CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST GLIMMER OF THE SAFETY-LAMP.

Humphry was hardly at home in his new quarters, when an incident occurred that directed his mind towards the investigation of one of the most subtle and mysterious principles in nature.

Mr. Borlase had returned from his day’s rounds, and as he was busy unfastening the long leggings that covered his black silk stockings, he informed the family, who, with the boy, were gathered round the tea-table in the little parlour adjoining the shop, that he had heard that day of a fearful explosion which had occurred, during the last month, in one of the Welsh coal-mines.

“It seems,” said the doctor, as he took his place at the table, “that there were two ‘shifts,’ or sets, of men employed at the pit. The first went to work at four in the morning, and were relieved by the next set at eleven; and so secure was the mine considered—so little thought of danger, indeed, entered the minds of the pitmen—that the second shift of men often entered the mine before the first had left it. This happened to be the case, they tell me, at the time of the accident; for shortly after the second set of hands had descended the shaft, the people above-ground were alarmed by a terrible report, followed by others so quickly, that it sounded like the firing of infantry, and a sheet of flame was seen to flash from the mouth of one of the shafts. The ground shook as if with an earthquake, the tremor being felt for half-a-mile round the workings; while the dull, subterranean boom of the explosion was heard, they say, nearly four miles off. Vast clouds of dust rose high in the air, in the form of an inverted cone, and large masses of timber and fragments of coal were shot straight up from the pit-mouth, as from a huge piece of artillery, and fell with a heavy crash near it; while the dust, borne by the wind, descended in a shower upwards of a mile from the spot, and as it did so, it caused a gloom, I am assured, like early twilight, in the neighbouring villages, inhabited chiefly by the families of the miners.

“The boom was no sooner heard,” continued Mr. Borlase, “the tremor of the earth felt, and the darkness from the shower of ashes perceived, than the wives and children of the miners rushed frantically towards the pit. Horror and dismay were painted on every face. The crowd thickened from all sides, so that in a short time several hundreds of women and children were gathered round the shaft. The air, the people say, resounded with shrieks and cries of despair for the fate of husbands, fathers, and sons, from many a bursting heart.

“The machinery, it was then found, had been rendered useless by the explosion, so that it was near upon an hour before thirty-two persons—all that survived that dreadful catastrophe—had been brought to daylight, and of these twenty-nine only lived to relate what had occurred in the mine below.

“It was now discovered that one hundred and twenty-one, men and boys, had been in the pit when the accident happened, so that eighty-nine poor souls still remained entombed in the workings. Those who had their friends restored to them appeared, it is said, to suffer for a while as much from an excess of joy as they had, a short time before, from the depth of despair; while those who were yet in the agony of suspense filled the air with shrieks and howlings, and ran about wringing their hands and throwing their bodies into the most frantic and extravagant gestures.

“After some little time, it appears that nine persons volunteered to descend into the pit, with the faint hope that some engulfed below might still survive. As the fire-damp, however, would have been instantly ignited by candles, those who went to search the mine lighted their way by ‘steel-mills,’ as they are called, which,” added Mr. Borlase, turning round to Humphry, “are small machines for giving light, by turning a cylinder of steel against a piece of flint; for it has been found, I should tell you, that though the fire-damp is immediately ignited by flame, it is not explosible by sparks.”

The remark evidently sank deep into the boy’s mind, for he knit his brows and bit his lips as if a sudden thought had flashed across his brain. But Humphry was too much interested in the narrative to interrupt the doctor, so he said not a word, and waited anxiously for Mr. Borlase to proceed.

“The men who had descended the pit,” continued that gentleman, “attempted to make their way towards the spot where they knew the miners must have been at the time when the explosion happened. Their progress, however, was soon intercepted by the prevalence of what is called the ‘choke-damp’—an atmosphere which it is suffocation to inhale—and the sparks from the steel-mill, they say, fell into this like dark drops of blood.

“Deprived of light, therefore, and nearly stifled, they were forced to grope their way back to the shaft.

“As each came up he was surrounded by a group of anxious inquirers, but not a ray of hope could be elicited. It was impossible, they told the people, for any breathing thing to live in the mine. At first, the assertion seemed to obtain some credit, but hope still lingered. All there recollected how persons had survived similar accidents, and stories were told how, upon opening a mine forty days after an explosion, men had been found still alive, having subsisted during the time on horse-beans and candle-ends. Then distrust began to enter the minds of the crowd, and some suggested that want of courage or bribery had induced the men who had descended to magnify the danger; so that when it was proposed by the owners to close the mouth of the pit, and so shut out the air from it—for the most experienced ‘viewers’ had pronounced the mine to be on fire—the proposition was received with cries of ‘Murder!’ and with expressions of determination to oppose such a proceeding with violence!

“All that night, they tell me,” the doctor proceeded, “many of the widows lingered about the mouth of the pit, with the hope of hearing the cries of a husband or a son.

“The next morning it was again proposed to exclude the air; still the populace, made furious by their misery, would not allow the project to be carried out until some others had again descended the shaft. But none could now be found hardy enough to enter the jaws of the burning cavern. At length, however, two brave fellows were induced to make the perilous attempt, and they nearly lost their lives in so doing.

“The account given by these adventurers (for they confirmed the opinion as to the pit being on fire) ultimately convinced the people of the impossibility of their friends surviving in so deadly an atmosphere, and reconciled them to the plan of excluding the air. Accordingly the shaft was closed, with the eighty-nine poor souls entombed in it, and more than a month elapsed before the mine was opened again and in a state to admit of an examination.

“During this interval, I leave you to imagine,” went on the apothecary, “what must have been the terrible suspense of those whose love made it impossible to eradicate all hope from their bosoms. The widows, anxious to believe that their husbands still lived in the closed mine, gave a ready credence to the idle tales of escape that were continually being circulated through the country. These inventions, however, had the effect of daily harrowing up afresh the sorrows of the people; so that when the morning came that had been appointed for the re-opening of the pit, the distress of the neighbourhood burst forth once more with almost redoubled fury.

“A great concourse of people assembled round the mine on that sad day: some came out of curiosity, others out of public sympathy, but the greater part came there with broken hearts and streaming eyes, intent on once more beholding the loved form of a father, brother, husband, or son.

“Soon a message was despatched for a number of coffins to be in readiness at the pit-mouth. Upwards of eighty of these had been ready prepared, and they had to pass by the miners’ villages on their way to the shaft. As soon as a cart-load of them was seen, the howling of the women, who had not yet found their way to the melancholy spot, floated on the breeze in low, fitful gusts, presaging a scene of the greatest distraction and confusion; and as each load of coffins came to the pit, it brought a long train of wretched mourners in its wake.

“The bodies of the ill-fated men were found under various circumstances. One, from his position, must have been asleep when the explosion happened; others were huddled together in ghastly confusion—twenty-one were found in a heap in one spot. The power of fire was visible upon all: some were scorched; others almost torn to pieces; while others, again, appeared as if they had been stifled at their work.

“Then came the heart-rending scene,” added Mr. Borlase, “of mothers and widows examining the mangled remains for marks by which to identify the bodies of their lost sons and husbands. Few, however, were able to recognise their relatives by their features; their clothes, their shoes, and—when these were too much burnt to be known again—their tobacco-boxes, or some token of affection, were often the only indications by which the lost friend could be singled out from the rest.

“Every family had made some arrangements for receiving the dead bodies of their kindred, but the doctor had very properly stated that, in his opinion, such a proceeding might spread a putrid fever through the neighbourhood, and the first body, when exposed to observation, presented so horrible and corrupt an appearance, that the people were induced to consent that each corpse should be interred as soon as it was discovered—on condition that the hearse, in its way to the chapel-yard, should pass by the door of the deceased.

“And the condition was duly complied with,” concluded the doctor, solemnly. “Hour after hour, and day after day—for the finding and removal of the bodies continued for upwards of a week—the funeral carriage might be seen slowly wending its way through the half-desolate miners’ villages, passing first by the door of one closed cottage, and then by another, while at the hatches of the others stood groups of women, the greater part of whom were habited in black, with little things by their side, and some with infants in their arms, mostly wearing some humble mark of mourning. As the hearse moved on, the women, with tears in their eyes, would tell one another whose body was then on its way to its last home, and each would have some little story to recite of good done and charity bestowed by the ill-fated man, while all would sigh to think what would become of the wretched widows and little orphans who, as the bier stopped at the cottage, might be seen, with streaming eyes and dejected heads, to issue forth and follow the funeral carriage slowly and sadly to the grave.

“For ten long, melancholy days,” said Mr. Borlase, mournfully, “were the shutters of the houses closed in the miners’ villages, and for ten days did the bell of the neighbouring chapel continually toll—for the finding of the bodies lasted all this time: and by this one terrible accident there were no less than ninety-two pitmen hurled into eternity, while as many as forty widows and one hundred and six orphan children were deprived of their protectors and ordinary means of subsistence.”[22]

Mr. Borlase, on finishing his melancholy story, turned to Humphry, and saw the tears trickling from his cheeks.

There was a silence among all present, as if the awe of the calamity was still pressing on their hearts.

Presently the impulsive boy started to his feet and cried, “I’ll put an end to this shocking misery, please God I will, some day.”

The quick eye of young Humphry saw a smile play faintly on the doctor’s lip, and he added, “I know, sir, you have reason to doubt my power to do as I say, and, perhaps, it may take me years of hard study to gain the knowledge to enable me to compass my end; but though it cost me a lifetime I will master it at last. I have sufficient faith in the goodness of the Creator, to believe that these terrible afflictions come upon us only through our ignorance, and that if we but study His will, as expressed in the laws of the universe in which He has placed us, He has given us the faculty to avert misery, and to turn the current of Nature to our own welfare rather than injury.”

Mrs. Foxell (Mr. Borlase’s sister), who was presiding at the tea-table, and who had already learnt to esteem Humphry highly for the generous qualities of his nature, was moved almost to tears with the benevolent impulses of the boy; for she was naturally of a kindly disposition, and the melancholy details of the accident had so affected her, that when she heard the youth vow he would one day put an end to such calamities, the transport of joy she felt was too much for her woman’s heart, and though she would have cheered him on, there was an hysteric spasm in her throat that prevented her utterance for a time.

Presently the lady said, “Do not be discouraged by what my brother may say to you, Humphry. He has lived too long in the world to be as hopeful as you are, and he is so accustomed to scenes of anguish that suffering is, with him, almost an everyday occurrence. But you and I, boy, are, thank Heaven, unused to such sights, so that the mere recital of them stirs us to the depths of our natures. Besides, it is only a woman who can fully comprehend the distress wrought by such a catastrophe as my brother has recounted to us; for the real suffering in all such cases falls lighter on those who are even destroyed by it than it does upon those who are left behind. It is not so much the dead husbands I grieve for as the living widows; the lost fathers felt but a momentary pang, but the fatherless children have years of misery to pass through: and it is because my sex teaches me to understand these things deeper than yours, that I, for the sake of the poor living victims—the wives and babes, beggared in heart as well as in means—would not have a word said that would take away one spark of hope from your noble purpose. Though the prospect of success may appear barren to some minds, nevertheless if you, Humphry, can, in the ardour of your sympathy, imagine such an object to be barely possible of attainment, I say to you, Go on; and God speed you in your good work. You wish such a result to be possible, and therefore believe it to be so, and believing it, perhaps you may find it to be as you fancy; whereas if you had no faith in it you would never work at it, and consequently could never accomplish it. Think, too, if you should one day gain your end, what honour would await you—how many thousand poor creatures would hail you as their preserver—what evils you would be the means of preventing—ay, and even what wealth you might reap from such a discovery, for you could secure it to yourself, and so derive a large income from the profits of it.”

“No, my good madam,” replied Humphry, half indignant at the idea of enriching himself by such means, “I would never think of such a thing. My sole object would be to serve the cause of humanity, and, if I succeeded, I should be amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so. All I desire is a competence, and this, I hope, my profession will yield me; more wealth might be troublesome, and distract my attention from pursuits in which, even now, I delight. Riches,” he added, “could not give me either fame or happiness; they might, undoubtedly, enable me to put four horses to my carriage, but what would it avail me to have it said that Humphry Davy drives his carriage and four?”[23]

The noble disinterestedness of these sentiments produced a deep impression upon all present, for they were uttered, not in the same passionate tone as that in which the boy had previously spoken, but calmly and almost gravely, as if they were the result of long reflection, and showed that the youth had already learnt to prize fame more than wealth—that his mind was bent on winning an honourable reputation rather than amassing a worldly fortune.

Old Mr. Borlase, the venerable father of Humphry’s master, looked with wonder and admiration at the youth, and drawing him closely to him, exclaimed, “There’s a brave lad! You remind me, Humphry, of my poor brother the clergyman, who is dead and gone now, rest his soul!—I mean him, you know, that wrote the ‘History of Cornwall;’ a wonderful book it is, too!—he’d just the same notions when he was a youngster, and used to say that money was only of value for the happiness it could bring, and that there was more real pleasure to be found in seeking and discovering the truth than the richest fortune could purchase. I am sure, for my part, lad, I hope you may succeed in your noble object; and I have seen quite enough changes in my time to think nothing impossible now. Why, I have heard my grandfather say that, when he was a boy, coal itself was seldom used as fuel, and now see what wonders are being worked by it. Haven’t we just had one of those wonderful steam-engines, which have been of late years invented by Mr. Watt, put up at the Wherry Mine close by?”[24]

The boy nodded quickly, as if he was well acquainted with the locality.

“And there,” continued the old gentleman, “that great monster of brass and iron goes on, day after day and night after night (though the shaft of the mine, you know, is in the sea, and the workings entirely underneath the sands), acting at a distance over the surface of the ocean, and drawing up the water from beneath its bed; and all, too, by means of a few bushels of coals. I am sure when I first saw the engine lifting up its arms, and snorting away as if with the heavy labour it was doing, it put me in mind of the old fable, I learnt at school, of Prometheus, who stole fire from the sun, you know, boy, and made men with it out of the materials of the earth. For it struck me as being a huge steam man—a kind of monster labourer, as it were, that would work on for ever, without needing any sleep, and without knowing any fatigue; and that wanted only coals, instead of bread and meat, to keep it going. Ah! we live in wonderful times, my lad, that we do; and whatever the world will come to in a few years, when I am dead and gone, is more than I can say. Why, Mrs. Foxell here was reading to me the other day, out of the ‘Sherborne Mercury,’ a paragraph, saying, that a Mr.—Mr.—What was the name, my dear?”

“Symington,” answered the lady appealed to.

“Yes; that’s it!—Mr. Symington,” proceeded the old gentleman, “had been making some experiments on the Clyde to propel a vessel, without sails or oars, over the water—what do you think of that?—and that he had actually got a large boat to move some three or four miles an hour by means of paddles worked by a steam-engine on board the vessel.[25] Dear, dear! What shall we come to next, I wonder! They say in the paper, too, that the experiment was perfectly successful; so that, I dare say, in a few years our sailors will be no longer at the mercy of the winds, and if they have only a stock of coals aboard, they’ll be able to traverse the seas which way they like. Ah! coal is a wonderful thing, that it is, Humphry. But I’m afraid that when we sit and warm ourselves by the fire, we seldom give heed to the dangers and hardships suffered by the poor creatures who are far away underground, digging it out of the bowels of the earth for us.”

“That’s true enough,” interposed the doctor, “and it’s long been an opinion of mine that the greatness of England will soon depend, not so much on the energy of its people as the extent of its coal-fields. You have heard, doubtlessly, that Mr. Murdoch, in our own county here, has, within the last year or two, made a successful application of the gas from coal to the purposes of illumination; he has produced by it a light much more brilliant than that of any lamp, and which requires no feeding nor trimming, nor has it any wick; and I am told that he speaks confidently of its being possible to light our streets and houses by such means.[26] But I must confess, that I myself can hardly go with the gentleman so far as that.”

“Well, for my part, Bingham,” interrupted the father, “I am ready to believe anything. I have lived to see mail-coaches introduced throughout the country for expediting the post, and letters that used to take near upon a fortnight to go from here to London, now carried the same distance in little more than two days.[27] So nothing they could do would astonish me after that! No, not even if I was to hear that the mail-coaches themselves were driven by coals, and at twice the rate they go at now.”

This was considered so wonderful a stretch of imagination on the part of the old gentleman, that the whole company laughed heartily at the apparent impossibility of such an achievement.

“You may smile,” went on the old man, “but steam is only in its infancy yet, depend upon it; and the engineer at the Wherry Mine, when I was talking to him about the machine there, told me that there was force enough in a bushel, or eighty-four pounds of coals, when properly consumed, to raise 70,000,000 pounds weight one foot high. Now, the ascent of Mont Blanc, from the valley of Chamouni, is said by travellers to be the most toilsome feat that a strong man can execute in two days; nevertheless, I find by calculation” (and the old gentleman drew a bit of paper from his waistcoat pocket) “that the combustion of only two pounds of coal would be sufficient, by means of a steam-engine, to lift a man to the summit. Again, the great Pyramid of Egypt is composed entirely of granite, it stands on eleven acres of ground, and is 500 feet high, so that its entire weight has been calculated to be about 13,000 million pounds; consequently about 180 bushels of coal would be sufficient to raise the entire mass twelve inches from its base.[28] So that you see, Humphry, what a wonderful thing coal is, and the large amount of force that lies locked up in every pound of it.”

“I do, sir,” said the boy, “and it is this which makes me wish to decrease the suffering attendant upon the working of so valuable a mineral. The account of the accident which Dr. Borlase has just told us, has so harrowed my feelings, that I shall spare neither time nor labour in seeking to discover the causes upon which such calamities depend, so as to find out the means by which to prevent them for the future. It may be some years before I shall be able to perfect my plans, but perfected they _shall_ be one day if my life be spared; and then I have no fear that a discovery, having for its object the preservation of human life and the diminution of human misery, will be either neglected or forgotten. However high the gratification of possessing the good opinion of society, there is a still more exalting pleasure in the consciousness of having laboured to be useful.”[29]