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"If I had thrown her down that, they would never have found her, for there must be choke-damp at the bottom of it enough to kill a thousand of them. But I could not bear the thought of sending the lovely thing down there even to save my life." He was growing wild again; but the horror had again laid hold upon Helen, and she stood speechless, staring at him. "Hide me hide me, Helen!" he pleaded.
Choke-damp, which is carbonic acid gas, is heavier than ordinary air, and thus the lowest parts of a colliery become first filled with it, as they would with water. In all coal-mines there is a slight, sometimes a considerable, inclination, or "dip" as it is called, of the otherwise flat bed of coal.
It was not the first time such a thing had happened, even in that pit. They all knew too well the effect of the fire-damp, and still more destructive choke-damp. "Is no one going down to bring them up?" was the question next asked. "Yes, some one will go, I dare say, as soon as it's safe; but it would not do to go yet," answered the banksman. "Besides, the gear is knocked to pieces."
But a century elapsed before the nature of this "gas sylvestre," or, as it was afterwards called, "fixed air," was clearly determined, and it was found to be identical with that deadly "choke-damp" by which the lives of those who descend into old wells, or mines, or brewers' vats, are sometimes suddenly ended; and with the poisonous aëriform fluid which is produced by the combustion of charcoal, and now goes by the name of carbonic acid gas.
Those more distant from the first part of the explosion heard it coming, and knew too well its dreadful import. They tried to fly towards the foot of the shaft. There only could they hope for safety; but what hope had they of reaching it with those fiery blasts rushing through every roadway and passage, and the destructive choke-damp rising rapidly on all sides?
Their fate now awaited these three, a speedy death by choke-damp, or a slow death by starvation, or a rescue from the outside under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty, since there was but one shaft completed, and that was now closed by a mountain of débris.
Our body "smoke" is not brown or blue, like the smoke from a fire; it is a clear, odorless gas, called carbon dioxid. This is the same gas that makes the choke-damp of coal mines, which suffocates the miners if the mine is not well ventilated; and the same gas that sometimes gathers at the bottom of a well, making it dangerous for anyone to go down into the well to clean it.
He knew that the danger now was not so much from the fire-damp the explosive gas as from the even more dreaded choke-damp, which surely follows after an explosion and the cessation of ventilation. Many more miners are killed by this choke-damp, as they hasten to the bottom of the shaft after an explosion, than by the fire itself.
Nothing disfigures them; smoke and, what is much worse, black rain rain which washes the atmosphere of the suspended mud does not affect them in the least. If the choke-damp of fog obscures them, it leaves no stain on the design; if the surfaces be stained, the idea made tangible in metal is not. They are no more touched than Time itself by the alternations of the seasons.
He walked away along the street towards the church with down-bent head, seeing no one. He entered the churchyard, not looking whither he went: a lovely soul was in pain and peril, and he could not get near to help it. They were giving it choke-damp to breathe, instead of mountain-air.
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