The ducky led me down into a standing--a space with a turn-table--of
unusual size, which I made my base of operations for exploring. Here was
a very considerable number of punt-shaped putts on carriages, and also
waggons, such as took the new-mined coal from putt to pit-mouth; and
raying out from this open standing, several avenues, some ascending as
guggs, some descending as dipples, and the dead here all arranged in
groups, the heads of this group pointing up this gugg, of that group
toward that twin-way, of that other down that dipple, and the central
space, where weighing was done, almost empty: and the darksome silence
of this deep place, with all these multitudes, I found extremely
gravitating and hypnotic, drawing me, too, into their great Passion of
Silence in which they lay, all, all, so fixed and veteran; and at one
time I fell a-staring, nearer perhaps to death and the empty Gulf than
I knew; but I said I would be strong, and not sink into their habit of
stillness, but let them keep to their own way, and follow their own
fashion, and I would keep to my own way, and follow my own fashion, nor
yield to them, though I was but one against many; and I roused myself
with a shudder; and setting to work, caught hold of the drum-chain of a
long gugg, and planting my feet in the chogg-holes in which rested the
wheels of the putt-carriages that used to come roaring down the gugg, I
got up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, near
the end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in this
gugg about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in,
and had done it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through the
broken cement, with their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black,
visage all fierce and wild, the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows,
the candle in their rimless hats, and, outside, their own 'getting'
mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225