Midnight
Along the great length of the foot wall , extending all the distance of the big chamber , the men began their work , five men to the drills and as many to the sledges , as they started their double-jacking . Hour after hour the clanging of steel against steel sounded in the big underground room , as the drills bit deeper and deeper into the hard formation of the foot wall , driving steadily forward until their contact should have a different sound , and the muggy scrapings bear a darker hue than that of mere wall-rock . Hour after hour passed , while the drill-turners took their places with the sledges , and the sledgers went to the drills -- the turnabout system of `` double-jacking '' -- with Fairchild , the eleventh man , filling in along the line as an extra sledger , that the miners might be the more relieved in their strenuous , frenzied work . Midnight came . The first of the six-foot drills sank to its ultimate depth . Then the second and third and fourth : finally the fifth . They moved on .