How is working in the mines described in the novel, Tyll?

The mine shafts where the small detachment of army dodgers slave are forbidding, tight, and dangerous. They are murky, thick with dust, claustrophobic. Overhead are the sounds of the Swedish artillery under the command of Field Marshal Lennart Torstennson, who did not head to Vienna, a commander known for his ruthless and relentless attack strategies. This means that above the men is death and, when the cannonading collapses the mine walls, all around them is death as well. As a bloody and disoriented Tyll stumbles about the darkness of the collapsed mines, as he falls over the bodies of other miners, he adamantly decides he will not die, even as another stone from the collapsing mine strikes his shoulder.