were sportsmen within limits. The limits, alas! in those soft days are
too often the coursing of a half-blinded rabbit, or the backing of a
horse in a race which will not be witnessed by the backer. It is
always gratifying to be invited to participate in a sporting event,
but there is a difference between a seat on the platform and a stance
in the arena. Getting hurt gratuitously is slipping into the _index
expurgatorius_ of modern field sports.
Men began to look sheepishly at one another. One or two had started
forward instinctively, but the impulse died away. A humourist was
heard imploring his friends to hold him back. There was something
unutterably grim about the towering figure up on the terrace.
Democracy and the equality of mankind to the contrary, Jack usually
recognises his master when it comes to a pinch. No Jack seemed to
desire advancement on this occasion.
Juggernaut waited for another minute. He wanted the silence to sink
in. He wanted the crowd to feel ridiculous. That object achieved, he
proposed to turn his visitors to the right-about and send them home.
He had been through this experience before, and felt comparatively
sure of his ground.
Provided, that is, that one thing did not occur. There were women
present.
Now women are exempt from the law of averages: the sex snaps its
fingers at computations based upon laboriously compiled statistics. If
the women--or more likely a woman--gave the men a lead, anything might
happen. And just as Juggernaut uplifted his voice to pronounce a
valediction, the disaster befel.
"Now go home," he began. "You are not yourselves to-night. Go home,
and think things over. Consult the older men: I see none of them here.
If you are of the same mind to-morrow, I promise to----"
"Call yourselves men? Cowards! cowards! cowards! One of _us_ is worth
the lot of you!"
A woman, with a shawl over her head and a child in her arms, had
mounted half-way up the steps, and was addressing the mob below. Sir
John recognised her as Mrs Brash, a quiet little person as a rule.
"Come up, chaps!" she shrieked. "Are you going to let him stamp on us
_all_? Look at his fine house, and his electrics, and his marble steps
and all!" [They were plain freestone, but let that pass.] "Where did
he get 'em all? From _us_--us that he has starved and clemmed this
last two months! Are you afraid of him--the lot of you? Great hulking
cowards! I see you, Brash, hiding there! Isn't there _one_ man here?"
"Yes--by _God_ there is!"
With a bound, Killick, the brooding visionary, the Utopian Socialist,
was at the top of the steps, brandishing a pit-prop and haranguing his
comrades. There was no stopping him. Mrs Brash had fired the train and
Killick was the explosion. His words gushed out--hot, passionate,
delirious. The man's sense of proportion, always unstable, was gone
entirely. He burned with the conviction of his own wrongs and those of
his fellows. _Nobilis ira_ gave him eloquence. He laid violent hands
upon wealth and power and greed and tyranny, and flung them one by one
down the steps on to the heads of his hearers. Most of what he said
was entirely irrelevant; a great deal more was entirely untrue; but it
served. For the moment Sir John Carr stood for all the injustice and
cruelty that strength has ever inflicted upon weakness. Every word
told. The mob was aflame at last. They hung upon Killick's fiery
sentences, surging ever more closely round the steps. The next wave,
Juggernaut saw, would bring them in a flood upon the terrace; and
then--what? He thought coolly and rapidly. There was Daphne to
consider--also little Brian. Daphne, he knew, was close by, standing
with beating heart behind the curtains of the library window. He had
forbidden her to come farther. Perhaps, though, she had been sensible,
and taken the opportunity of this delay to slip away. Of course, of
course.
There was a movement beside him, and he realised that his education in
femininity still left something to be desired. A hand slid into his,
and Daphne's voice whispered in his ear--
"Jack, I want to speak to them."
Her husband turned and smiled upon her curiously.
"What are you going to say?" he asked.
"I am going to tell them about--about the tea and sugar. It's the only
thing to do," said Daphne eagerly.
"I would rather be knocked on the head by a pit-prop!" said
Juggernaut. And he meant it. Some of us are terribly afraid of being
exposed as sentimentalists.
Meanwhile the crowd had caught sight of Daphne. The men fell silent,
as men are fain to do when a slim goddess, arrayed in black velvet,
appears to them, silhouetted against a richly glowing window. But
there was a vindictive shriek from the women.
"Get back at once, dear," said Juggernaut. "You are in great danger.
Telephone to the police, and tell Graves to get the fire-hose out. It
may be useful in two ways. I promise to come in if things get worse.
Hallo! who is that?"
A burly man in a bowler hat, panting with the unwonted exertion of a
two-mile run, was approaching him along the terrace. He had come up
the drive unnoticed, and having skirted the edge of the crowd had
gained access to the terrace from another flight of steps at the end.
It was Mr Walker, the mine manager.
"I tried to get you on the telephone," he shouted in Juggernaut's ear;
"but they have cut the wire."
"What is it?" asked Juggernaut.
Walker told him.
There was just time to act. The mob were pouring up the steps in
response to Killick's final invitation. Juggernaut strode forward.
"Stop!" he cried in a voice of thunder. "Stop, and listen to what Mr
Walker has to tell you!"
His great voice carried, and there was a moment's lull. Walker seized
his opportunity.
"There has been an accident at the pit," he bellowed. "Some of your
lads went down after you had left, to see what damage they could do to
the plant. Some of the older men went down to stop them. Something
happened. The roofs of the main road and intake have fallen in, and
Number Three Working is cut off--with eight men in it!"
There was a stricken silence, and the wave rolled back from the
steps. Presently a hoarse voice cried--
"Who are they?"
Mr Walker recited six names. Four of these belonged to young bloods
who had been foremost in the riot at the pit-head. There were agonised
cries from women in the crowd. All four men were married. The fifth
name, that of Mr Adam Wilkie, who was a bachelor and a misogynist,
passed without comment. The sixth was that of a pit-boy named Hopper.
Mr Walker paused.
"You said eight!" cried another woman's voice in an agony of suspense.
"The other two--for the love of God!"
"Amos Entwistle," replied Mr Walker grimly--"and Mr Carthew."
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
LABORARE EST ORARE.
Six men sat upon six heaps of small coal in a long rectangular cavern
five feet high and six feet broad. The roof was supported by props
placed at distances specified by the Board of Trade. One side of the
cavern was pierced at regular intervals by narrow openings which were
in reality passages; the other was a blank wall of gleaming coal.
This was the "face"--that point in the seam of coal which marked the
limits of progress of the ever-advancing line of picks and shovels.
The men were well over two hundred fathoms--roughly a quarter of a
mile--below the surface of the earth, and they had been prisoners in
Number Three Working ever since an explosion of fire-damp and
coal-dust had cut them off from communication with the rest of Belton
Pit six hours before.
The prisoners were Jim Carthew, Amos Entwistle, and Adam Wilkie,
together with a hewer, a drawer, and a pit-boy, named Atkinson,
Denton, and Hopper respectively. There had been two others, but they
lay dead and buried beneath a tombstone twelve hundred feet high.
What had happened was this.
About four o'clock on that disastrous afternoon, Amos Entwistle was
sitting despondently in his own kitchen. He was the oldest and most
influential overman in Belton Pit, but his counsels of moderation had
been swept aside by the floods of Mr Winch's oratory; and like the
practical creature that he was he had returned home, to await the
issue of the insurrection and establish an alibi in the event of
police-court proceedings.
To him entered Mr Adam Wilkie, with the news that some of the more
ardent iconoclasts of the day-shift had remained below in the pit, in
order to break down the roofs of some of the galleries leading to the
workings--an amiable and short-sighted enterprise which, though
pleasantly irritating to their employer, must inevitably throw its
promoters and most of their friends out of work for an indefinite
period.
Here at least was an opportunity to act. Entwistle hastily repaired to
the pit-offices, where he knew that Mr Carthew had been spending the
afternoon; and the three, united for the moment by the bond of
common-sense, if nothing else, dropped down the shaft with all speed.
Fortunately the man in charge of the winding-engine was still at his
post, and of an amenable disposition.
Arrived at the pit bottom, they hurried along the main road. The
atmosphere was foul and close, for the ventilating machinery had
ceased to work. There was a high percentage of fire-damp, too, as
constant little explosions in their Davy lamps informed them.
Presently they overtook the enemy, who had done a good deal of
mischief already; for they had set to work in the long tunnel known as
the intake, down which fresh air was accustomed to flow to the distant
workings; and at every blow of their picks, a pit-prop fell from its
position and an overhead beam followed, bringing down with it a
mingled shower of stone and rubbish.
There was no time to be lost, for the whole roof might fall at any
moment. It was three against five; but authority is a great asset and
conscience a great liability. By adopting a "hustling" policy of the
most thorough description, Carthew, Entwistle, and Wilkie hounded
their slightly demoralised opponents along the intake towards the
face, intending to round up the gang in one of the passages leading
back to the main road, and, having pursued the policy of peaceful
dissuasion to its utmost limits, conduct their converts back to the
shaft.
The tide of battle rolled out of the intake into the cavern formed by
the face and its approaches. Master Hopper was the first to arrive,
the toe of Mr Entwistle's boot making a good second.
"Now, you men," said Carthew, addressing the sullen, panting figures
which crouched before him--the roof here was barely five feet above
the floor--"we have had enough of this. Get out into the main road and
back to the shaft. You are coming up topside of this pit with
us--that's flat!"
But his opponents were greater strategists than he supposed.
"Keep them there, chaps!" cried a voice already far down one of the
passages.
"Catch that man!" cried Carthew. "Let me go!"
Shaking off Atkinson, who in obedience to orders had made a
half-hearted grab at him, he darted down the nearest passage. It led
to the main road, but across the mouth hung a wet brattice-cloth.
Delayed a moment, he hurried on towards the junction with the main
road, just in time to descry two twinkling Davy lamps disappearing
round the distant corner. They belonged to Davies and Renwick, the
ringleaders of the gang. What their object might be he could not for
the moment divine, but he could hear their voices re-echoing down the
silent tunnel. Evidently they were making for the main road, perhaps
to raid the engine-room or call up reserves. He must keep them in
sight. Laboriously he hastened along the rough and narrow track.
Suddenly, far ahead in the darkness, he heard a crash, followed by a
frightened shriek. Next moment there was a roar, which almost broke
the drums of his ears, and the whole pit seemed to plunge and stagger.
His lamp went out, and he lay upon the floor in the darkness--darkness
that could be felt--waiting for the roof to fall in.
* * * * *
Renwick and Davies, it was discovered long afterwards, had reached the
main road, running rapidly. Here one of them must have tripped over
the slack-lying wire cable which drew the little tubs of coal up the
incline from the lyes to the foot of the shaft. Two seconds later a
tiny puddle of flaming oil from a broken lamp (which for once in a way
had not been extinguished by its fall) had supplied the necessary
ignition to the accumulated fire-damp and coal-dust of the
unventilated pit. There was one tremendous explosion. Down came the
roof of the main road for a distance of over half a mile, burying the
authors of the catastrophe, Samson-like, in their own handiwork.
* * * * *
The survivors were sitting in the _cul-de-sac_ formed by the face of
the coal and its approaches, three-quarters of a mile from the shaft.
No one had been injured by the explosion, though Carthew, being
nearest, had lain half-stunned for a few minutes. Possibly the
brattice-cloths hung at intervals across the ways to direct the
air-currents had been instrumental in blanketing its force.
The party had just returned from an investigation of the possibilities
of escape.
"Will you report, Mr Entwistle?" said Carthew, who found that the
surviving mutineers appeared to regard him as the supreme head of the
present enterprise and Entwistle as his chief adviser.
Amos Entwistle complied.
There were two ways, he explained in his broad north-country dialect,
by which Number Three could be reached from the shaft. One was the
intake, along which fresh air was conducted to the workings, and the
other was the main road, which could be reached through any of the
passages leading away from the face. The explosion in the main road
had brought down the roof for a distance which might be almost
anything. The intake was blocked too. It was some way from the scene
of the explosion, but the props were gone, and the roof had come down
from end to end, for all he knew.
"Is there no other way out?" said Carthew.
"None, sir."
Carthew indicated the row of openings beside them.
"Don't any of these lead anywhere?"
"They all lead to the main road, except that one at the end, which
leads to the intake. We have plenty of room to move about, and plenty
of air; but we are shut in, and that's a fact, sir."
"Is that your opinion too, Mr Wilkie?"
"We canna get gettin' oot o' this, sir," replied the oracle with
complacent finality.
There was a deathlike silence. Then Master Hopper began to cry softly.
He was going to die, he reflected between his sobs, and he was very
young to do so. It was hard luck his being there at all. He had only
joined the riot from youthful exuberance and a desire to be "in the
hearse," as an old Scottish lady once bitterly observed of a too
pushful mourner at her husband's funeral. He entertained no personal
animosity against the owner of the pit: in fact he had never set eyes
on him. His desire had merely been to see the fun. Well, he was seeing
it. He wept afresh.
Atkinson and Denton sat and gazed helplessly at Carthew. The part they
had played in sealing up six souls in the bowels of the earth had
faded from their minds: to be just, it had faded from the minds of
their companions as well. The past lay buried with Renwick and Davies.
The future occupied their entire attention.
There was another danger to be considered--the suffocating after-damp
of the explosion. Carthew inquired about this. Entwistle considered
that the risk was comparatively slight.
"The cloths hung across the approaches to the main road should keep it
away," he said. "It's a heavy gas, and don't move about much, like. We
shall be able to tell by the lamps, anyway."
"Then what had we better do?" said Carthew briskly. "Dig?"
One of the men--Atkinson--lifted his head from his hands.
"Ah were saaved by t' Salvationists once," he said hoarsely. "Ah could
put up a prayer."
"I think we will try the effect of a little spade-work first," said
Carthew. "_Laborare est orare_, just now!" he added to himself.
* * * * *
A few hours later they re-assembled. They had tapped, sounded, hewed,
and shovelled at every potential avenue of escape, but to no purpose.
The intake and main road appeared to be blocked from end to end. Six
men were mewed up with no food, a very little water, twenty-four
hours' light, and a limited quantity of oxygen; and they had no means
of knowing how near or how far away help might be.
All they were certain of was that on the other side of the barrier
which shut them in men were working furiously to reach them in time,
and that up above women were praying to God that He would deliver
them.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
BLACK SUNDAY.
The search party had concluded its investigations, and stood at the
foot of the shaft, which fortunately had not been injured by the
distant explosion, waiting for the cage.
A pit-bottom is an unexpectedly spacious place, more resembling the
cellars of a ducal mansion, or a city station in the days of the old
under-ground, than a burrow in the hidden places of the earth.
Whitewashed brick archways open up long vistas, illuminated by
electric lamps. Through an adjacent doorway streams the cheerful glow
of the engine-room, from which the haulage of the trucks is
controlled. Only in the "sump," below the level of the flooring at the
foot of the shaft, the water gleams black and dismally.
"Is there any other road to explore, Mr Walker?" asked a huge man in
blue overalls, with a patent breathing apparatus strapped upon his
back.
"No, Sir John. All we can do at present is to get the ventilating gear
going again, and then send down a double shift to get to work on the
main road, in the hope of finding some one alive at the end of it.
Meanwhile we will go up and look at the pit-plan."
"How long do you think it will take to get through? You know more of
the geography of this pit than I do."
"It depends on how far the roof is down. It will be slow work, for we
must re-prop as we go. Twenty yards an hour is about the best we can
expect to do, working top-notch all the time. And if the road is
blocked from end to end, as well it may be, it will be a question of
days, Sir John."
"And in Number Three they have neither food nor drink?"
"Neither, to our knowledge. Probably they have a little water, though.
We must get at them double quick. Here is the cage coming down."
The cage roared upwards between the wooden guides, black with long use
and glistening with oil and water; and presently the party were back
in the great shed which covered the pit-head, pushing their way
through anxious inquirers to the office buildings.
Leaving the other members of the search party--an overman and two
hewers--to report progress, Sir John and his manager shut themselves
into the inner office. Here Walker unrolled the pit-plan, which, with
its blocks and junctions and crossings, looked very like an ordinary
street map.
"Here we are," he said. "We have been able to explore the whole pit
except this part here"--he dug the point of his pencil into a distant
corner--"and the reason is that the means of access to that particular
level are blocked. Here is where the block begins." The pencil swiftly
shaded in a section. "There is the intake, all blown to smithereens;
that and the road to Number Three. But if there are men alive in the
pit, Number Three is where we shall find them."
"Do you believe that they are alive?" asked Juggernaut.
"I do. It seems incredible that the whole roof should have come down.
We must get the ventilating plant in order and dig them out; that's
the only way. We should be able to start work immediately."
"Right!" said Juggernaut, bracing himself at the blessed thought of
action once more. "I'll call for volunteers."
A minute later, appearing at a brilliantly lit window, he addressed
the silent throng below him. To most of them this was the second
speech that they had received from him in twelve hours.
"We have been down the pit," he said. "There has been a biggish
explosion, and Number Three is cut off by a heavy fall. The air below
will be breathable in less than an hour, and we are going to set to
work right away, and clear, and clear, and clear until we find out
whether there is any one left alive there. Now,"--his voice rang out
in sudden and irresistible appeal--"we want _men_, and plenty of them.
Short shifts and high pressure! Those poor fellows have very little
water, no food, and a doubtful air supply. I ask for volunteers. Who
will come down? Step forward--now!"
A gentle ripple passed over the sea of upturned faces. Then it died
away. The distance between the speaker and his entire audience had
diminished by one pace.
"Thank you!" said Juggernaut simply. "I knew I had only to ask. Mr
Walker, will you call the overmen together and get going as soon as
possible?"
A few hours earlier the men of Belton had failed in an enterprise for
lack of a leader. Now they had found one.
* * * * *
Sir John Carr drove the first shovel into the mass which blocked the
main road, and for the space of thirty minutes he set a standard of
pace in the work of rescue which younger and more supple successors
found it hard to maintain.
Shift followed shift.
Sunday morning dawned up above, and the sun swung into a cloudless
April sky, but still the work below went on--grim, untiring,
unprofitable work. Hope deferred succeeded to hope deferred.
Twenty-four hours of blind energy advanced the rescuers three or four
hundred yards, but there seemed to be no end to the fall. Progress was
growing slower too, for the excavated material had to be carried back
farther every time. Once during the second night word was sent up the
shaft that two men had been hurt through a fresh fall in the roof,
over-eagerness being the cause. Still the work went on. And so Black
Sunday drew to a close, to be succeeded by a Monday of a very similar
hue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
VEILLESSE SAIT.
Lady Carr was at the pit-head early on Monday morning. She had arrived
in the Belton motor, just in time to provide for the conveyance of the
two injured men to the county hospital, eleven miles away. She herself
passed quietly in and out amid the anxious groups of men and women.
She said little: it was not a time for words; but it was noted that
she lingered for more than a few minutes in the company of Master
Hopper's mother, and that her grave, slow smile appeared to hearten
that broken widow mightily.
Presently she encountered her husband, whom she had not seen for two
nights and a day.
"You here?" he said.
"Yes. I have sent those two poor men away to Kilchester in the car,
and I am waiting for it to come back." Then a note of maternal
severity intervened. "Have you been to bed at all since I last saw
you?"
"Not much," admitted Juggernaut. "But I have a vague recollection of
lying down somewhere for a few hours last night. It may have been on
the office sofa or it may have been in the sump. What I am more
certain of is that I have not washed for days. I feel like Othello.
But what has brought you down to the pit?"
"I thought you would like to know," said Daphne, "that this affair is
in the morning papers."
Othello looked, if possible, blacker than before.
"Have they got the names?"
"Yes, Jim Carthew's too. And what do you think the result has been,
Jack? I have had a wire from--from--" for a moment Daphne's concern
for the tragedy around her was swallowed up in the joy of the
match-making sex over one sinner that repenteth--"whom do you think?"
"I don't know."
Daphne told him. "It was the first thing she heard when she landed in
England. She is _frantic_ about him, and is coming down here to-day.
She has offered to sleep anywhere, do anything, if only she may come.
Jack, isn't it too heavenly?" Daphne positively crowed.
Juggernaut's teeth flashed across his grimy countenance in a
sympathetic smile.
"You women!" he said softly. "We must fish him out for her after this,
Daphne. Well, Mrs Entwistle?"
A middle-aged woman with hungry eyes was at his elbow. She was Amos
Entwistle's wife.
"Would you come and speak to old Mr Entwistle, sir?" she said--"my
man's father. He is too rheumatic to move about easy, but he seems to
have something on his mind about another way of getting at them."
Sir John Carr turned and followed her promptly.
"Shall I come too, dear?" said Daphne.
"Better not. Go and send Walker to me if you can find him."
Mrs Entwistle conducted Juggernaut to a sunny nook, sheltered from the
keen breeze, against the brickwork of the power-house. Here sat
Entwistle senior, stone-deaf, almost blind, but with his
eighty-year-old wits still bright and birdlike.