why we prop our roofs
with those piles of sleepers. Anyway, you can see that we cannot take
out a whole line of pillars. We work 'em _en echelon_, and those big
beams you see running from floor to roof are our indicators. They show
when the roof is going to give. Oh! dear no, there's no dramatic effect
about it. No splash, you know. Our roofs give plenty of warning by
cracking and then collapse slowly. The parts of the work that we have
cleared out and allowed to fall in are called goafs. You're on the edge
of a goaf now. All that darkness there marks the limit of the mine. We
have worked that out piece-meal, and the props are gone and the place is
down. The roof of any pillar-working is tested every morning by
tapping--pretty hard tapping."

"Hi yi! yi!" shout all the devils in chorus, and the Hall of Eblis is
full of rolling sound. The olive man has brought down an avalanche of
coal. "It is a sight to see the whole of one of the pillars come away.
They make an awful noise. It would startle you out of your wits. But
there's not an atom of risk."

("Not an atom of risk." Oh, genial and courteous host, when you turned
up next day blacker than any sweep that ever swept, with a neat,
half-inch gash on your forehead--won by cutting a "stook" and getting
caught by a bounding coal-knob--how long and earnestly did you endeavour
to show that "stook-cutting" was an employment as harmless and
unexciting as wool-samplering!)

"Our ways are rather primitive, but they're cheap, and safe as houses.
Doms and Bauris, Kols and Beldars, don't understand refinements in
mining. They'd startle an English pit where there was fire-damp. Do you
know it's a solemn fact that if you drop a Davy lamp or snatch it
quickly you can blow a whole English pit inside out with all the miners?
Good for us that we don't know what fire-damp is here. We can use
flare-lamps."

After the first feeling of awe and wonder is worn out, a mine becomes
monotonous. There is only the humming, palpitating darkness, the rumble
of the tubs, and the endless procession of galleries to arrest the
attention. And one pit to the uninitiated is as like to another as two
peas. Tell a miner this and he laughs--slowly and softly. To him the
pits have each distinct personalities, and each must be dealt with
differently.

CHAPTER III

THE PERILS OF THE PITS.

An engineer, who has built a bridge, can strike you nearly dead with
professional facts; the captain of a s