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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB i HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES V OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! "Buried Alive" HELLO EVERYBODY! Adventure sure laid an icy hand on the shoulder of Joseph Kuritz, who sent me one of the best written yarns I've had to date. Joe's at Brooklyn now and at last writing could have used a job. He gave up his youthful ambition to be a mining engineer as a result of events related in today's story, and switched to mechanical engineering. But, if you ask me, the magazines are looking for people who can write like Joe. Accordingly, I'm following his script pretty close. In April, 1920, Joe was a surveyor with the GJen Alden Coal Co., Scranton, Pa. It was his first job, and he was assigned to investigating "pillar robbing" in the Cayuga mines. I'll explain. Miners must leave enough coal to support the roof of the mine, which consists of shale, a scalv rock, that caves in easily. Pillar robbing means stealing coal from these remaining supports, sup-ports, and is illegal, since it may cause cave-ins in which workers are killed, gas and water mains burst, even explode, and brick buildings standing on the land collapse. It's earthquake, fire and flood. Old Timbers Prove Useless as Support. The Cayuga had been deserted for 50 years. Inside Joe and three companions found pillars cracked and crumbled by the weight of millions of tons of rock they had held up for five decades. As supports they were useless and might just as well have been mined out Old timber erected by miners to protect themselves in those far, bygone years were rotted, useless. A touch and they collapsed to fungi-infested, mildewed mil-dewed dust Not much between Joe and the millions of tons of rock over his head. Worse, the workings were of the "pitch" type each chamber like a long, sloping tunnel, some very steep. The roof was dangerously dan-gerously cracked. Slabs of shale hung so loose a breath would send them crashing to the floor. Fallen rock covered the steeply-slanting steeply-slanting floor in sizes from a fist to dining-room table. This "gob" can start an avalanche on the slanting tunnel floor. Joe's duties lovely Job! were to climb over this loose rock, covered with slime. If he made it it was safe for the others to come up. If he didn't and started a fatal avalanche Joe forgot to tell about that Joe's Lamp Ignites a Pocket of Whitedamp. Well, sir, Joe climbed gingerly upward, clinging to the glistening coal pillar at the side, peering ahead by the faint light of the lamp fastened above his cap-vizor. He stepped, light as a falling feather, testing every Joe clung to the pillar on his stomach. footfall. At the top our "human fly," as Joe calls himself, was to establish es-tablish a point for the transit a surveyor's instrument to shoot at Joe never made it. Twenty feet from the top Boom! An explosion like a giant bassdrum shook the earth in a bolt of livid flame. GAS! Joe's light had ignited a pocket of whitedamp! Splinter! Crackl Crash! The shock jerked rock toppling from the roof, dropped it on the loose "gob" on the steeply-slanting floorl , The slide was on! At first, with thumps scarcely audible above the rolling rumble of the waves of flame over his head, then, in a roaring crescendo, jagged rock raced, leaping and thundering downward past Joe, hurtling into the hell of darkness far below. Joe's lamp bad gone out with the explosion. But above him was blinding glare a marching surf of blue-and-red-streaked fire, lighting up the chamber overhead. Blistering white heat above thundering flood of angry rock below! Joe clung to the pillar on his stomach, ducking hurtling rocks, shrinking from the blazing heat above. With clawing fingers and toes that vainly sought foothold in the hard floor, he lay there it seemed agesaching muscles a-torture. The slide diminished. The "carbonic oxide" above burned fitfully, threatening any second to seek out with its rainbow flames another pocket, spreading in chain explosions through the underground terrain, burying Joe and his companions. He Began to Figure His Chance for Escape. Joe thought of the others. Had they been crushed to a jelly-smear under those tons of rock trapped in some doghole or cross-cut in a pillar7 The rolling flames died, went out In the inky black Joe groped for a match, lit his lamp. The floor was clear. He stepped out Instantly he tobogganed down on a slab of rock he had overlooked. Four hundred feet below he brought up short on the heap of loose rock. It had blocked the entrance completely. Joe was caught like a rat. He sat on a rock, wondered that he was not frightened, began to 6gure his chances of seeing sunlight sun-light again. It seemed suddenly very precious, sun and open air. Air! The rock .had sucked much out, the explosion had driven more out and the fire had burned he didn't know how much of the life-giving oxygen in that black pit. Would the rest last till they got to him? Then, Joe says, panic did grip him. He shouted himself hoarse. He smashed a rock repeatedly against a pillar, listened. Not a sound. Just silence. Terrible silence Joe saw slow death ahead suffocation, thirst, starvation. Unwounded, he wished for death swift death, rather than this drawn-out agony. Now he could only wait helplessly. Joe says he prefers to forget the next nine hours. Imagination can be the most horrible form of torture. But his companions had escaped. With all hope gone for Joe, they had notified the surface. A relay of rescue crews, working as only mine rescue crews can, dug through the pillar from an adjoining chamber and pulled Joe out 'nine hours later. From that day on the only coal Joe can stand looking at is in a stove. He quit the mining engineer career cold. But I still say he can write like a professional? What do you think? Copyright. WNU Service. |