"Hold up.... Thanks, matey, the light's a bit dim...."
An odour of carbolic mingled with the stench of the coal-dust; a blue-clad nurse with a scarlet cross on her arm moved among the white bundles, and she seemed to bring with her a promise of exquisite peace after pain, and rest and eternal sleep. Outside, a grim black wagon lumbered up the hill, and, as the wind flapped its canvas doors open, one saw its load of coffins....
Now the rescue party was going down again. They emerged from a brick shanty, through whose windows Humphrey could see the shelves which were meant to hold the miners' lamps--there was a pathos in those empty shelves. These men were going down to dare death: they looked inhuman fantastic creatures, with goggled helmets over their heads, and great knapsack arrangements of oxygen and nitrogen to breathe, for one breath of the air in the mine below meant stupor and sleep everlasting. There were five men, and as they passed the group of dolorous women, they must have felt the tremor of hope and deep gratitude that shot through the fibre of every despairing one. Here were the sexes in their elemental state, stripped of all the artificial trappings of civilization; men were doing the work of men; women giving them courage with the blessings of God that they murmured.
The leader of the rescue gang carried a little canary in a cage; the little yellow bird piped and sang, and hopped about his perch. The little yellow bird was the centre of all their faith in God's mercy: for if the bird could live in the air of the mine, there was still some hope for their men.
Slowly the cage descended the shaft that was unbroken. The sunset blinked between the spokes of the gearing-wheel, slower and slower--they were at the bottom of the mine. Now, they were in that inferno of vaporous blackness, with death stalking them, a gaunt, cloudy monster, who had but to puff out his cheeks and breathe destruction. There would be enormous falls of coal and timber to combat; they would have to crawl on their bellies, and stagger along, stooping to the broken roofs of the galleries, and always there was the startling danger of a jar knocking their knapsacks, or breaking the mouthpieces through which they breathed their precious elixir of life.