Read Ebook: The Boy With the U.S. Miners by Rolt Wheeler Francis

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Ebook has 1521 lines and 65895 words, and 31 pages

"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?"

"It happened right when the visiting party was in the mine," the boy explained. "It was in one of the main galleries, which was strongly timbered. A prop, which had been standing firmly for ever so many years, suddenly crumbled into splinters and the roof fell on the woman, hurting her so badly that she died soon after she was taken to the top.

"Just after the roof fell, so Father said, he and all the rest of the miners saw a band of knockers gathered around the pile of fallen roof and pointing at the figure of the woman crushed beneath. He said the knockers were laughing so loudly that some of the miners heard the echoes away at the other end of the mine."

"And do you believe that, Anton?" queried Clem, incredulously.

"Father saw them himself," the boy replied, in a tone of finality.

"Then there's the gas sprites," Otto went on, pleased at having found a sympathetic listener. "I've never seen 'em myself, but there's plenty that have. In a mine where I used to work, in Belgium, there was a man who could see 'em as plain as I see you or Anton. That was his job, and he was paid handsomely, too.

"He could walk through a gallery, either in a workin' or an abandoned mine, an' could tell right away if there was fire damp, or white damp, or black damp, or stink damp, in the workin's. He could see the gas sprites himself an' give warnin' where men had better not go. He didn't have to carry a safety lamp, nor chemical apparatus, nor cages of mice an' canaries, the way folks do, now. He just walked into the mine an' saw the sprites. He was friendly to 'em, an' they never did him no harm."

"What were they like, Otto?" queried Anton.

"Shadows o' women," the old man replied promptly. "Fire damp, this diviner used to say, looked like a figure veiled in red, black damp was veiled in black wi' white edges, white damp was bluish, an' stink damp was yellow. When the gas was faint, all he could see was just the glow o' the colors, very dim; but when the gas was strong then the shapes o' the women were bold an' clear.

"The gas sprites, bein' women, catch an' hold the young men an' the single men more easily than old an' married miners. You don't deny that single men are more often killed by damps than married men, do you, Clem?"

The young miner looked uncomfortable at the question.

"That's a general belief, and statistics seem to back it up," he admitted. "But I don't see that it has anything to do with your goblin ideas, Otto. It's just because the single men, generally, are the youngest, and they haven't become as immune to the poisonous gases of the mine as men who have been working below ground all their lives."

"You can explain away anything, if you have a mind to," Otto retorted scornfully. "But as long as men are workin' below ground, there's goin' to be knockers an' sprites o' the damps, an' miners is goin' to be killed. Me, I've escaped. Why? Because I'm chock-full o' science an' modern ideas? Not a bit of it! I get along because I know what the spirits o' the mine expect, an' I give it to 'em. Right now, I'm the oldest man at work, here, an' I ain't never had an accident."

"Don't you believe his stories, Anton," the young miner protested, turning to the boy. "Those antiquated notions will only lead you astray. The 'damps' are just various kinds of gases coming out of the coal, and the way to fight them is to keep a strong current of air going through the mine."

"How do they come out o' the coal, if you know so much?" questioned Otto, belligerently.

"Sure I know! But I don't suppose telling you will change your ideas."

"It won't," the old miner admitted frankly. "But I've had my say, an' it's only fair to let you have yours. The youngster, here, can believe which o' the two he pleases."

"Well, it's something this way," Clem began, casting about in his mind for a way to explain the chemistry of mine air as simply as he could. "Ordinary air--the air above ground--is made up of a little less than 21 per cent. of oxygen and a little more than 78 per cent. of nitrogen. The rest of it is a mixture of carbon and oxygen which the books call carbon dioxide or black damp, with some other rare gases beside.

"Now, all animals, including man, depend for their life on the oxygen in the air. If the oxygen drops to 15 per cent., a man will suffer. That's not likely to happen where miners' lamps or safety-lamps are used, because the flame of a lamp goes out when there's less than 17 per cent. oxygen. Even at 19 per cent., a lamp will burn so dimly as to warn of danger. The nitrogen in the air is inert, that is, it does neither good nor harm to man. But what I want you to remember, Anton, is that even in the purest air above ground, there's always some 'black damp,' so it's a bit hard to see where Otto's goblin women come in!

"Now, when pure air comes down a coal shaft, a lot of changes happen to it. Some of the oxygen is consumed by the breathing of the men and animals in the mine--if there are any donkeys or such--some is taken up by the burning of lamps, some more by the explosion of blasting powder, a little is lost by the rusting of iron pyrites--which is found in many coal mines--and a lot of it is taken up by the coal, just how, we don't quite know."

"It's good to hear o' somethin' you don't know," the old miner remarked sarcastically. "But you're talkin' about dry air, an' the air in most mines is moist."

"Quite right," Clem agreed. "It has to be. Mine air is made moist, on purpose, especially in winter."

"It is?" Otto's voice expressed unqualified astonishment.

"It certainly is! In most coal-mines--this one, for instance--all the air that passes down the intake shaft is moistened by a spray of mixed water and air, so finely atomized that it floats like a cloud."

"What for? It's easier to work in dry air'n moist air."

"It's easier to get blown up, too! In winter time, Otto, the air above ground is a lot colder than the air in the mine. Cold air can't hold as much moisture as warm air, and as soon as air gets warmed up a bit, it tries its hardest to absorb any moisture with which it happens to come in contact.

"What happens in a mine, in such a case? Why, as the cold air from above passes through the galleries of a mine, it gets warmed up. As it warms up, it draws out from the roofs, the ribs, and the floors all the water that there is to draw, and makes the mine dead dry. When coal dust is absolutely dry, it crumbles into finer and finer dust, until at last the particles are so small that they float in the air. Then comes disaster, for finely divided coal dust is so explosive that the smallest flame--even a spark from the stroke of a pick--will set the whole mine ablaze."

"I don't see that," interrupted Anton. "If dust is so bad, why do the bosses hang boards from all the gallery roofs and pile them high with dust?"

"Because the dust in those piles is stone dust, my boy," the young fellow explained. "When an explosion happens, it drives a big blast of air in front of it, so strong, sometimes, as to knock a man down. The blast of air blows all the stone dust from those boards and fills the air chock-full of it.

"This stone dust, usually made from crushed limestone or crushed shale, won't burn. The flame of the explosion can't pass through and the fire can't jump a rock-dust barrier. Even the flame of methane, which you know better as 'gas,' or fire damp, which has a terrific force, is choked back by this dense cloud of rock-dust, and, as you know, all coal mines have more or less methane gas."

"They don't, either," contradicted Otto. "I've worked in mines for years at a time an' never seen the 'cap' on the flame of the safety-lamp, tellin' there's fire damp there."

"You may not have seen it, but there was gas there, just the same. As for the cap-flame you're talking about, Otto, I'll admit that it's the surest way of telling when there's so much fire-damp that the mine is getting dangerous. But it's a risky test, just the same. You can't see the little cap of methane gas flame burning above the oil flame of the lamp until there's 2 per cent. of gas in the air of the mine, and a little more than 5 per cent. will start an explosion."

"What makes that cap?" queried Anton.

"Fire damp or methane gas burning inside the wire gauze of the safety-lamp."

"But if the gas is already burning inside, why doesn't it explode outside?"

"Just because it's a safety-lamp, my boy. That's why the flame burns inside a wire gauze. I'll explain that.

"Suppose you take a lamp with a hot flame--an alcohol or spirit lamp will do--and light it. Then hold a piece of close-meshed wire gauze right on the flame. You'll find that the flame will spread under the wire gauze but will not go through. Hold it long enough, though, until the wire gets red hot, and, quite suddenly, the flame will pass through and burn above the gauze as well as below.

"Try another trick. Put out the lamp and then hold the gauze just where it was before. You can light the flame above the wire but it will not pass below the gauze until the wire gets red-hot. That shows that gas which is not burning can pass through a wire gauze, but that gas which is aflame cannot pass until the wire is red-hot."

"Yes," said Anton, "I can see that."

"Very good. Then, if you have a lamp which is burning inside a cylinder of wire gauze, the gas of fire-damp can go through, and, if there's enough of it to burn, it will burn above the flame of the lamp, making an aureole or 'cap' just as Otto says. But the flaming gas can't get back through the wire gauze to set fire to the fire-damp outside, at least, not until the wire gets red-hot, which it's not likely to do, seeing that the gas is in the middle, not underneath it.

"That's how they test for fire-damp, nowadays. The flame of a safety-lamp is drawn down until it shows only a small yellow tip. If there's any fire-damp in the air, a light-blue halo appears over the yellow flame. At a little more than 1 per cent., an experienced man can judge that there is gas there, but the true 'cap,' which is pointed like a cone, doesn't show until there's 2 per cent. of the gas. At 3 per cent., the cap will be like a dunce's cap, and more than half an inch high. At 4 per cent., it will be over an inch high, and at 4 1/2 per cent. it'll form a column of blue flame. Then it's high time to get out of the mine, and to get out quickly.

"In the improved form of safety-lamps, the oil flame burns inside a glass, but the air which reaches the flame has to pass through two cylinders of wire gauze. The glass keeps the flame from ever touching the innermost gauze, and, if an accident happens--such as the breaking of the glass--it would still be fairly safe, for the burning gas inside wouldn't pass through the inner gauze until that got red-hot, and it wouldn't reach the outer gauze because the current of air passing down between the two layers of wire mesh would keep the outer gauze cool. This safety-lamp was invented by Sir Humphry Davy, in England, in 1815, just after a big explosion in an English colliery had cost hundreds of lives. All mines nowadays require that miners use either safety-lamps or electric lamps, and it's every miner's business to report to the boss when he sees a cap of burning gas inside his safety-lamp."

The old miner nodded his head in agreement.

"I won't use an electric lamp," he commented. "It's foolishness. The gas sprites ain't really malicious. They're willin' enough to give a warnin'. They'll put a cap on a flame if they don't want folks in that part of the mine. An electric lamp tells nothin'. It won't even give a warnin' against black damp."

"Perfectly true," Clem agreed. "With an oil safety-lamp, the flame gets dim or even goes out if there's too much black damp. The electric lamp burns on, just the same, because the light is in a vacuum. Black damp isn't so dangerous as fire damp, though. It only causes distress and hard breathing because it shows that there's too big a proportion of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the air and not enough oxygen. It's oxygen that a man misses."

"But black damp'll explode, too," put in Otto.

"No," the other corrected, "it won't. But it often happens that there's fire-damp around when black damp is present and the black damp makes a test for gas difficult. It's the gas that explodes, not the black damp.

"It isn't always the explosiveness of a damp that makes it dangerous, though," he went on. "As Otto could tell you, Anton, white damp is the worst of the three. And it doesn't give any warning at all."

"That's why we had that diviner in a Belgian mine," the old man commented, gravely. "He could see the gas sprites in their blue veils. But, if there's a lot o' white damp, you can tell it by the flame of a safety-lamp gettin' a little longer an' brighter."

"It's not safe to trust it," the young fellow advised. "You'd have trouble seeing 2 per cent, of white damp, and you'd be dead before you had much chance to look. Even with 1 1/2 per cent., a man would be likely to drop before he reached a better-ventilated part of the mine, and he couldn't see that much on the flame of his safety-lamp at all. To breathe the air with only 1 per cent. of white damp for an hour would put a man in such a state that he mightn't recover, and he wouldn't have had any warning.

"Luckily, there's much less danger of white damp in mines than there used to be. It's a gas that's formed only when there's been something burning. After an explosion in a mine, or a fire, there's sure to be a lot of it, and rescue parties have always found it their worst foe. But, in the ordinary working mine, it is rare."

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