Page:Stryker's American Register and Magazine, Volume 6, 1851.djvu/212

206 pit to prevent a like occurrence for the future, when it was suggested that another and a final effort should be made by letting some individual down by ropes to examine the nature of the abyss, and ascertain if there was any encouragement for further efforts to be found below. A brother of the lost child undertook the fearful task. Cords were fastened round his waist and limbs, and one to his wrist, by which he might indicate to those above his wishes either to descend or to be drawn up.

He was swung off, and slowly lowered, until having gone to the depth of about fifty feet, he looked below him, and there shone through the thick darkness two glistening eyes intently looking upward. In another moment he was standing on a shelf or angle in the shaft with the child clasped to his bosom. He fastened his brother securely to his own body, and bidding him take the rope firmly in his hands, the signal was given to draw up. The child hung convulsively to the rope, and in a few minutes arose within view of the hundred anxious spectators who had assembled to witness the result, and when the first glimpse of the little fellow, alive, caught their eager gaze, screams and shouts of joy from the excited multitude filled the air, and big tears of sympathy started from the eyes of every beholder.

After the first paroxysm of delight had subsided, the child was examined to see if he had sustained any injury, and, extraordinary to tell, with the exception of a little bruise on the back of the head, he was perfectly sound and unhurt. The only complaint he made was that he was hungry, being nearly 27 hours under the ground. To inquiries made of him he replied that he saw a light and heard it thunder. From the nature of the pit it appeared that he had fallen a perpendicular distance of 40 feet, upon a slope or bend in the shaft, and from that place slid down 20 feet further, to the spot where he was found leaning against a sort of pillar or wall, and gazing upward. The force of his first fall was probably broken by his striking against the sides of the pit during his descent.