writing hourly despatches for my paper; then I drove to Newcastle, a
cold, dark journey of a couple of hours, and scribbled my latest bulletin
at the _Journal_ office. This done, I lay down on a pile of
newspapers in the rat-haunted office, and snatched a few hours' sleep
before returning to the post of duty. But some nights it was impossible
to leave the mouth of the pit even for a moment, for none could tell when
the captives might be reached; so I sat with the doctors, the mining
engineers, and one or two colleagues before the fire which gave us a
partial warmth, though it did not shield us from the pitiless winds and
the drifting sleet and snow, which often effaced my "copy" more quickly
than I wrote it. It was a time of hardship and endurance, not soon to be
forgotten; but it was also a time which tested to the full the
capacities, both mental and physical, of the journalist, and I at least
derived nothing but benefit from that rough experience.

For a full week the work of re-opening the shaft went on by night and
day, and there were wives and parents who during all that week hardly
left the neighbourhood of the pit for a single hour. The task of
re-opening the shaft was one of extreme peril. The men had to be lowered
to their work at the end of a rope in which a loop had been made, which
was secured round their bodies. The two chief dangers they had to face
were the continual falling in of the sides of the shaft and the presence
of noxious gases. They never flinched, however, and I witnessed on that
dreary pit platform at Hartley that which I have always considered the
bravest deed I ever saw. I and a handful of watchers were dozing round
the open fire in the early hours of a bitter winter morning, just one
week after the accident had happened, when we were suddenly aroused by an
urgent signal from the shaft, evidently coming from the men working far
below. We thought that the imprisoned miners had been reached, and
eagerly we waited till the first messenger was brought to the surface.