The first miner—a frail old man—was strapped into the capsule. Gill signaled the winch operator. The capsule rose. One foot. Ten feet. Fifty feet. Then it jammed.

Gill took over. He personally adjusted the drilling pressure, ignoring the screaming warnings of the rig operators. He introduced a radical idea—pumping bentonite slurry (liquid clay) into the hole to seal the cracks and stop the water from flooding the air pocket. It was a gamble. Too little, and the mine floods. Too much, and the men are buried in mud.

Gill shouted down the line: "Don't sing. Dig. Build a platform of coal bags. Every inch above the water is life."

The second problem was physics. The drill bit was designed for coal, not the jagged, waterlogged sandstone above the mine. Every two feet, the bit shattered. Engineers told Gill it would take 10 days. The miners had 48 hours of oxygen left.

"Who goes first?" the officials asked.

The crew, sweating through their shirts, manually rotated the huge winch. The capsule scraped free. Sixty seconds later, the old man’s head emerged into the sunlight. He was alive.

Cheers erupted. But Gill didn’t smile. The hardest part was just beginning.