In the front of each helmet is a round bull’s-eye of heavy mica, protected by steel rods; and below the bull’s-eye, an inch below the mouth, is the main valve which is closed immediately before the man enters the poisoned atmosphere.

From the helmet, in front, hangs a pair of false lungs, or large rubber sacks, protected by a leather apron; and on the back, held by straps over the shoulders and supported by plates fitting closely to the small of the back, hangs a heavy knapsack weighing about forty pounds. This knapsack consists of two steel cylinders, each one containing pure oxygen compressed to one hundred and thirty atmospheres, sufficient to support life for one hour, the two together being sufficient for two hours. Above the oxygen-cylinders are two cartridges, or cans, containing loose crystals of hydrate of potassium sufficient to absorb two hours’ exhalation of carbonic acid gas. With the helmet these cartridges and the oxygen-cylinders are connected in a continuous circuit, and as soon as the oxygen is turned on there is a flow up from the oxygencylinders by a tube under the right arm to the helmet, and down under the left arm to the cartridges, and through them again to the tube at the oxygen-valve.

Upon adjusting the helmet, the wearer takes several large breaths of pure air, which he exhales into the false lungs on his chest, and immediately shuts the mouth-valve. At the same instant, with his right hand behind his back, he turns on the oxygen, and this, regulated by valves to an even feed to last for exactly two hours, forces itself up the tube into the helmet, and by its pressure and reverse suction, draws down through the other tube and through the cans of potassium hydrate the exhaled breath. Air being a mixture of pure nitrogen and pure oxygen, the oxygen cylinders furnish one necessary element. The second — the nitrogen — already exists in the several breaths that the man has taken into the false lungs, for the nitrogen atoms are indestructible and, mixed with oxygen, can be used indefinitely. Passing through the potassium-hydrate cylinders, the carbonic acid gas is entirely absorbed, leaving the free nitrogen atoms to unite with the oxygen below; and so for two hours, a steady stream of air passes up through the right-hand tube, and for two hours the cans of potassium hydrate absorb the impurities exhaled, and pass on the nitrogen atoms to unite with the fresh oxygen ever flowing up from the cylinders.

In order that the helmet-men might keep exact account of the amount of oxygen used, there was a clock fastened to the knapsack. When the helmet was adjusted and the oxygen turned on, the hand of the clock pointed to two hours, and as the pressure in the cylinders was reduced, the hand slid back to one hour, thirty minutes, fifteen, and finally zero, when it would be necessary to open the valves and breathe the outer air or suffocate. We could not see the clocks on our own knapsacks, as they were behind our backs, and so every fifteen minutes or so we would gather in the gas-filled tunnels, and with our electric torches read the minutes remaining on each other’s clocks. Thirty minutes left meant a start for top, even if we were near the hoist. We could take no chances. Unconscious men are hard to move, especially when one’s own air has almost gone.

It will, be clearly seen that it would have been impossible to lower a man into the mine, connected with the surface by an air-hose, as in submarine diving, for the extent of his investigations would be limited to an area extending not more than a few yards from the mouth of the shaft; and the weight of four hundred feet of such an air-line would be liable to tear the hose, in which case death would be instantaneous. Compressed air also was impracticable, for a sufficient supply of compressed air to enable a man to be lowered to bottom and conduct his investigations and return would, at its highest compression, necessitate a cylinder of a size and weight that would make free movement impossible.

It was a cold, gray morning when a dozen of the men chosen to effect the first descent into the mine gathered inside the small stockade about the airshaft. Outside the fence, unmindful of the rain and cold, a hundred silent, unexpressive faces pressed close against the palings and watched for what might come. Everything was in readiness for the descent. Inside the dome above the air-shaft the seal had been removed; and the double doors, forming a sort of vestibule, which connected this room with the outer world, made an effective airlock through which the men might enter. A large, square box, which in the time of operation had been used to lower heavy supplies, and occasionally mules, into the mine, hung suspended by a steel cable in the air-shaft, and was lowered or raised by means of an engine in the fan-house, the cable running over a sheave-wheel in the crown of the dome.

The air-shaft consisted of two compartments: the main shaft, which was fourteen by twelve feet — a smooth, board-lined shaft, four hundred feet in depth; and an escapement or stairwayshaft beside it, built, in compliance with the law regulating coal-mines, for use in case of accident to the hoisting apparatus. The stairway-shaft was separated from the air-shaft proper by a partition of matched boards, and connected with it at the mine-bottom by a small door. From the bottom of the air-shaft two ventilating tunnels extended, one east, one west; the east air-course on a level with the mine-bottom; the west, by means of an ‘ overcast ’ or bridge across the main entry, a passage at a level of about ten feet from the bottom of the air-shaft. Thus to a man standing at the foot of the air-shaft facing the north, the east air-course, on his right, was on the same level as the floor of the air-shaft, the west air-course, on his left, was a square opening ten feet above the ground. From these conditions it would be necessary, in order to reach B entry, which ran under the west air-course, to pass from the bottom of the air-shaft through the door at the foot of the escapement-shaft, and thence by another small door into B entry.

No one knew what conditions would be met with at bottom, but it was determined to make a trial trip, lowering three men in helmets to the bottom of the air-shaft, and hoisting them again without allowing them to leave the box; and, if their trip were successful, to send a second crew of three helmeted men, who would pass through the doors into the main entry and, returning, report what conditions they had found there. Preparatory to the descent, the box was lowered until the white mark on the cable-drum in the engine-house showed that it had reached bottom, when it was hoisted again. This showed that there was no wreckage of any sort in the shaft, which might have been the case had the fire burned loose the shaft-lining.

At half-past nine, the first crew was ready: volunteers, selected for their ability to cope with emergencies, who received large pay on account of the dangerous nature of their work; and with their helmets in place and the oxygen turned on, the outer door of the fan-house was closed behind them, and the rest of us sat down to wait. It was fully five minutes before the squeaking of the big drum in the fan-house told us that they had started. Inside, lying on the floor at the edge of the shaft, lay a man in a helmet to receive the signals which might be sent upward by the men in the box. The round blade of a circular saw had been hung by a wire from the bale of the box (the iron beam from which it was suspended like a basket), and signals were given by striking this with a hammer. Upon hearing a signal, the man at the edge of the shaft-mouth would immediately transmit it by pulling a bell-rope which rang a bell in the engine-room. One stroke meant ‘stop.’ Two strokes, ‘haul up.’ Three, ‘lower away.’ Four, ‘safe arrival.’ Five strokes on the sawblade — which rang like a great bell — meant ‘haul out at top speed; danger has been encountered.’

Three minutes after the box had started its descent came a sudden violent ring on the bell-rope, and the intense agony of uncertainty became almost unbearable. Then came three bells, and we knew that the journey had been resumed. Five minutes — for the box had been lowered very slowly—and then came the four strokes denoting their arrival; and a minute later, the two bells to hoist. Four minutes later there was a noise inside the house and, with a puff of smoke, the door burst open and the four helmeted men, the three who had made the trip and the signalman, stumbled out into the light. The doors were instantly closed, the helmets removed, and the first story of the descent into the mine was told.

So dense was the dead smoke in the shaft, and so feeble the light of the electric torches which they carried, that they had seen nothing. Their descent had been uneventful except once, when the box, swinging silently in the shaft, had for a second struck on one of the cross-ribs, and hence their signal to stop. At bottom they had noticed no excessive heat, although the sweat which poured from their bodies showed that the temperature was far from normal. But they had seen no fire — that was the main point.

An hour later the second shift was ready, of which I was a member, my companions being Delmer, the mineengineer, and Knox, one of the pitbosses. Before starting, all our plans were carefully arranged: Delmer was to carry the hammer, with which he would signal on the saw-blade; I was to carry his electric torch and my own; and Knox was to pay especial heed to the swinging of the box to prevent it from catching on the side of the shaft. Upon reaching bottom, we were to leave the box and pass through the door into the bottom of the escapement, and thence out through the second door into B entry. There we were to take the temperature with a self-recording thermometer, and observe whatever we could without going more than a few yards from the door. This over, we were to return.

With a last look at the cold, gray sky, we adjusted our helmets. The clamps were tightened, the washers inflated, and we drew our long breaths of the damp air. Then the mouth-valves were snapped in place, and the hissing in the valves and a sweetish taste in my mouth told me that the oxygen had been turned on. Like children in a darkened room, we followed Delmer through the first door and turned to see it close behind us. There was a sudden blackness, and silence save for the steady hissing of the compressed oxygen and the even click of the regulating valves. The second door was opened, and without seeing it we passed through and stood, as we knew, on the brink of the open shaft. Here three electric lights gleamed dim and far away through the thick smoke that completely filled the dome above the shaftmouth.

I had known darkness before — the darkness of the mine, darkness that meant a complete absence of light; but here was an opaque darkness, a darkness that the presence of light failed to affect. At my feet a board stretched out into the smoke and disappeared. Stooping clumsily to my knees under the weight of the helmet, and peering forward through the bull’s eye in the dim rays of the electric lights, I saw that the board passed over three feet of blackness into the box which hung in the middle of the shaft. One side of the box, fastened by heavy hinges, had been lowered down like a drawbridge, and from this open side to my feet extended the frail gang-plank that we must pass over. Out before me, in the smoke and blackness, the box swung dimly, its nearest angle half-lost, like the bow of a ship in a dense fog.

One by one, we crawled on our hands and knees over the swaying board and reached the box; but so dense was the smoke and blackness that, holding my electric torch at arm’s length, try as I might, I could distinguish nothing but a faint yellow smudge of light at a distance that I knew to be but the length of my arm. The last man having crossed, the watcher in his helmet on the brink pulled back the board; and groping clumsily, and hampered in the darkness, we pulled up the swinging side of the box and lashed it into place. Then, clear and vibrant, came the three strokes from Delmer’s hammer on the saw-blade. Far away we heard the bell transmitting our signal in the engine-house; and then, imperceptibly, without jolt or sound, the faint smudge of tawny yellow of the three electric lights on the edge of the shaft seemed to rise above us, and standing silent in the box we sank into blackness unutterable. Instantly, sense of direction was gone. There was nothing to see. We could not even see through the bull’s eyes of our helmets the walls of the shaft — almost within arm’s reach. Once, I held my light pointed close against, the bull’s-eye of my helmet, and found a sudden relief in its yellow glare.

For a time that was eternity we seemed to swing in the blackness of space, but we knew that we were steadily descending. I was gripping the side of the box, which came about to my waist-line, with one hand, and trying with my torch in the other to peer through the smoke at the side of the shaft, when there was a sudden jolt and an abrupt stop. The box, swinging in its descent, had caught by one corner on a cross-rib of the shaft. The sudden stroke from Delmer’s hammer on the gong vibrated in my ears, and I felt the floor of the box tipping under me like the deck of a sinking ship. With one arm hooked over the side, and the other clutching at the bale, I clung frantically, I could not even see to what, in the darkness. Far above us, the signal had been heard and transmitted, and with the box at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, it stopped in its descent. There was a moment of waiting and then a lurch as Knox pushed us free from the side of the shaft, and at the same instant a sudden slap as the heavy box fell and brought up on about three feet of slack steel cable. We learned afterward that we were at a level of about two hundred feet. Then three strokes, and we knew that we were again descending; but now, with hands outstretched, we pushed ourselves away from the walls as we swung from side to side in our descent. Two minutes more and our heavy car landed lightly as a thistle at the bottom of the airshaft.

We had expected that we should feel the slight shock as we hit bottom, notwithstanding the fact that the engineer on top would calculate our position exactly and would bring us slowly to a rest; but our arrival was puzzling, for there was no jar and, in addition, the box landed on an angle, when it should have rested squarely on the floor of the air-shaft. For a few seconds we remained in our places, silent and wondering; then, one by one, we climbed over the side. As I stepped over the edge of the box, taking care that the tubes of my apparatus did not catch on any projections, my feet almost slipped from under me, for it seemed as though I had placed them on a slippery mattress.

One by one we crawled out and over the strange, soft object that lay under the box; and then, peering closely in the faint light of our torches, we saw that we had landed on the bloated bodies of two mules which had evidently fled before the smoke and fire when the mine was abandoned and had died seeking the last breath of air at the foot of the air-shaft.

There was about a foot of water at the bottom of the shaft, for we had pumped water down the sides to prevent the heat from igniting the thin board lining; and through the water, and over the bodies of the mules, we groped our way to the small door a yard away that led in to the foot of the escapement. One by one we crawled through the door, wriggling to get our shoulders and our knapsacks through its small confines, and yet with constant care that the tubes of the apparatus and the knapsack and helmet did not touch anything; for the words of the chemist, that ninety seconds of the gas would kill, were never for an instant forgotten. The foot of the escapement was a little lower than the bottom of the air-shaft and the water correspondingly deeper. With the clear splashing in contrast to the dullness of the darkness, we groped for the second door and passed through it into B entry. As I lifted up my shoulders on the other side of the doorway, a sudden heat struck me, and I realized that the fire had been nearer the mine-bottom than we supposed.

Uncertain as to the perfect efficiency of our apparatus— for we were all new to it — we refrained from venturing far from the little doorway through which we had just passed. With our hands we examined the props on either side of the entry, and from their feeling knew that the fire had not reached them, and that the mine-bottom was unharmed; but the intense heat which brought the sweat suddenly out upon us raised the fear that somewhere, — perhaps only a few yards away, — hidden in the smoke and darkness, lay a dormant fire which the presence of air would fan into active flames. Slowly we withdrew through the doorway, and once more climbed over the mules into the box. The sudden transition from the heat of B entry to the cooler atmosphere of the airshaft condensed the sweat inside our helmets and smeared the inside of our bull’s-eyes with a thick white mist that cut off even the little that we had previously been able to see.

I have not mentioned the conversation or words that passed between us, but I do not remember that we said much beyond the few words that were necessary. The scant sounds that echoed through the isinglass of the helmets seemed more like the far-off bellow of some animal than the voice of a man.

Once again in the car, we gave our signal, and far off—four hundred feet above us — the expectant ears of the watcher caught the note of our two bells like distant church chimes; softly we felt ourselves lifted, and the ascent was begun. Four minutes later the three electric lights at the shaftbrink glowed — now almost defiantly — through the smoke, and we lowered the side of our ship and dragged in our gang-plank. Then, one by one, we groped through the first door — all of us — and then through the second. My helmet had leaked and my head reeled in a misty sort of way from the time I left bottom; and as the bright, gray world outside streamed in through the sweat-streaked bull’s-eye, it seemed more like a pleasantly swaying picture than a reality. Some one pulled open my air-valve, and in a second my helmet was off and I drew into my lungs air that had seemed never so sweet or fresh.

Already another crew was preparing for a third descent, to carry our investigations still further.

For one long week we continued our work at the air-shaft, and almost every hour a crew of helmeted men was lowered down in the swinging box to the bottom. Working in the darkness by the feeble light of their torches, kneedeep in water and climbing over the rotting bodies of the mules, they erected stoppings across the openings of the two air-courses which led from the bottom of the air-shaft. The small door connecting the air-shaft with the escapement or stairway was then opened, and a few hours later the big fan at the fan-house began slowly to turn over and force pure air down the air-shaft, which — as our stoppings proved to be tight — found no escape into the mine and returned up the stairway, making a single loop at the bottom. In half an hour both compartments of the shaft were clear, and men, with safety-lamps and helmets ready in case of danger, descended and found the smoke gone and the air clean on the bottom. That night the bodies of the nearest mules were hoisted out and everything was put in readiness for a trip on the following morning into the tunnels of the mine nearest the air-shaft. With clean air at bottom, it was now possible to put on our helmets there and go directly into the mine, avoiding the danger and discomfort of the long helmeted trip down the smoke-filled shaft.

It was about nine o’clock in the morning when four of us prepared for this first investigation of conditions existing in the mine surrounding the air-shaft. Our helmets were adjusted on top, leaving the air-valve open, to be closed when we passed through the small door at the foot of the stairway into the mine. Delmer stayed in the box, and the three of us left him and, splashing noisily in the water, crawled through the small door into the door of the escapement, and then suddenly opening the door into the mine, passed through it as quickly as we were able. We realized that fire might exist beyond, a possibility which made it necessary for us to crawl through as quickly as possible in order that the puff of air which would accompany us might not be of sufficient volume to mix with gas and form an explosive mixture which the fire would ignite. I was the last to go through the door, turning my shoulders sideways in order to pass my knapsack through the narrow aperture.

From the comparative coolness of the shaft we stepped out into B entry, and our first impression was one of heat, for the air was hot beyond our expectation. We had supposed — from the volume of smoke that had been in the air-shaft before it was blown out — that B entry, and probably most of the rest of the mine, would be in a like condition, but the conditions were almost worse than they had been in the airshaft. The smoke was thick as a fogbank. Groping blindly through the blackness upon which our lights seemed scarcely to make an impression, we reached the other side of the entry, a distance of about twenty feet. Then, through the sweat-streaked glass in my helmet, I saw a dull red glow, first almost imperceptible, and then brighter as we advanced: a tinge of tawny color smeared into the thick black smoke. The entry was still on fire, and a few steps more brought us so close to the flames that the heat on our unprotected hands and necks became almost unbearable. There was nothing now that could be accomplished, and after a few brief words from MacPherson, bellowed through his helmet, we turned and felt our way back to the small doorway.

It was now doubly necessary that our exit should be made as quickly as possible, for we were standing in a gasfilled entry; an open fire, denoting the presence of oxygen, was burning actively behind us, and every second that the door remained open as we passed out would allow the clean air from the air-shaft, carrying more oxygen, to pass into the entry.

Without a word, stumbling awkwardly in our haste, we climbed through the door and fastened it behind us. ‘The entry is on fire,’ we shouted to Delmer as we climbed over the edge of the box; and then for three or four long minutes we stood, voiceless, as the box swung upward, each man with the fear in his heart that a sudden explosive blast from the mine below would hurl us to an instant destruction.

Our exit was safely accomplished, and after a conference at the fan-house it was realized that through some crevice or opening from the air-shaft to the mine, which had escaped our notice, air had passed into the workings; and while we had labored taking out the bodies of the mules, the latent fire, revived by this new supply of oxygen, had been fanned into active flame and had crawled down the entry to the very bottom of the shaft. Under these conditions all our work had to be abandoned, and reluctantly we replaced the seal over the air-shaft. A few hours more would have been all that was necessary to bring the fire into the shaft and destroy it.

Again a number of the men who had until now been active in the work lost heart and left town. December had come, and with it, cold, gray days, with occasional flurries of snow, and ice in the early mornings. Disappointed, but not down-hearted, and spurred on by the more than double pay they were receiving for their work, the men who remained began to follow out the instructions of those in charge for conquering this unexpected development. At the mouth of the air-shaft a great furnace was constructed, and for four days and nights the fumes of sulphur were pumped slowly down the airshaft: a vapor which sank of its own accord into the mine and, it was believed, would smother out the flames at the foot of the shaft. In addition, the pipes, which had been connected with the two drill-holes that we had bored down from the surface into the mine, were connected with the boilers in the power-house, and for a week steam was sent down the pipes to condense in the mine below, and assist the sulphur fumes in extinguishing the fire.

By the middle of the month, it was determined to make another attempt to descend into the mine. It was no longer advisable to use the air-shaft as an entrance, for our previous experience had told us that the fire, if it still existed, would be at the foot of that shaft; accordingly an air-tight house with double doors and a vestibule was built over the hoisting-shaft, and preparations were made to descend in the regular hoisting-cage. This was much easier, for here there was no danger of mishap, as there had been in the swinging box in the air-shaft. The steel elevator would carry us to the bottom in less than a minute, and the regular mine-signals would give us easy communication, when on bottom, with the men above.

The first trip down proved highly encouraging. There was no fire or trace of fire anywhere around the foot of the hoisting-shaft. The entry was filled with smoke, but it was not as dense as it had been in the other shaft, and with new and more brilliant portable electric lights which we had secured, we were able to work under far more favorable conditions. The first crew that descended went only to the bottom and was immediately hoisted out again; the second crew continued the exploration from the bottom of the shaft; and the third crew, of which I was a member, explored B entry toward the foot of the air-shaft as far as we were able to penetrate.

At about two thirds of the distance between the hoisting-and main-shaft, the steam which had been pumped into the mine had loosened the roof, and a great ‘fall’ of white stone seemed effectively to block the tunnel. On our next trip, however, we discovered that high up on the right side was a small opening through which we could crawl; and, hampered by our helmets, and fearing to press even lightly against the great blocks of stone which arched above us, lest a touch should bring down tons of rock from the loose roof, we crawled over the ‘fall’ and down into the entry on the other side.

Here the smoke was as thick as it had been when we first penetrated into that portion of the entry from the airshaft, but the heat was gone, which seemed to indicate that the sulphur and steam had done their work. Tramping through the water which flooded the floor of the entry, and which was now coated, like boiled milk, with a white skin of sulphur, we reached the bottom of the air-shaft. A few feet beyond the small door, the fire which we had seen that other morning had burned through the props and, the support gone, the roof had fallen; to what extent we were unable to determine. The work before us now consisted in shutting off the various entrances into the rest of the mine which led from that part of the entry lying between the two shafts, in order that we might remove the seals from the air-shaft and draw the air slowly down the hoisting-shaft, through B entry and the small door at the bottom of the escapement in the airshaft, and up to the top again through the air-shaft; thus creating an actual air-zone in the mine reclaimed from the gas and smoke.

For ten long days the work continued, so slowly and so laboriously that it was sometimes hard to see the end of our labors. Hampered by the weight and bulk of the helmets, and panting when our exertions caused our lungs to demand more air than the regulating valves could supply, we erected six stoppings, of matched boards and canvas, over the mouths of the various tunnels which led off from B entry; and with our bare hands mixed plaster and smeared the cracks and edges until the stoppings were tight. Then came the last and hardest stopping of all, for one had to be built across the entry just beyond the air-shaft, for which it was necessary to carry all the material — lumber, saws, hammers, metal lath, and sacks of plaster — up the entry to the fall, and then over the hazardous pass and down into the smoke and water on the other side.

Day and night the work continued, and after a week of terrible labor the stopping was completed. I remember one of the last trips we made, when nerves and muscles, worn and exhausted, almost refused to continue their work. We had crawled through the pass down into the smoke and water on the other side. The day before, two coils of hose had been dragged over the fall and, with the greatest difficulty, connected with the water-main in the air-shaft, and the streams directed against the fall beyond the air-shaft, where fire might still exist beneath the tons of fallen rock. The muffled roar of the water filled the black smokepacked tunnel with sound, and every few minutes the tall, four-hundred-foot column in the pipe would break, and there would be a roar and crash as though the whole roof were giving way above us.

We had left a little opening in the stopping, that we might go through and plaster the opposite side, and as I crawled back from doing this work, my helmet struck sharply and twisted sideways on my head for a second, allowing a little gas to leak in beneath the washers. A minute later, as I rose to my feet, a dizziness seized me, and calling to my two helpers, we started for the hoisting-shaft. We all realized that should a man become unconscious through a leak in his helmet, it would be impossible to get the dead weight of his body up and over the fall. With that one thought in each mind, we slowly crawled up and over the masses of rock, through which many journeys had worn a hazardous path, and down on the other side. And now flashes of light, like electric sparks, seemed to play before my eyes, sliding down across the front of my helmet. My knees began to sway, and it suddenly occurred to me that they must be bending in both directions as I walked. It was a hard trip to the shaft, and I realized how bright was the cold sunshine on top, and how clean and crisp was the open air, when they helped me off with my helmet.

On Christmas Eve we lost a man under very similar circumstances. Either by striking his head or in some other way, he had loosened his helmet and been overcome by the gas which had leaked in. His body lay on the far side of a battice, and his weight and the helmets which his companions wore so hampered them that death came before he was finally brought to the surface.

With the completion of this last stopping, the end of our terrible work seemed near, and it was with the spirit of a holiday that the men tore off the seal from the air-shaft and opened the doors of the house at the top of the man-hoist. Slowly the great fan once more turned, and after two hours, when the safety-lamps no longer detected the presence of gas in the air which came out of the air-shaft, we cautiously descended. With our helmets laid aside and with the comparatively bright light of our safety-lamps, the mine took on a more familiar and homelike aspect. In a few hours, no longer hampered by helmets or conditions of smoke and gas, we tore down a wide passage through the fall, an operation that would have taken days to accomplish under the former conditions, with the helmets. That evening in the Superintendent’s room in the office-building, those who were in charge, with the maps of the mine spread before them, planned the next move in the fight and determined which entries should next be opened and how the air-currents should be led into them in order that the mine, tunnel by tunnel and section by section, might be cleared of the smoke and gas.

Meanwhile, a dozen men, under the leadership of Boar, had remained in the mine and were tightening the stoppings and preparing for the work of the coming day. It was about eleven o’clock that night when Boar heard a slight explosion beyond the stopping by the airshaft. Without alarming his men, he began an investigation, when two more violent explosions threatened to blow down the stopping. The unexpected had again happened. Stoppings once more had leaked, air had passed into the gas-filled tunnels, and fire still existed.

Without a second’s delay the men were hoisted from the mine, and fifteen minutes after the last man stepped from the cage there came a sudden explosion in the mine. From the hoistingshafts a huge white cloud of vapor shot up into the night; but at the airshaft the force of the explosion was more violent, and the great dome of reinforced concrete above it fell in a mass of crumbled wreckage, swept back clean from the edge of the shaft . It was one o’clock when I reached the fan-house, and a great full moon was standing high in the cold winter sky. Up from the square, black mouth of the air-shaft, a tall white column of vapor rose into the night, and then, when the mine began to breathe, disappeared; and with our hands held above the black hole, we could feel the rush of air sucked back into the abyss.

At an interval of about an hour following the first explosion there had come a second but less violent one; and again two hours later, when the mine had sucked back sufficient air to form another explosive mixture, a sudden hissing puff again shot out from the shaft, breaking into three pieces two twelve by fourteen green oak beams that we had laid across its mouth as the foundation for a seal. So sudden was the explosion that Peter Dawson, a powerful Negro who was crawling out over one of the beams when it occurred, was blown a distance of over fifty feet. We found him lying beside the track beyond a string of box-cars, with the blood running from a bad scalp-wound. His first words were that he had been tossed completely over the cars. ‘I seen the roofs all white with frost an’ moonlight,’ he muttered; and the doctor later affirmed that Pete would have been killed when he landed on the rail if he had not hit on his head. A hundred men were now working in the moonlight, and in half an hour two more of the great beams were placed across the shaft-mouth, and planks and canvas, packed down with clay, above them.

The damage at the top of the manhoist had been slight, and only the doors on the house above it had been blown from their fastenings. For the third time the shafts were sealed.

[In the January number Mr. Husband will describe the culmination of the disaster.—THE EDITORS.]