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Not Demons, but Saviors Frontispiece FACING PAGE How Anton's Father was Killed 12 Coal-Hewers at Work 13 Where the Branch Line Forks 13 Knockers 20 Gathon, Goblin of the Mines 20 Dwarfs in the Mine 21 Miners Descending a Shaft 54 Falling-in of a Mine 55 Explosion of "Fire Damp" 55 Into the Poison-Filled Air 82 U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car 83 Interior View showing Life-Saving Equipment 83 Where the Timber goes 90 Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors 91 Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs" 91 Divining-Rods 138 The World's Oldest Picture of Gold-Seekers 139 Australia's Treasure-House 158 In the Richest Gold Mine of the World 159 Sutter's Mill 176 The Rush to the Gold Mines 177 The Prospector of To-day 184 Flume at the Melones Mine 185 The Coming of the Forty-Niners 194 David Egelston 195 The Miner's Sluice 214 Panning Gold on the Klondyke 215 Where Deserts Yield Millions 236 The Eater of Mountains 237 The Top of the Chilkoot Pass 260 Pass in the Sierra Nevadas 261 Hydraulicking in Colorado 300 America's "Gold-Ship" at Work 301

THE BOY WITH THE U S. MINERS

UNDERGROUND TERRORS

"Ay, lad," said the old miner, the pale flame of his cap-lamp lighting up his wrinkled face and throwing a distorted shadow on the wall of coal behind, "there's goin' to be a plenty of us killed soon."

"Likely enough, if they're all as careless as you," Clem retorted.

"Carelessness ain't got nothin' to do with it," the old man replied. "The 'knockers' has got to be satisfied! There ain't been an accident here for months. It'll come soon! The spirits o' the mine is gettin' hungry for blood."

"Nonsense, Otto! The idea of an old-timer like you believing in goblins and all that superstitious stuff!"

"It's easy enough for you to say 'nonsense,' Clem Swinton, an' to make game o' men who were handlin' a coal pick when you was playin' with a rattle, but that don't change the facts. Why, even Anton, here, youngster that he is, knows better'n to deny the spirits below ground. The knockers got your father, Anton, didn't they?"

Anton Rover, one of the youngest boys in the mine, to whom the old miner had turned for affirmation, nodded his head in agreement. Like many of his fellows, the lad was profoundly credulous.

From his Polish mother--herself the daughter of a Polish miner--Anton had inherited a firm belief in demons, goblins, gnomes, trolls, kobolds, knockers, and the various races of weird creatures with which the Slavic and Teutonic peoples have dowered the world underground. From his earliest childhood he had been familiar with tales of subterranean terror, and he knew that his father had often foregone a day's work and a day's pay rather than go down the mine-shaft if some evil omen had occurred.

Yet Anton was willing to accept modern ideas, also. Clem was both his protector and his chum, and the boy had a great respect for his older comrade's knowledge and good sense. He was aware, too, that Clem was unusually well informed, for the young fellow was a natural student and was fitting himself for a higher position in the mine by hard reading. This Ohio mine, like many of the American collieries, maintained a free school and an admirable technical library for the use of those workers who wished to better themselves.

The young student miner was zealous in his efforts to promote modern ideas among his comrades, and knew that the old superstitions bred carelessness and a blind belief in Fate. Despite their differences in age and in points of view, he and Otto were warm friends, and he returned the old man's attack promptly.

"So far as Anton's father is concerned, Otto," he said, "it was Jim Rover's carelessness that killed him. He was caught by a falling roof just because he wouldn't take the trouble to make sure that the draw slate overhead was solid before setting to work to undercut the coal. I know that's so, because he told me, just before he died. I was the first one to reach him, after the fall, for I was working in the next room, just around the rib."

"An' who made the draw slate fall, just when Jim Rover was a-standin' right under it? Answer me that, Clem Swinton!"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"Every man who's ever handled a coal pick knows that draw slate is apt to work loose. That's one of the dangers of the business. And the danger can be avoided, as you know perfectly well, Otto, if a chap will feel the roof for vibration, with one hand, while he uses the other to tap on the slate with the flat side of a pick. If he won't take the trouble--why, it's his own fault if he gets killed.

"Blaming the 'knockers,' Otto, doesn't hide the fact that nearly a thousand miners get killed in the United States every year, just through their own carelessness."

The old man shook a finger ominously.

"It isn't always the careless ones what get taken," he declared. "Look out for yourself, Clem Swinton; look out for yourself! It's you the knockers'll be after, next, an' much good all your readin'll do you, then! I warned Jim Rover less'n a week afore he got killed, an' I'm warnin' you now."

Anton looked up, fearfully, for old Otto had a reputation as a seer, in the mine, but Clem only laughed.

"I put my faith in following out the safety rules, Otto," he replied, "not in charms and tricks to keep the goblins away."

The old man, however, was not thus to be set aside. He was as ready to defend his old-fashioned beliefs as was Clem to advance his modern theories.

"Experience goes for somethin'," he affirmed stubbornly. "Boy an' man, I've been below ground for over forty years. I've worked in Germany, Belgium, France, and all over this country. Just eight years old I was, when I went down the shaft for the first time; there weren't no laws, then, to keep youngsters out of a mine.

"I was a door-boy to start off with, openin' doors for the coal-cars to come through. That meant keeping one's ears open. The loaded cars come a-roarin' down the slopin' galleries, an', if a kid didn't hear them, he'd get smashed between the coal car an' the door. Even when he did hear them, he had to jump lively, or he'd get nipped, anyhow.

"On the other side o' the door it wasn't much better, for the empty cars were hauled up the slope o' the mine galleries by donkey power, an', if a kid didn't hear the whistle o' the donkey driver, he'd get his head clouted an' would be fined two days' pay beside.

"There warn't no eight-hours' day, then. We worked a shift o' twelve hours, an' the miners didn't stop between for meals--just took their grub in bites while they went on holin' coal. All piece-work it was in them days, an' every miner holed, spragged , picked and loaded his own coal. The more stuff he got out, the more pay. The men didn't get any too much money, either, an' if a miner wanted to have a decent pay-check at the end o' the week, he warn't goin' to be hindered by havin' any trouble with cars. The poor kid at the door got it comin' to him from all sides.

"It's different now in coal-mines to what it was then. We hadn't no electric plant to run ventilatin' fans for keepin' the air fit to breathe. Nowadays, a man can be nigh as comfortable below ground as he can be above; but, when I was a kid, the air in a mine was hot, an' heavy, an' sleepy-like.

"After breathin' that air for nine or ten hours, it was hard to keep awake. You'd see the pit-boys comin' up out o' the shaft wi' their eyes all red an' swollen an' achin'. No, it warn't from gas, it was just from rubbin' em to keep em' open. An' rubbin' your eyes with hands all gritty with coal-dust ain't any too good for 'em."

"Well, Otto," the young fellow interrupted, "you can't deny that modern methods have improved all that. There aren't any door-boys in a modern mine. Most of the States in this country have passed laws requiring that all doors through which coal cars pass must be operated automatically. The United States Bureau of Mines keeps a sharp lookout, too. There aren't any donkeys, either, not in up-to-date mines; endless-chain conveyors take the coal from the face where the miner has dug it clear to the mouth of the shaft, and load it into the buckets by a self-tipping device. As for small boys in a mine, as you said yourself, there aren't any, not in the United States, anyhow."

"I'm not denyin' that minin' has got easier," was the grudging reply, "it'd be a wonder if it hadn't. What I'm sayin' is that all your newfangled schemes don't stop accidents and won't never stop accidents, not till you get rid o' the knockers an' gas sprites of a mine. An' that you'll never do!

"You're like a whole lot o' these young fellows, Clem, who believe nothin' that they don't see. You don't never stop to think that maybe it's your own blindness an' not your own cleverness that keeps you from seem'. Wait till I tell you what happened to me, one time, when I was a door-boy in Germany.

"Long afore I first went down into a coal mine, I knew about the knockers, and where they come from. Dad told me that all the coal-seams o' the world were forests, once. Long afore Noah an' the Flood. He'd seen ferns an' leaves o' trees turned into coal. One time, when digging out a seam, he'd come across the trunk of a tree standin' upright in the coal, with the roots still in the under clay."

"That's right enough," agreed Clem, "but the coal-forests were a good many million years older than Noah!"

"Maybe, maybe; but you warn't there to see," Otto retorted. "Anyhow, there were forests, an' these forests were standin' afore the Flood. Judgin' by what's left, the trees o' these forests must ha' been big.

"All those trees, Dad used to say, had spirits o' their own, just like trees have to-day. Elves an' dryads, he used to call 'em. When the Flood came an' spread deep water over the whole world, the tops o' the hills were washed into the valleys an' all these forests were covered in mud an' sand. That's how it is you never find anything but shale or slate or sandstone above a coal seam. What's more, when pullin' down slate, you'll often find sea-shells, like mussels an' clams. Ain't that so?"

"I won't argue with you about the Flood, Otto, for that's a long story. But you're dead right in saying that all coal seams are overlaid with rocks which have been laid down by water, and that fossil shells are found in the overlying layers. But go ahead and tell us what you saw."

"When the Flood came," the old man resumed, "the elves an' dryads what used to live in the coal-trees were swallowed up in the water. They weren't drowned, because spirits can't die--at least, that was what Dad told me. They couldn't go away from their trees, because the trees were still standin' there, though all covered in mud or sand. So they had to change their ways for a new life, first under the water, an' when the waters o' the Flood dried up, under the ground. The elves, who were the men-spirits o' the forest, became knockers; the dryads, who were the women-spirits o' the trees, became the sprites o' the gas damps.

"In the old days, folks used to be able to see these spirits o' the forests. They used to build temples to 'em, an' have regular festivals in the woods, always leavin' some food for 'em to eat. Dad told me never to forget that the only way to keep on the good side o' the spirits below ground was to keep out o' the mine on the first day o' spring an' the last day o' summer, an' every time I took anything to eat below ground, to leave a bite behind.

"I've always done it. In all the years I've been minin', I've never gone down the shaft on March 21st or September 20th, an' I never will. An', every time I've taken my dinner-pail to the face where I was workin', I've put a bit o' bread aside for the knockers. You can believe it or not, as you like, but when I got back to the place, on my next shift, the bread was gone."

"Probably rats," commented Clem, in an aside to Anton.

The old miner paid no heed to the interruption, if, indeed, he heard it.

"That way, I always knew that the knockers were on my side, an' I've been willin' to hole coal in mines that folks said weren't safe. What's more, in forty years o' work, I've never lost a day's time from an accident of any kind. I know I'm safe, because of what happened to me when I was still a kid.

"One day--I don't know just why, maybe the air was worse'n usual--after I'd been lookin' after the door for the bigger part o' the shift, I dropped right off asleep. Half-dreamin', I heard a loaded car come roarin' down, but I didn't wake up until it was so close as to be too late.

"I scrambled up on my feet an' was just makin' a wild jump forward to the door, when I felt a little fist--it seemed about the size of a baby's, but was strong an' hard--hit me right in the chest. It pushed me back into the corner, out o' the way o' the car, an' held me there.

"At the same minute, an' just in the nick o' time, the door swung open.

"Rubbin' my eyes--they was so gritty wi' coal that I could hardly look out o' them--I saw what looked like a little man made o' coal standin' back against the door an' holdin' it open for the car to pass through. His face was sort o' pale, like a whitewashed wall in the dark, an' his eyes were red, like sparks. I thought he had a pointed hat an' long pointed shoes, but I was so scared that I couldn't be rightly sure. I could just see his whitish face movin' up an' down, like he was noddin' his head. Then the door slammed shut, the hand suddenly lifted off my chest an' I didn't see nothin' more. I tell you, I kept awake after that."

"You must have opened the door unconsciously, while half-asleep, and dreamed about seeing the goblin," was Clem's comment.

But, before the old man could retort, Anton broke in.

"Father told me he's seen some, just like that. It was in Wales. A woman visitor had gone down to see the mine."

Otto shook his head gravely.

"Never a woman went down a coal mine yet, but an accident happened right after," he declared. "In the big explosion at Loosburg, when over four hundred miners were killed, it was found out, after, that one o' the miners was a woman who had dressed herself in men's clothes an' was pickin' coal. But what was it your father saw, Anton?"

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