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The doctor shook his head as he lifted himself, and they left him there, in order not to waste any chance of getting out the living first. Twenty yards farther on three more bodies were found, two oldish men and a boy, very little burnt. They also had been killed in escaping, dragged down by the inexorable afterdamp.
I am afraid it's a bad job, but we may get through yet. "We had not gone fifty yards before we came on the afterdamp, filling the headway like smoke. Jack and I took hold of each other's collars and ran, but before we were half-way through, he fell. I kept good hold of his shirt, and dragged him on on the ground.
An when he wor layin there, I ses to myself, 'He's the third as the coal-gettin ha took from me. An I minded my feyther an uncle how they was braat home both togither, when I wor nobbut thirteen years old not a scar on em, nobbut a little blood on my feyther's forehead but stone dead, both on em from the afterdamp. Theer was thirty-six men killed in that explosion an I recolleck how old Mr.
A little distance from the prayer-meeting, the sceptics of the party leant against the wall or lay along the floor, unheeding; while seven men were unconscious, and possibly dying. Two or three young fellows meanwhile, who had been least touched by the afterdamp, had "amused themselves," as they said, by riding up and down the neighbouring level on the "jummer" or coal-truck of one of them.
To judge by the time I've been sitting since I got you here it's night long ago." "Since you got me here?" repeated George, with feeble interrogation. "When I came to I was lying with my face in a dampish sort of hollow, and I suppose the afterdamp had lifted a bit, for I could raise my head. I felt you close by. Then I dragged myself on a bit, till I felt some brattice.
But the flame in its caprice had passed him by, and he and another man had been able to struggle through the afterdamp back along the heading, just in time to stem the rush of men and boys from the workings at the farther end.
A man lay on his side, close against the wall, with an unlocked lamp in his hands, which were badly burnt. But no other part of him was burnt, and it was clear that he had died of afterdamp in trying to escape. He had evidently come from one of the nearer work-places, and fallen within a few yards of safety. The inspector pounced upon the lamp at once, while the doctors knelt by the body.
You know, it is a product of combustion, and is very deadly it is the much-dreaded white damp or afterdamp of a mine explosion. "I'm going to tell you a secret which I have not given out to the press yet. I tried an experiment in a closed room today, lighting the brazier. Some distance from it I placed a cat confined in a cage so it could not escape. In an hour and a half the cat was asphyxiated."
All of them, young or old, were dazed and bent from the effects of afterdamp, and scarcely one of them had strength to rise till they were helped to their feet. Nevertheless, the cry which had been heard by their rescuers had not been a cry for help, but the voices of the little prayer-meeting raised feebly through the darkness in the Old Hundredth.
But about thirty yards farther they came upon the first signs of mischief. A heavy fall of roof had to be scrambled over, and beyond it afterdamp was clearly perceptible. Here there was an exclamation from Burrows, who was to the front, and the first victim showed out of the dark in the pale glow-worm light of the lamps turned upon him.
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