Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1875 — Thrilling Story of a Boy’s Adventures in an Abandoned Coal-Mine. [ARTICLE]

Thrilling Story of a Boy’s Adventures in an Abandoned Coal-Mine.

Through the brutality of a miner in the employ of the Pennsylvania Coal Company at this place a •nule boy in the same mine was recently put to so terrible an experience in one of the company’s abandoned mines that he has become, it is feared, hopelessly insane, and has been sent to the lunatic asylum in Danville, Montour County. 1 The miner’s name is James Barrett. The boy son ot a poor widow, and, although but fourteen years of age, contributed largely to her support. His name is James Gallagher. The man Barrett, it seems, was in the habit of abusing the lad in a most shameful manner, having no apparent cause save a mere personal antipathy. The boy stood in mortal tear of Barrett. A week or so ago the latter had

been tyrannizing over young Gallagher with more than usual cruelty, and finally swore that if he did not quit his sight at once he would kill him, at the same time running toward the boy with his pick raised as if to strike him. Gallagher ran Screaming away’ from his persecutor, and made directly into the abandoned chamber, never stopping to look where he was, in his fright only thinking of getting out of the reach of Barrett. After running for some time the boy stopped, and for the first time saw that he was in a workedout mine. Even then terror of his cruel taskmaker was uppermost in his mind, and it was not until the little mine lamp on his cap began to grow dim and finally went entirely out that he awoke to the horror of his situation. If there is a chamber of horrors anywhere in the world it is a coal mine that has been worked out and deserted. Its labyrinth of corridors responds to the least sound with the most demoniacal echoes, and noxious gases generate in the pools of slimy water that exudes from the walls and drips down upon the slippery floor. Pitfalls filled with water that accumulates without interruption abound in these noisome halls, and myriads of hungry rats, bold, and even aggressive, haunt these desolate chambers hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface, and over all the most oppressive darkness. There is no darkness like that in a mine. It is so dense and heavy that one feels its weight upon him as if he were beneath fathoms of water, and the eye does not become accustomed to its pall sufficiently to penetrate in the slightest degree. On every side the constant drip, drip of the unwholesome water is heard, and the noise of rats, which frequently displace some loose bowlder of coal as they scamper over it, and send it tumbling to the floor, awakening a thousand horrid echoes and sending them reverberating through the deserted chambers.

It was into such a place as this that young Gallagher found hiipself, without a light, alone, and entirely ignorant of the way out. His first thought was to shout aloud for help, but the sound of his voice traversing the devious corridors and yelling back to him his cry, prolonged and multiplied a hundred times, as if so many fiends were mocking his distress, so frightened the boy that he could not gather courage to repeat the cry, and he commenced groping his way along in silence in the direction he thought most likely would lead to the entrance of the mine. He had proceeded some distance along the slimy wall, when a certain difficulty of breathing and choking sensation warned him that he was trespassing where that greatest of all terrors to the miner, fire-damp, prevailed, and he hastily retraced his steps with the intention of turning into the first corridor he came to. It was a long time before he reached one. It turned offto the right and he entered it and followed it for a quarter of an hour, feeling his way along one side of it ana being careful not turn into any of the corridors crossing it so that he might not become confused if circumstances compelled him to again retrace his steps. Suddenly, in putting his foot forward, he found no rest for it, and before he could recover his balance he fell headlong into a pit. His head came in contact withone side of the excavation. He attempted to regain his feet, but he was overcome wnh a sense of numbness and fell back into the slime and ooze that covered the jagged bottom of the pit. How long he lay there unconscious the boy did not know. He came to himself with a knowledge of a peculiar pain in his fingers and toes. At first he did not realize where he was, but the impenetrable darkness and cold, damp atmosphere soon recalled his situation. He drew up his hands and feet to make an effort to arise, when an army <rf rats scampered away from about him. They ran over his body and trailed their cold, slimy tails in his face. He sprang Up with a shriek of terror that again started the blood-curdling echoes through the chamber. *

From the feeling of his hands and feet Gallagher knew that the rats had been gnawing at his flesh, but he did not stop to make any investigation until he escaped from the pit and was again on his way back to the place from whence he had started. To get out of the pit he found no easy task. Twice he clambered up its jagged sides until he almost reached the top, and as many times fell back to the bottom. The third time trying was successful, and he drew himself out exhausted and fainting. He lay down on the floor of the corridor for several minutes before be had strength to proceed, and then gathered himself up ana hurried away from the spot which was so full of terrors to him. When he reached the first cross corridor he sat down on a jutting piece of coal and for the first time found that the rats had gnawed two of his fingers to the bona and had eaten away the uppers of his shoes and the flesh of his two great toes. He had often heard old miners relate over their lunch m the dismal chamber the experience of men lost in minesand attacked by rats, and now’ the reality of the thing nearly overcame him with its horror, and he almost swooned at the - thought of what he had passed through, and what he might yet be doomed to experience.. To add to the terrible situation of the poor lad, hunger began to make itself manifest, and the tortures of thirst were beginning to afflict him. As was the case with the Ancient Mariner, there was Water, water everywhere, But not a drop to drink. From the fact that he was growing so hungry and thirsty Gallagher judged that he had been a long time in the mine, i Up to this time he had been confident that he would be able to find his way out of the old mine in the course of a few hours, but now hope seemed to be leaving him. He conjured up pictures of his mother waiting for him to come home at night, of her anxiety at his tardiness, and then her uncontrollable grief at the news of his loss. Then his mind dwelt on the horrors of a death by starvation or suffocation in the mine, and the sickening thought that he was follow-ed by a horde of ravenous rats that were ready to make food of him even before he was dead. These thoughts almost drove him crazy, and he aroused himself, determined to make another effort to escape from the mine. He followed’” one of the cross corridors and wandered about in the maze of chambers for hours.

Once he thought he heard his name called and he shouted in reply, only to hear it repeated for many minutes by the demon echoes. While wandering about in this way, a prey to the tortures of hunger and thirst, and toboth mental and physical agony, he saw a light flash for an instant across the corridors in which he was groping. It was a long way off, but he knew it was a miner’s lamp and felt that parties were searching through the deserted chambers for him. Regardless of the hard, jagged floor, the strong walls, the ever-accompa-nying throng of rats that kept in his rear, or dangerous pits that might lie ahead of him, he ran rapidly toward where he had seen the light, shouting until he was hoarse. “Thisway! Here I am! Here I am! This way, for God’s sake!” The echoes took up the cry and carried it through the noisome avenues, lifted it up to the roof of the cerulean vault and repeated it until it died away in a wail of a gony; but the bearer of the light did not hear it in the course he had taken, and the almost exhausted boy, footsore and bruised by frequent falls on the hard, rough mine floor, hurried on in the subterranean labyrinth. Suddenly, in turning the angle of one of the corridors a light again flashed upon his sight and then another and another. A voice shouted a prolonged call: “J-a-m-e-s G-a-l-l-a-g-h-e-r! Hel-l-o-o, Jimmy!” The inevitable echoes had scarcely taken up the cry when the boy returned the call with all his soul in his voice:

“ Here I am! Come this way!” His answer was heard, and in a few mo; ments sturdy miners had fottnd the boy.’ But he did not know that he was rescued. He had fallen to the ground unconscious, his strength having gone out with his last wild cry. He was soon taken out into the pure air, where his frantic mother and the most of the villagers had assembled to await the result of the search. The people were wild when it was announced that the boy was found, and his brave rescuers were borne aloft by the crowd. It was a long time before young Gallagher was restored to consciousness, and theh it was only at intervals that he was in his right mind. In these sane intervals he related the story of his fearful sufferings, and learned that he had been nearly two days and one long night wandering among the horrors of the mine. His lucid spells lasted but a short time, when he would be seized with frantic ravings, in which he would plaintively beg of Barrett not to hurt him, and then shriek: “Therats are eating me up! Drive them away! Drive them away!” The moments in which he was sane became less frequent and, finally, days passed without one gleam of reason lighting up the darkness of his mind. The surgeons found it necessary to amputate one hand and three toes that had been gnawed by the rats, and to perform other painful operations to save the boy’s life. One day last week, his physical condition being such as to permit it, they decided he must be taken to an asylum for mental treatment, and expressed grave doubts of his permanent recovery. The brute Barrett, when the result of his cruel ty became known, was compelled to flee the plaee in the night to escape the fury of the exasperated populace, and .personal effects left by him were burned as an expression of the indignation of the people against him.— Dunmore, Pa. (July 211), Cor. N. Y. Herald.