From car to car all along the line the miners called to one another as the train trundled along, joshing and laughing.
A mile from the entrance the train reached the breast where McTeague's gang worked.

The men clambered from the cars and took up the labor where the day shift had left it, burrowing their way steadily through a primeval river bed.
The candlesticks thrust into the crevices of the gravel strata lit up faintly the half dozen moving figures befouled with sweat and with wet gray mould.

The picks struck into the loose gravel with a yielding shock.

The long-handled shovels clinked amidst the piles of bowlders and scraped dully in the heaps of rotten quartz.

The Burly drill boring for blasts broke out from time to time in an irregular chug-chug, chug-chug, while the engine that pumped the water from the mine coughed and strangled at short intervals.
McTeague tended the chuck.