AN ADVENTURE IN A COAL-PIT.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 344, 20 July 1875, Page 3

AN ADVENTURE IN A COAL-PIT.

Trifles often lead to great disasters, and it seemed but a trifle to me when, one November morning, a telegram was put into my friend Willis’s hands as we were preparing for a day’s shooting. His presence was demanded in London on some trust business, and he had immediately to give up all idea of sport. He begged me, however, to take Rover and the keeper, and pursue ray recreation as if he were with me. I was not eager to make a large bag ; so I determined to discard the man, and take a long ramble on the lonely hills behind Bradford, in the hope of picking up a stray woodcock, as well as a brace or two of grouse. Perhaps I was a little tired of partridges amongst the turnips, and wanted an excuse for a walk as much as anything. The day was somewhat gloomy. Torn wasps of dark cloud hurried over the hills at the back of my friend’s house, but I did not mind a wetting; so started with Rover, my pointer, who frisked about in as exhilarated a state as his master. Soon I gained Baddon Fell, the highest point in the district, and turned to look on the tall chimneys and smoky pall of Bradford. Thence my course lay over hill and valley, succeeding one another in gentle acclivities. Neither grouse, which were very wild, nor woodcoek, fell to my gun. At noon, I rested, and ate a couple of biscuits, by way of lunch. Then on again; and on rising a slope, I beheld a small scrub of brambles, spruce firs, and larch, with a holly or two intermingled, surrounded by a dilapidated fence. It was about a hundred yards across, and none of the trees were more than ten feet high; but it was in a sheltered spot, and was just the place in which a woodcock would rest, a short time after his flight. Rover divined my intention, and pushed on a few yards before me. No one was in sight. A few sheep dotted the face of the opposite hill. Rain had begun to fall, and the whole landscape was cheerless to a degree. I climbed the slight fence, and followed Rover into the brushwood. A dozen steps, and I suddenly felt myself slip forward. I caught the stem of a larch, and, to my horror, glided down, with a crashing of sticks and a howl from the terrified dog—glided down as it might be for a moment or two, through bush and brake, then, with an awful plunge, we all disappeared into darkness, while bushes and earth rattled over me for another few seconds. To this succeeded a crash and a stunning blow, and I knew no more. After what seemed an age, I came to my self, weak and sorely numbed; every limb aching, and my head splitting with agony, but without any broken bones, as I discovered when able to stand up again. The fact of my having slid down on the mass of debris, had providentially saved my life, but the disentangling myself from the bushes and briers which had almost smothered me, took of itself some little time. Slowly recollection retured with the glow of blood in its old channels, after having been frozen, as it were, by the shock. It was pitch dark, and awful silence reigned around. High up, I could discern a patch of grey sky, but it was evidently the hour of twilight, and soon it too faded out. At length, I gathered my senses, and the conviction then flashed upon me that I had fallen down the shaft of a disused coal-mine, and that, too, one situated in such an out of-the-way village over the bleak hillsides, that rescue was extremely improbable. Willis, I now remembered, had mentioned these old shafts to me a few days ago, and had told me that scrub and brushwood were usually planted over the site of them, on some rough planks and hurdles loosely thrown over the yawning mouth of tbe pit. Alas, his cautions had been thrown away ! Striking a light with a fusee, I found it was six o’clock : so that I must have been unconscious for some hours. A few drops from my brandy flask greatly restored me, and I began to move about, for, though much oppressed with the the horror of my situation, I wanted to circulate my blood, and attain my full powers of thought. I settled at once that it was no use to give in and lie on the heap which had fallen with me, till death came by inches. Perhaps, if I fired a shot, it might attract notice, and enable me at the same time to see for a moment where I was. Accordingly, I took aim in the direction I conceived the shaft was, and drew the trigger. I shall never forget the result. For an instant the vast caverns that seemed to yawn on every side around me were lit up, and I could catch a glimpse of huge buttresses reaching up on high, like the arms of Atlas. The roof I could not see, owing to the momentariness of the flash, but the noise was appalling. The explosion echoed and re-echoed round the dark vault, and then fled away in muttering thunders into the unknown darkness, seeming to be caught up, and buffeted between the buttresses, and, for several moments after these repercussions of sound had ceased, to linger like the recurring undertones of some monstrous passing bell. I am not superstitious, but it seemed just as well not to be ringing my own knell; so I determined to waste no more powder in utterly futile attempts to make somebody hear. A low moan of pain at my side now made me start; but on calling to Rover, I found it proceeded from him. He had fallen with me, but, less fortunate—as I found on scrambling to where the moans proceeded from—had broken his back in the descent. It was piteous to feel the poor animal licking my hand, and to know that he was powerless to drag himself a yard. Even in the upper world, there would have been no cure for him, and sorry as I was to lose his companionship in the utter darkness which enveloped us, I knew it was more humane to put an end to his sufferings. There was agony in the thought, but what could be clone? Immediately, the faithful creature was no more, and now I was left absolutely without a friend in the bowels of the earth. I in a measure encouraged myself, however, by thinking that after dinner had waited an hour, Mrs Willis would probably become alarmed, and send out to scour the neighbourhood. But who would dream of looking for me in a deserted coal-pit ? and Avho could track my steps over the barren moors, to the point where the earth subsided under me ? And then once more hope awoke strong said irrepressible within me. (To he continued,')