'After I'd been there a week I gathered from the conversation of the men one evening that I was going to be taken somewhere the following day. I was delighted. For I thought to myself that, no matter where it was, the change couldn't be for the worse.
'But I was wrong. Where do you suppose I was taken? You could never guess. I was taken down into the coal–mine. I didn't know at the time that it was customary to keep canaries in coal–mines. It seems that there is a very dangerous kind of gas, called coal damp, that sometimes comes out underground and kills the men working there if they are not warned in time to escape. The idea of having canaries down there is, apparently, that the birds being higher up than the men—hung on the walls of the passages—will get the gas first. Then if the birds start to suffocate the men are warned that it is time to get out of the mine. While the canaries are lively and hopping about they know it's all right.
'Well, I had never seen the inside of a coal–mine before. And I hope I never will again. Of all the dreadful places to work and live I think that must be the worst. My cage was taken by my owner and his brother the next morning, and he walked a good mile before we came to the mouth of the pit. Then we got into a sort of a big box with a rope to it. And wheels began to turn and we went down and down and down and down. The sun could not be seen. For light the men had little lamps fastened to their hats. The box stopped and we got out and went along a long, narrow passage which had little rails with wagons on them, running the length of it. Into these little wagons the coal was put, a long way back in the inside of the mine. Then it wa trundled along till it came to the big shaft, where the sliding box, or lift, took it up to the top.
'After we had gone a good distance underground the men stopped and my owner hung my cage on a nail high up on a wall of the passage. There they left me and went to their work. And all day long men passed and repassed with little wagons of coal, while others picked with pick–axes and loaded the trucks with shovels. Again I was taking an active part in the lives of men. Such lives, poor wretches! My job was to wait for gas—to give warning, by coughing or choking or dying, that the deadly coal damp was stealing down the corridors to poison them.
'At first I feared I was going to be left there all night after the men went home. But I wasn't. When a whistle blew at the end of the day I was taken down from the wall back to the sliding box and up into the open air—and so home to the kitchen and the squalling children. It was now late in the autumn and the daylight was short. It was barely dawn when we went to work in the morning, and dark again before we came up at night. The only sunlight we saw was on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I had been an inn coach announcer; I had been a Marchioness's pet in a silver cage; I had been a crack regiment's mascot. Now I was a miner, working nine hours a day—sniffing for gas! … It's a funny world.
'This was, I think, the unhappiest part of my life. My fortunes had fallen very low—they couldn't get much lower than the bottom of a coal mine, could they? So I had that consolation, anyhow; whatever change fate brought along it was bound to be an improvement. And, curious though it may seem, I preferred the working hours in the mine to the so–called resting time in the miner's home. Down in the pit there was at all events a spirit of work. I felt something was being done, accomplished, as each loaded wagon rattled past my cage on its way to the hoisting shaft. And I was helping, doing my share. While the dingy, squalid home—well, it was nothing. One wondered why it had to be, that's all.'
'But in the mine,' Dab–Dab put in, 'weren't you always in continued dread of this horrible gas poisoning you?'
'At the beginning, yes, I was,' said Pippinella. 'But after I had my first experience of it I was not so scared. I had supposed that if the gas ever did come while I was there that, of course, would be the end of me. But I was wrong. We had several goes of it in my mine, but no fatal accidents. I remember the first one especially. It was a little after noon and the men had only been working about half an hour since lunch. I noticed a peculiar smell. Not knowing what gas smelled like I didn't at first suspect what it was. It got stronger and stronger. Then suddenly my head began to swim and I thought, "Gosh! this is it, sure enough!" And I started to squawk and flutter about the cage and carry on. There were men working not more than seven or eight feet from my cage. But with the noise of their own shovels and picks they did not hear me. And their heads, of course, being lower than mine, they had not yet smelled the gas, which always floats to the top of a room first.
'After a couple of minutes had gone by and still they hadn't taken any notice of me things began to look pretty bad. The beastly stuff was all in my nose and throat now, choking me, so I could hardly squeak at all. But still I kept on fluttering madly about the cage, even though I couldn't see where I was going. And just at the last minute, when everything was getting all dreamy in my head, the men put down their shovels and picks to take a rest. And in a voice that sounded all sort of funny and far away I heard out of them cry:
'"Bill—look at the bird!—Gas!"
'Then that signal word "Gas!" was shouted up and down the passages of the whole mine. Tools were dropped with a clatter on the ground; and the men, bending down to keep their heads low, started running for the hoist shaft. My man Bill leaped up and snatched my cage from the wall and fled after them.
'At the shaft we found hundreds of workers gathered, waiting their turn to go up in the sliding box. The whistle up at the top was blowing away like mad to warn any stray men who might still be lingering in the passages.
'When everyone had reached the open air big suction fans were set to work to draw the gas out of the mine before the men would go to work again. It took hours to get all the passages cleared and safe. And we did not go down again that day.
'And then I realized that these men were taking the same risk as I was. After that first time, when we nearly got caught and suffocated, they were more careful. And at least one of the workers always kept an eye on my cage. If I showed the least sign of choking or feeling queer they would give the alarm and clear out of the mine.
'The winter wore on. Sadly I wondered how long I was to be a miner. For the first time since I had been a fledgling in the nest I fell to envying the wild birds again. What did it matter how many enemies you had, hawks, shrikes, cats and what not, as long as you had liberty? The wild birds were free to sweep the skies: I lived under the ground—in a cage. I often thought of what my mother had told me of foreign birds—birds of paradise and gay–plumed macaws that flitted through jungles hung with orchids, in far–off tropic lands. Then I'd look around at the black coal walls of this underground burrow, at the lights on the men's caps glimmering in the gloom; and it seemed to me that one day of freedom in India, Africa or Venezuela would be a good exchange for a whole life such as mine. Was I here for the rest of my days? Nine hours of work; home; to bed; and back to work again. Would the end never come?
'And at last it did. You know a canary is a somewhat smaller creature than a human being, but his life and what happens in it are just as important for him. Only that, of the two, the canary is the better philosopher. I've often thought that if a man or woman had had my job in that mine he would probably have pined away and died from sheer boredom and misery. The way I endured it was by just refusing to think too much. I kept saying to myself; "Something must happen some day. And whatever it is it'll be something new."
'One morning at eleven o'clock a party of visitors came to look over the mine. You wouldn't think if you had ever worked in a coal mine, that anybody would want to go and look at one. But folks will do all sorts of things out of curiosity. And these people came to inspect us and our mine in rather the way they'd go to a zoo.