I won't go on, because you wouldn't believe me. There's
the coal under us, and we work it at any depth from following up an
outcrop down to six hundred feet. That is our deepest shaft. We have no
necessity to go deeper. At home the mines are sometimes fifteen hundred
feet down. Well, the thickness of this coal here varies from anything
you please to anything you please. There's enough of it to last your
time and one or two hundred years longer. Perhaps even longer than that.
Look at that stuff. That's big coal from the pit."

It was aristocratic-looking coal, just like the picked lumps that are
stacked in baskets of coal agencies at home with the printed legend atop
"only 23_s_ a ton." But there was no picking in this case. The great
piled banks were all "equal to sample," and beyond them lay piles of
small, broken, "smithy" coal. "The Company doesn't sell to the public.
This small, broken coal is an exception. That is sold, but the big stuff
is for the engines and the shops. It doesn't cost much to get out, as
you say; but our men can earn as much as twelve rupees a month. Very
often when they've earned enough to go on with they retire from the
concern till they've spent their money and then come on again. It's
piece-work and they are improvident. If some of them only lived like
other natives they would have enough to buy land and cows with. When
there's a press of work they make a good deal by overtime, but they
don't seem to keep it. You should see Giridih Bazaar on a Sunday if you
want to know where the money goes. About ten thousand rupees change
hands once a week there. If you want to get at the number of people who
are indirectly dependent or profit by the E. I. R. you'll have to
conduct a census of your own. After Sunday is over the men generally lie
off on Monday and take it easy on Tuesday. Then they work hard for the
next four days and make it up. Of course there's nothing in the wide
world to prevent a man from resigning and going away to wherever he came
from--behind those hills if he's a Sonthal. He loses his employment,
that's all. But they have their own point of honour. A man hates to be
told by his friends that he has been guilty of shirking. And now we'll
go to breakfast. You shall be 'pitted' to-morrow to any depth you
like."

CHAPTER II

IN THE DEPTHS.

"Pitted to any extent you please." The only difficulty was for Joseph to
choose his pit. Giridih was full of them. There was an arch in