e was fastened round his right wrist, and he was
swung into the smoke. The word was passed to the engine-room, the little
tin pot of an engine began to pant and snort 30 or 40 yards away and the
man dropped out of sight. The coal-smeared comrade who had charge of
the twine paid it out delicately fathom by fathom. It was the only link
between the adventurer down below and the chance of life, and the merest
tug at it would have caused an immediate reversal of the engine and
would have brought him back to bank. But no signal came, and for
anything that anybody there could have told, the man below might have
been suffocated by the smoke. There was not a sound to be heard but
the creaking of the wheel as it revolved above the shaft and the hoarse
panting of the little engine, and the crowd which had by this time grown
to vast dimensions waited in so tense a silence that there was something
awful in it.

How long we waited I cannot tell, but at last the signal came. The
word was flashed to the engine room and the rope came gliding swiftly
upwards. The hero was comatose and was hanging all limp and loose by the
chain which had been passed about his waist. He was seized, swung to one
side and lowered and landed and one great fiery flake of flannel as big
as a man's hand fell from the rough garments in which he was swathed
from head to foot. A bottle of whisky came from somewhere and was put to
his lips and in a while he recovered consciousness though he was still
gasping and choking and his eyes were streaming. In the meantime another
man, as good as he, was ready, and he came back, as it turned out
afterwards, blinded for life, but neither that nor anything that fear
could urge could stay the rest, and man after man went down and faced
that lurid smoke and hell of darkness undismayed, until at last their
valour won the day and they brought out every man and boy and beast. One
coaly giant yelled, "That's the lot," when the last batch came up, and
then the crowd went mad, weeping, cheering, dancing mad. I have seen
many deeds of valour in my time, both in peace and war, but I have never
seen anything to match the Black Lake rescue for deliberate courage.

I feel inclined to say less about the courage displayed by the members
of the next rescue party whose work I saw, for the very sufficient
reason that I was a member of it To tell the honest truth, I had not
the remotest idea that I was courting any sort of danger. At the Pelsal