They had been working in a narrow gallery, by means of five inclined driftways, at each of which only one man could ply his pick at a time, and where light and air could only be procured artificially.

The coal was carried out in baskets as fast as it was hewn out: the atmosphere in which they thus toiled like giants, naked to the waist, was almost suffocating; yet, under these conditions, they had literally effected in four days, to save our lives, what it would have taken them four weeks to do, had they been working by the piece for wages.

They had even been compelled to put up ventilators, and their lamps would only burn when close to these.

They gave us broth through a tin pipe; but almost another day elapsed before the hole was large enough for them to carry us through it in their arms." "And there was nobody else saved, was there ?" inquired the landlord, with a triumphant look.
"There was not," said Solomon, expressing his tobacco smoke very slowly.
"Out of a hundred and thirteen men who had been caught by the flood in Dunston, we two were the sole survivors." Many other stories of the like sort had Solomon to tell, and for not one of them, was he indebted to his imagination.

His experience of life had been remarkable, and it had impressed itself upon his character.