After dinner I was promptly
lowered again, the forenoon's accumulation of chips hoisted out of
the way, and I was left until night.
One morning, after the dreary bore was about eighty feet deep, my life
was all but lost in deadly choke-damp,--carbonic acid gas that had
settled at the bottom during the night. Instead of clearing away the
chips as usual when I was lowered to the bottom, I swayed back and
forth and began to sink under the poison. Father, alarmed that I did
not make any noise, shouted, "What's keeping you so still?" to which
he got no reply. Just as I was settling down against the side of the
wall, I happened to catch a glimpse of a branch of a bur-oak tree
which leaned out over the mouth of the shaft. This suddenly awakened
me, and to father's excited shouting I feebly murmured, "Take me out."
But when he began to hoist he found I was not in the bucket and in
wild alarm shouted, "Get in! Get in the bucket and hold on! Hold on!"
Somehow I managed to get into the bucket, and that is all I remembered
until I was dragged out, violently gasping for breath.
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