The Making of a Novelist | Page 7

and began a journey on all fours through mud

and slush five or six inches deep. Here and there the airway was lofty
enough to allow us to walk with bent heads and rounded shoulders.
Sometimes it was so low that we had to go snakewise. There was one
place where the floor and roof of the passage had sunk so that we
actually had to dive for it. This seemed a little comfortless at the time,
but it saved our lives afterwards. After a toilsome scramble we came
upon the stables, and found there the first dead body.
It was that of a lad named Edward Colman, who had met his death in a
curious and dreadful manner. He was sitting on a rocky bench, and at
his feet lay a rough hunch of bread and meat and a clasp-knife. He had
heard evidently the cry of alarm, had sprung to his feet, and had struck
the top of his head with fatal force against a projecting lance of rock
immediately above him. There had been a speedy end to his troubles,
poor fellow, and he sat there stiff and cold and pallid, staring before
him like a figure in an exhibition of waxworks.
The waters barred our further descent into the mine, but there was a
belief that by breaking through the earthy wall of the stable a
continuation of the old airway would be found. The experiment was
tried with an alarming result No sooner was the breach made than a
slow stream of choke-damp flowed into the chamber, and the lights
began to go out one by one. We scrambled back at once for our lives,
and once past the pool were safe; the water effectually blocked the
passage of the poisonous gas. I got but one whiff of it; but it gave me a
painful sensation at the bridge of the nose which lasted acutely for
some days. In all, our expedition had not lasted an hour; but it had
proved to demonstration the impossibility of saving a single life.
I was dressed and mounted in another quarter of an hour and scouring
hard through the dark and the rain in the direction of Birmingham.
When I arrived there the country edition of the News was already on the
machine and the compositors were leaving work. Word was given at
once, however, the whole contingent detained, and I sat down to write
an account of the night's adventure--the printer's devil coming for the
copy sheet by sheet as it was written, and each folio being scissored
into half a dozen pieces so that as many men as possible might work on

it at once. I slept a few hours, and then rode back to Pelsall with a copy
of the paper in my pocket. Forbes packed up his belongings an hour
later and left the scene.
I had an idea that I had made an enemy, and that Forbes would never
forgive me for beating him. I did not know my man, however; for it
was he who took me by the hand in London a year afterwards and
secured for me the first regular engagements I ever held there. He
introduced me to Edmund Yates, who found me a place on the original
staff of the World, and to J. R. Robinson, manager of the Daily News,
who gave me a seat in the gallery of the House of Commons and a
chance to show what I was good for as a descriptive writer. Forbes did
more than this; but the matter I have in mind is private and confidential.
I have no right to speak of it here, except to say that it was an act of
large-hearted generosity performed in a fashion altogether
characteristic of the man, and that I shall never cease to be
affectionately grateful for it.
There were two instances of escape at the Pelsall Hall disaster which
seem worth recording. Every mine has what is known as an 'upcast
shaft'--a perpendicular tunnel which runs side by side with the working
shaft, and is connected with it at the foot by an airway which serves to
ventilate the workings. When the first rush of water, breaking in from
some old deserted working, came tearing down, a man and a boy were
standing at the bottom of the downcast. They were carried on the crest
of the wave clean through the airway, borne some distance upwards in
the upcast, and were there floated on to the floor of a skip, where they
were found insensible, but living, some hours later. No other creature
was brought to bank alive.
One special correspondent turned up at Pelsall on a Sunday, just as the
pumping apparatus, which had broken down, was on the point of