LITTLE-KNOWN HAPPENINGS IN COAL MINES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2268, 19 August 1897, Page 49

LITTLE-KNOWN HAPPENINGS IN COAL MINES.

Glimpses of the Subtebkanean WOKLD. Deep down In the bowels 1^ of the earth happens much that is strange. If the miner were an imaginative man, skilled in tha mo of the pen, he could thrill us, surprise as, hold us spell-boand ; for the romance of bis daily life, displayed with th« light of f *nc7, , would make a story of surprising interest. i For curious incidents one need, go no farther than the shaft of a colliery. Drop a marble down one, and by the time it reaches' 1 the bottom it will have gained such force

that it will penetrate a 2in plank. v On one occasion a. rat fell down a comparatively shallow pit. The rodent strack a, miner on .the head with a loud report and floored him as if by a bludgeon. Five or six years since, Loo, a man dropped into the abaft of a Welsh pit and disappeared for ever. Down below, in the roads and workings, there are scores of strange episodes. In connectioii with shot-firing many stories are told. At a certain pit where gunpowder is used it is the rule, when a shot misses fire, to leave it till the following day. Some little time back a light was applied to a train in the usual manner. As no report followed, the men went to the surface.- Next morning one of the miners, in clearing out the hole, could find no trace of powder — ie was filled with nothing but dirt. He consequently taxed the man who should have charged the bore with " making a holiday." " That's right, lad," coolly replied the col-. Her. " Some on us wanted to go to th' race?, and we didn't want to be fined for stopping off ; so I filled yon hole wi' a bag o' dirt." Sometimeß two charges are fired together — a dangerous practice, since the report of one may by mistake be taken for the simultaneous explosion of both. A miner recently had a marvellously narrow escape of losing his life in these cirenmstances. He was returning to a spot where a charge had been laid, thinking it had exploded some little time previously, when there was a flash, a' deafening bang, and blocks of coal were hurled all round him. It is a marvel that he was not killed instantly, as he assuredly would have been had he started off a few seconds earlier ; but, beyond receiving a few trifling flesh wound?, he was uninjured. Equally remarkable are the hairbreadth j escapes from death owing to falls of roofs. When only a few miners are working together thay can generally tell by the Bound overhead when they are in danger of being crushed ; but if a dozen or more are busy close to one another the noiee they make drowns the ominous " crack " above. An old collier recently warned bis fellow-workers that a fall was coming. All the party with the exception of the

man's son— a young fellow about 20— a«i cordingly "knocked off" and retired to m safe distance. The coal-miner again told hist boythat if he did not come away he would soon be buried; but that individual, with the foolish obstinacy of youth, .announced his determination to stop where he was at all costs. Then the man seized his offspring, and by sheer force dragged him from the face of the coal. Hardly had the two gofc clear away from the spot when down poured tons of earth and stone. Five seconds later, and both of them would have been buried alive.

Plenty of stories are also told about more serious disasters — those which blot out of existence in the twinkling of an eye scores of breadwinners. A certain amount of mystery attaches to old workings. They may be fall of gas ; there may.be accumulated in them thousands of tons of water; there may smoulder in them a fire which will burn for years before it is discovered. Only a few years back an uuder-manager of a large pit said to bis wife :

"There's a rare lot of gas in those old ! workings. Every man ought to come up, and air ought to be driven through them to clem it out. But they won't do that. Ah, well, it'll be too late presently, you see if it isn't. ! There'll be an explosion, and before many { days, too, and I'm going to lay up sick till it's over." For more than a fortnight, therefore, the man was "ill." At last, as nothing unusual happened, he returned to his work. But; lot that very morning the long-expected orajgh came, and amoDg the threescore or more colliers who wect from tbie life like the snuff of a candle was he who had failed to be true to his own convictions. Coincidence or retribution — which ? After the "accident" inquiry was mads > for the books, that the condition of the mine before the disaster might be investigated; but 'they could not be found — a oiroumstance, ba it noted, with sadly too many parallels. [ What beoame of the tell-tale evidence ? ftoI body knows. Bat the manager himself was seen going towards the ventilating furnace below with the books, and he was also seen coming back without them. | The great difference in the temperature of I mines u&s several peculiar consequences. Some pits are so well ventilated — bo much air ia driven through them — that the men employed in them shiver with cold at times, . and work with their coats on. Others, particularly those of great depth, are suffocatingly hot — " hot enough," colliers say, "to frizzle bacon," Some coal is warm when ifc reaches the surface, and " spits " if rain j descends on it. ( j In the close mines mice are rather plentiI ful. A few of them reach the subterranean , world snugly nestled in trusses of hay and bags of corn that are taken down for the ponies, and these, soon becoming accustomed to their new quarters, increase and multiply rapidly. Oats are consequently introduced into colliery stables, and, like their natural enemy, quickly make themselves at home. One pit pussy is so habituated to her sufroondiegs that she is invariably missing for more than half the week. When the men leave on Saturday she seems, to think that she, too, is entitled to a little change, and accordingly she disappears in the workings, and is seen no more until the following , Wednesday or Thursday, treciiely where '■ she goes is an inexplicable mystery ; but she ,| must roam through the old and disused porj tions of the mine, which have evidently no ' terrors for hsr.