Gill smiled. "Sardarji is here. Now, listen carefully. No pushing. The oldest first. Then the weakest. Then the rest. You will go alone. You will feel like you are dying. But you will not."
He had built the rescue capsule himself in a local workshop. It was a narrow steel cylinder, open at the top, with a simple latch. It was never tested. Mission Raniganj
But one man refused to accept that verdict. Gill smiled
On the third lift, the cable frayed. On the eleventh lift, the winch motor overheated and smoked. On the thirty-third lift, a young miner panicked, thrashed inside the capsule, and nearly knocked it off its guide rail. Gill, from below, reached up and held the rail steady with his bare hands until the man calmed down. No pushing
The first problem was time. The trapped miners had only flashlights and a single telephone line that still crackled with static. Their voices, relayed up, were haunted: "The water is rising. We can see the ceiling getting closer. We're singing hymns."
Suddenly, a deafening crack echoed through the tunnel. A nearby river had secretly eaten away at the rock above, and now, millions of gallons of water came crashing through the roof of the mine. The men barely had time to scream.
Finally, after 65 harrowing lifts—over 55 hours of non-stop work—only one man remained. Gill himself.