is coming," and they all know
that the master does not consider _his_ life of more value than
theirs; he does not fly and leave them all the danger, because he is
the owner and gets all the profit. Quietly, with the most perfect
composure, he gives his orders--the ventilators are to be opened--a
charge of cool air at once to the heated coal; and the workers are to
go off work after three instead of six hours. He gets into the pail,
covered with buffalo-skin, and lets himself down to the bottom of the
shaft, to see if the new openings are dangerous. He turns over
carefully with an iron bar the coal-dust, to try if any of it is
heated, or if gas is there concealed which might cause an explosion.
Then, as the ventilators below and the air-pump above begin to work,
he takes his place at the anometer. This is a tender little machine,
something like the humming-top of children. Its axle turns upon a
ruby, and the spring sets a wheel with a hundred teeth in motion; the
velocity of this wheel shows the strength of the current of air in the
shaft. It should neither be stronger nor weaker than the motion of the
"bad weather."

He has now seen to everything; he has taken every precaution, he has
left nothing to chance, and, when all the miners have quitted the pit,
he is the last to ascend in the basket to the fresh air and the
daylight.

Fresh air--daylight!

In Bondavara the sun never shines, the shadow of the smoke hangs like
a thick cloud over the land; it is a black country, painted in chalk.
The roads are black with coal-tracks; the houses are black from the
coal-dust, which the wind carries here and there from the large coal
warehouses; the men and the women are black. It is a wonder the birds
over there in the woods are not black also.

The mouth of the Bondavara pit is on the slope of a hill, which, when
you ascend it, gives you a fine view over the whole country. On the
other side, in the valley, are the tall chimneys of the
distilling-ovens. These chimneys are busy night and day, vomiting
forth smoke, sometimes white, but generally coal-black; for here is
distilled the sulphur which forms a component of the coal.

The metal can only be melted when in this condition. One of the
principal customers of the coal-mine is the iron-foundry on the
neighboring mountain, which has five chimneys from which the smoke
issues. If the hammer throws up white smoke, then the oven distils
black smoke, and so contrariwise. Both fac