AT GRIPS WITH DEATH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 651, 14 March 1914, Page 7

AT GRIPS WITH DEATH.

MOMENTS WHEN WORKERS ARB VERY NEAR IT. "Pick-pick !" "Tap-tap !" The noise comes up intermittently from somewhere about sixty feet below the ground level. In a narrow aperture, only wide enough to admit on? man's body, a panting mortal is laboriously chipping away into the solid rock. An enormous sky-scraper building, of the kind that is i.eing copied from America, is to be erected, and this man is boring, below the actual foundations, a hole for the reception of »ne of the great steel girders. Sweating as only n horse or a man can, hardly daring to breathe for the clouds of minute particles of rock' dust which are flying round his head, the man works on, tapping and picking with a weary steadiness, and only stopping occasionally to send up the accumulated chippings in a little basket that hangs near him by a rope.

Quite suddenly he realises that he is very tired. He wants to close his eyes. Rest seems so inviting. And now he finds he cannot breathe. His eyelids start out, and he opens his no ith spasmodically, drawing in a choking cloud of dust. Then he falls. Up above the foreman grumbles. ''l don't, hear Jim Master's pick goin'," hs mutters. "If we're to finish this contract in schedule time, there must be no slackin'. I'll give Jim a rouse up." He peers down the hole and then begins to pull with all li.'.-i strength on the rope that is ror.nd Jim Master's body. Others lead a hand, and Jim is hauled to the surface. A drop of brandy makes h iiv: open his eyes. . . inquiringly

' Foul gas," says the foreman, laconically. "You wsre very nearly a L.xnner that time, Jim."

"I)o your best, Blazeley." The v urt:.- rang in the jockey "u' ears, as v. ith a of some fifteen horses, he lines up in front of the starting gate for the X—shire Autumn Steeplechase. His master, he knows is not worrying about the value of the race, for that is small- It is the bats he has made on the result that worry him. And Blazeley intends to do his best, for his master has been good to him. He is not a great, jockey, and gaining in weight every day, and sometimes he wonders how much longer his employer will go on keeping him. lie must do his best. At the same time there flashes across his mind" the picture of his v/ife patiently giving tea to a noisy little brood in the tiny house they "occupy. And he shudders to think what they would do if anything happened to him. Here they are at the "ditch," the last jump in the race. His mount takes it badly, and Blazeley should have held him up better. The horse stumbles, throws him, then recovers itself and canters off. The jockey rises dazedly to Ms fest, and then crawls as quickly as he can to the side of the course, only one second before the big black horse that was following takes the jump, and hurtles past, a few inches from his body. "Just clear !" says Blazeley, and .mutters something very like a prayer.' * * * * He dare not look down, and yet : orne insane prompting within him -.ids him do so. Suspended in mid-air, about a hun;'.v2d feet above the roat'ing street, by means of a crazy sort of rope i ra'-lle, he is tinkering up a complicated arrangement of telephone wires. A noise below, the unusual sound of a regimental band, makes him look ('own.

Five minutes later an out-of-work i.Torter rings up the news editor of ■ n evening paper : "There's been a accident in the street," he says. •'What's the story worth to me?"— "Modern Man."