DOWN THE MINE AT CHIRK.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11630, 11 May 1912, Page 8

DOWN THE MINE AT CHIRK.

THE MEN AT WORK AGAIN. (By Basil Clarke, in the Daily Mail.} The miners at the Brynkinalt Colliery were starting work again. It was close on nine o'clock at night, and man after man emerged from the darkness of the lanes and fields about the pit into the soft lights of the weigh-box at the shaft head. Here each received his lamp, and then took his stand in the cage to be "wound below." Cageful after cageful dropped noiselessly from sight, and as each one dropped the halo of light which its passengers' lamps shed on the round ring of the shaft wall grew gradually less and less end mistier and mistier till it became a mere spot and went out. All were down at last, and then came my turn to go. The cage is low and you must stoop. There is a hand-rail to hang on by; the lamp man had provided a lamp, its glass globe so spotless that one could imagine the light naked. The manager's brother had kindly provided suitable clothes and—thoughtful soul —a leather skull cap wherewith to mitigate in some degree the thousand head-splitting blows against the roof that you and I and all the unknowing ones can count upon in a first journey through pit workings. "So long!" shouted the manager's brother. We were moving, and his voice sounded queerly distant. We were gathering pace. * With the light of my lamp I could see through the open ends of the cage the bricks of the shaft wall flying upwards; the cage seemed to be still, only the walls flying upwards, and I wondered in a vague kind of way whether I, too, were not flying upwards instead of downwards. I suddenly remembered sitting in GrahamWhite's aeroplane while he achieved from a height of 400 ft that glorious folly of flying known as the vol-plane. The sensations were strangely alike. Then the cage bottom began again to press' on my boot soles, the bricks flew upwards less fast; we were slowing down, there came light again, the sound and the hiss of engines, the clatter of railways and many trucks, and a voice, a cheery, hilarious voice, that said: "Whoa, my hearties, whoa, and back out gently now and welcome home again!" I looted at the man, half expecting to see some quaint-shaped gnome of the under-world, but instead there, ntood a red-faced, bright-eyed old Welshman in a bowler hat, of all odd things for an under-world. "Mr Hughes, hooker-on," he said, introducing himself with a bow ■ and a broad smile and a flourish of the old hat. "Nice weather." he added chirpily, and T laughed with him at the idea of such a thing as weather existing in this grim bed of the earth. Then he went on to push tugs of coal into the cage I had quitted. He spoke of them as "lads." "Here, my lad, now, inside with you, sharp now, in with you, and the next now" —and so on, tub after tub. A right genial old gnome, to be si^re. I had been entrusted to the care of

Mr Morgan, the overman of a district, an old miner of forty odd years in the pits, a man in whom was the instinct of the underground. Why did Mr Morgan never look at the roof and yet

never bump his head as I did? Why could Mr Morgan tell that tracks were coming rushing on us in the dark, when in the silence I could hear not a tick of sound ? Why did this venerable, likeable old man stop suddenly as we. trudged along in the dim light of our lamps, look up at the roof and bellow to some unseeable sprites to get a prop under that piece? Instinct —it could onlv be instinct, and I found myself trudging along those low, narrow roads in his wake as after one who possessed gifts that I had not and senses, more than seven, of which I knew nothing. We soon turned aside from the noble thoroughfare that left the bottom of the pit shaft, and entered a roadeuphemism for w-hat I should have called a tunnel—the mean height of which was 4ft 3in, and at this height and at about 4ft width the road continued save in places where a projecting rock in the roof would momentarily reduce reduce the height by six inches or so. Of each of these sudden reductions in hci-iht I carrv still an indelible record in the form of a wound on the scalp. ! Given trucks blocked our path. Mr | Morgan signalled in some way. and I cheery, lavishing youths . bent the-r ! naked backs and pushed the trucks up and down or into byways while wc I passed. Here and there we lighted on | boys in charge of compressed air enI nines. With "these and long wire haw- ! sl-ts the\v bundled the trucks along the ways. With one of these boys we left oiLv coats and vests, for the temperature was rising. At times'as wc crouched along—l with breaking back, for yft 9in goes into 4ft Sin for from comfortably—Mr Morgan would draw me aside' to a bay :n the wall, saying, nothing; in the blackness. I could sua nothing ; then a rumbling, faint as that of distant wind, would begin, and soon, round a corner perhaps, would come an aval-nncho of trucks. The traffic of Leic-ester-srmare at theatre time is too mild and dovelike compared to the terror of those uishing trucks in these dtork. narrow ways. I thought of all the pit disasters I had been to —of Pretoria and Maypole', Little Stanley, aud the rest of that grim train of dreadful pits—and wondered if ever such upheavals took men when they were crouching, as T

was. and- as I clattered up this inky, rocky spout in the ea.rtlr there came .- distant boom like that of a great gun. The rocks shook against my ribs. "Here it is," I said, "it has come,'"' and I lay quietly on my face and listened 1 breathless. There was no sound until at last came old Morgan's clieery voice. T. Kiovelkd out of the hole and found

i "Only shot-firing," he said, "come j ajeng. We'll go and see one fired, j We came out into a broader road. , A 4ft Sin road is a luxury after an j air-hole. Men were working at the •> coal face —merry, laughing men they • were, too. glad, apparently, to he at j work again. They hailed'us breezily. I They hailed me too. "A stranger has j come to fill for me," yelled- one: "he i will fill tubs for me." And the rest | laughed, long deep laughs that came j hounding back in echoes from the ends j <u the dark gallery. ! Some men were driving long drills | into the solid wall of coal. The bottom ! cf the face had already been underj mined by electric coal-cutters, whose | whirling teeth had thrown up great , heaps of fine coaldust through which i.v.-H waded. One hole was soon ready.for | :■■ shot, and Mr Morgan undertook the j firing. "AH clear." lie shouted, and hs i and I nnd half a dozen others sr-ram- ; bled along the face and un a gallerv nt j right angles. He knelt on the floor i his lamplight.shining diralv on two wives j and- a little battery which he took !,-> j \: is hand. "Fire!" he, shouted warn- ■ lugly. and he raised, his head to listen. ! The shout came and went again in echo. i but there was no answering shout. All j tin? men were in safe places. R» i touched the wires together. There was .■ ••>_ Fond roar and' a feeling in my ears as ; Hough someone had blown hard down i both of them at once. Then the coal j face ripped and heaved and cracked j and down fell tons of it with' a. crash" j ao went to examine the damage, but ! already, notwithstanding the dreadful i smell of_ the- explosive, a great fellow ; was- lifting hundredsweight chunks of j ton! and' heaving them into the wheeled | i standing readv. "He, will fill for j me." shouted the humorist, and voices | '■■■ ok up th<- joke. "X;, v , he's come to j fill for me." ; Great merry boys. the«-e miners at i work anew on the coal face. Their \ company was cheery and coming after the bkick loneliness of the r-ads. One touch of this loneliness T on the return journey. ~Mr Morgan. fcir ; !7<r. I suspect, another onslaught of

| trucks, had left me to arrange for my , | .'ike an inrrlorious true? -.vitli the hoy? ; who carry on 'his wat of tlip trucks. , | ~>H- !'>mi) was out. as nsnal. and T sat in j Hip dark en road' awairn'T bi<= rej turn. The darknpss was sneh as T hnvp I imypi- realised inst. nothing, "ine bla"k- ---| '!«.«. the of al' th''>M-s Th« j -Tr -as odd to -it h-ro : .nd think of ; «,-„l,f ns rWv,. down a-av f-om ~ycrv- '. ;, 01 ,;, r ~,_,,,.',- ~c l.:f„ P ., r l „,..,_ j n ,-». t -,H ll«l". "l rV- »m.<•!=.- rf this I haU of linr-..",,. ,-or.V s ,„rl f:ton.,. j ••-■ a Plim;,e '—rf-'cl' ' c thr "'■e<--j!f .ill i tl-,-'- Treat nrediirt o-' reons nT tha". : W 0 returned to ihp uit pv« h-r th" 1 t-:.i haiilace roid. i-li,, _s-h=H Ml of its roomy, palatial delights and trim-

ness nftor the limitations of 4ft 3i,n ? Mr Pushes was still hooking on tubs and cracking jokes impartially. I talked with him and his assistants for ...

whole before going up the shaft to the surface again. Here, instead of blackness, a cloudless moon and- every star, bathing the country side, hill and dale, in glorious light. * A church bell was tolling midnight. I went, down to the pit offices. A dozen police were bivouacked there, and they gave me a cup of excellent coffee.