CHASM 900 FEET DEEP

Evening Star, Issue 20196, 8 June 1929, Page 18

CHASM 900 FEET DEEP

MINER'S HARROW ESCAPE A thrilling story conies from Clydacb Vale in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. A young collier named Emlyn Protheroc, who has been out of work two years, at last found work, and considered himself lucky. But as ho was descending the pit alone the machinery of the winding engine went out of order and the cage stuck. He found that the cage could be moved a little, but it would not go right tip of right down. For two and a-half hours the man was imprisoned, and possibly he foresaw the swift and sudden fall of the cage, a disaster which lias killed miners before. Possibly also he was suffering front the hardships of two years’ unemployment. The unhappy result was that when the chance of escape came he was too exhausted to take it.

The cage had been manoeuvred opposite a watercourse opening into the shaft, but there was a gap of 6ft between the cage and the watercourse, and a tremendous drop of 900 ft lay below. The colliery agent and two men went down the watercourse till they came to its opening on the shaft. A narrow plank was placed across the chasm. Protheroe was not strong enough to cross it, as his strength had ebbed away.

Then Will Jones, a pitman, walked over the plank to the cage, picked the lad up, and swung him across the giiif to the arms of the men on the other side, afterwards crossing the narrow and unstable plank again in safety. No man could have stepped safely above that tremendous drop unless lie had been perfectly fit and perfectly calm. It was indeed a fortunate thing for young Protheroe that there was a man at hand not only •willing hut possessed of the necessary nerve and strength to rescue him.

This truo story, says an English writer, recalls a passage in one of the romances written hy Sir Eider Haggard. Three people exploring the inside of a mountain had to cross a chasm by a narrow plank. Two managed it, but the third faltered and was hurled to death, taking the plank with him.

That tragedy of fiction might have been reproduced in the mining district of the Rhondda Valley hut for the coolness and courage of Will Jones.