The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and
the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small
matters with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime,
under the surgeon's directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which
others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw,
while he himself contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and
handkerchiefs. As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of
the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them:
and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his
powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing
down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was
not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was dark now,
and torches were kindled.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which
was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had
fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half
choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by some jagged
earth at the side.
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