high-pitched, senile tones he criticised the arrangements for rescue.
The excavatory operations were a mistake. Time was being wasted. The
poor lads inside had nobbut a little water to drink and nowt to eat.
The air would be getting foul, too.
"You must get there _quick_, Sir John," he said, rising painfully from
his seat. "See now."
He began to hobble laboriously away from the vicinity of the pit-head
towards the rather grimy fields which lay to the north of the
colliery. By this time Walker had arrived, bringing with him a burly,
bearded pit-inspector, sent down by the Board of Trade.
Twenty minutes' laborious walking ended in a halt in the middle of a
bleak pasture-field, from which a few unconcerned sheep were
extracting some exceedingly dubious-looking nourishment. Mr Entwistle
called a halt.
"Been thinking things over," said he, breathing stertorously. "Known
this country-side, above and below, nigh seventy year. The lads, they
go buzzing round the pit-head, but the old man"--as a matter of fact
he said "t'owd mon," but it will be simpler to paraphrase his
utterance--"sits at home and thinks things over. They has to come to
him in the end!"
All this was highly irrelevant and proportionately exasperating; but
old age has its privileges. Doubtless Agamemnon, Menelaus, and other
eager stalwarts longed with all their hearts to tear Nestor limb from
limb, what time that venerable bore delivered himself of fifty lines
of autobiographical hexameters as a preliminary to coming to the
point; yet they never did. Presently Mr Entwistle concluded his
exordium and tapped upon the ground with his staff.
"We are standing," he announced, "right over the road to Number Three.
Two hundred fathom down," he added, in case they should have
overlooked this point.
This, at anyrate, was a statement of fact. Walker produced and
consulted the pit-plan. "You are about right," he said. "Well?"
"How far along this road is the face?" inquired the old gentleman.
"It's a tidy number of years since I----"
Walker told him, with the result that the excursion was resumed.
Presently Mr Entwistle came to a halt again.
"We're over Number Three now," he said.
Walker again confirmed him, with the aid of a compass-bearing and the
pit-plan.
"Well?" he said.
The old man pointed with his stick to some dismantled and abandoned
pit buildings farther down the valley, a full mile away.
"The old Shawcliffe Pit," he croaked. "Worked out this forty year. But
I knowed it well when I were a lad."
Juggernaut, suddenly seeing light, caught the old man by the arm.
"You mean," said he rapidly, "that the Shawcliffe workings run up this
way----"
"No, no," said Walker, interrupting. "You are wrong, Mr Entwistle. The
Shawcliffe workings all run down the other way, to the north."
"Nay," persisted the old gentleman--"not all. They thowt there were a
seam this way, and they drove one road out here, if so be they might
pick it up. They had got signs of it, boring. But it were a faulty
seam. It weren't until Belton Pit were opened, thirty years later,
that they struck it fair."
"And that road runs out this way, from Shawcliffe shaft?" asked the
Inspector.
"Ay, and it must come very nigh to the Belton Workings now--nigh to
Number Three. I reckon----"
"He is right!" said Walker excitedly. "It's a chance! I _have_ heard
of this road, now I think of it." He turned to Entwistle again. "How
far out do you think it runs? Quick, man--tell us!"
For answer the veteran, much inflated, stumped off again in a
northerly direction, with all the assurance of a water-diviner in full
cry. After fifty yards or so he stopped.
"I should say it ended about here," he said. "You can trust the old
man's memory. The youngsters----"
Another lengthy deliverance was plainly threatened, but this time our
Nestor observed, not without justifiable chagrin, that the majority of
his audience had disappeared. The symposium was suddenly reduced to
himself and his daughter-in-law.
Testily curtailing his peroration, to the exclusion of severable
valuable aphorisms upon the advantages of senile decay over youthful
immaturity, the old gentleman resignedly took the arm of Mrs Amos, and
permitted himself to be conducted back to his fireside.
But he had served his turn for all that.
The other three were hurrying back to Belton Pit talking eagerly,
Juggernaut leading by half a pace.
"It's madness, of course," said Walker cheerfully. "This pit has been
closed for forty years. The props will be down----"
"The air will be foul," said the Inspector thoughtfully.
"Or explosive," added Walker.
"And there will probably be water," continued both together.
"Is the shaft still open?" asked Juggernaut brusquely.
"I believe so," said Walker.
"I suppose it would be possible to rig a derrick and tackle over it?"
"Yes."
They strode on a dozen paces.
"I am going down," said Juggernaut.
"I am going with you," said Walker.
"And I," said the Inspector, "am coming too."
They broke into a trot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
HOLD THE FORT!
The safety-lamps had burned themselves out hours ago, and the
imprisoned party sat on in the dark. There was nothing else to do.
Food they had none: their water was exhausted. They slept fitfully,
but in the black darkness sleep seemed little removed from death, and
time from eternity.
Jim Carthew lay with his head upon a friendly lump of coal, pondering
with his accustomed detachment upon the sundry and manifold changes of
this world. He thought of Death. Plainly he and his companions were
about to solve the mystery of what lay hidden round that corner which
our omniscience is pleased to consider the end of all things. What
would they find there? Another life--a vista more glorious and sublime
than man in his present state could conceive? Or just another long
lane--just another highway of labour and love, of service and reward?
Or--a _cul-de-sac_--an abyss--a jumping-off place? He wondered. Not
the last alternative, he thought: more likely one of the other two.
Anyhow, he would know soon, and it would be interesting. His one
regret was that he would not be able to come back, even for five
minutes, to tell his friends about it.
Friends!...
This brought a new train of reflection. He thought of Jack Carr and
Jack Carr's wife. Would the latter keep her promise, and come back to
her husband? He wondered. She should be in Belton this week, all being
well--that is, if this was the week he thought it was. But time seemed
rather a jumbled affair at present. Besides, he was so infernally
hungry that he could not reason things out. Never mind!...
He thought of Nina Tallentyre. _That_ difficulty had solved itself,
anyhow. No need for further hopings or strivings: that was a relief!
When their rupture occurred he had prayed to be excused from living
further. He had even petitioned that the earth might open and swallow
him up for ever. Well, the earth had done so, so he ought to be
satisfied. He was gone down into silence, and Nina was rid of
him--well rid of him! He was well rid of her, too. She had led him a
dog's life the last few months. A _dog's_ life. He repeated the fact
to himself pertinaciously, but without any great feeling either of
conviction or resentment.
He felt strangely contented and cheerful. His mind dwelt with
persistence on the bright side of things. He thought of the day when
she and he had first met, and Nina, in her superb, imperious manner,
had desired him to take her out of "this rabble," and come and amuse
her in a corner. He remembered subsequent meetings; various gracious
acts of condescension on Nina's part; and finally one special evening
on board a yacht in regatta-time, when they had sat together in a
corner of the upper deck in the lee of the chart-house, with a
perfectly preposterous moon egging them on, and the faint strains of
_Caressante_ pulsing across the silent water from the Commodore's
yacht hard by; and Nina had nearly--almost--all-but--and then
actually--capitulated.
She had gone back on her word three weeks later, it was true; but he
drew consolation even now from the memory of something which had
slipped through her long lashes and rolled down her cheek even as she
dismissed him, a memory which had carried through many a black hour.
It was over episodes like this that his mind lingered. Other and less
satisfactory items declined to come up for review. Perhaps, he
reflected, dying men, provided they had lived clean and run straight,
were always accorded this privilege. Only the credit side of the
ledger accompanied them on their journey into the unknown. It was a
comforting thought.
... He wondered what she would think when she heard about it. In a
blue envelope at the bottom of his private strong-box they would find
his will, a primitive document composed in secrecy, and endorsed: "To
be opened when I have gone out for good." In this he had bequeathed
all he possessed to "my friend Miss Nina Tallentyre," be she maid,
wife, or widow at the moment. Carthew was not a man who loved by
halves. All that he had was hers, whether she needed it or not. Of
course she must not be made conspicuous in the matter; he had seen to
that. The bequest was to be quite quiet and unostentatious. No
probate, or notices in the papers, or rot of that kind. In the blue
envelope was enclosed a private letter to his lawyers, dwelling on the
importance of this point. They were decent old buffers, that firm, and
would understand. They would square up any death-duties and other
legal fakements that were necessary, and then pass on the balance to
little Nina, to buy herself pretty things with. But no publicity! No
embarrassment!
... He fell asleep, and dreamed, from the natural perversity of
things, of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
When he awoke, low voices were conversing near him. Farther away he
could hear the regular breathing of Master Hopper, who, with youth's
ready amenability to Nature's own anodynes, was slumbering peacefully.
"I can weel understand, Mr Entwistle," observed Mr Wilkie in measured
tones, "that no decent body would like to be seen entering yin o' they
Episcopalian Kirks."
Amos Entwistle's heavy voice agreed. He commented with heat upon
indulgence in vain repetitions and other heathen practices favoured by
the Anglican community; and related with grim relish an anecdote of
how his own daughter, lured from the Wesleyan fold by the external
fascinations of the new curate, had once privily attended morning
service at the parish church--to return, shocked to the foundations of
her being, with horrific tales of candles burning on the altar in
broad daylight and the Lord's Prayer repeated four times in the course
of a single service.
"But what I couldna thole," continued Mr Wilkie, who had been
characteristically pursuing his own line of thought in the meantime,
"would be no tae belong tae the kirk of the _land_. A Chapel body! I
could never endure the disgrace of it."
Entwistle demurred vigorously. It was no disgrace to be Chapel folks.
Sturdy Independents were proud to be able to dispense with
State-aided, spoon-fed religion. Disgrace, indeed! Were not Mr
Wilkie's qualms on the subject of Dissent due rather to a hankering
after the flesh-pots--the loaves and fishes--the----
"Well, perhaps no exactly a disgrace," continued Mr Wilkie,
disregarding the latter innuendo, "but a kin' o' stigma, like. Man,
it's an awful thing tae walk doon the street and meet the minister o'
the pairish, and him pass by and tak' no more notice of ye than if ye
were a Plymouth Brother or an Original Secessionist. I mind yince when
I was in a Tynside pit, I sat under Mr Maconochie--him that gave up a
grand kirk in Paisley tae tak a call tae oor wee bit Presbyterian
contraption, Jarrow way. Now, although Mr Maconochie's kirk was my
kirk and him oor minister, I used tae feel far more uplifted if I got
a good-day frae the minister o' the English Kirk--Golightly, or some
sic' name--an _Episcopalian_! I canna imagine why, but there it was. I
doot it was just orthodoxy. He was the minister o' the kirk o' the
land, and Mr Maconochie, being, for him, on the wrong side of the
Border, was not. Gin I had met yon felly Golightly trapesing doon the
High Street o' Jedburgh, things would hae been gey different; for
then----"
The point at issue, Entwistle's deep patient voice asseverated, was
this. Should a man who was an Independent allow himself or his bairns
to have aught to do with Church folk on any pretence whatever?
He was answered in the darkness by a third voice. Denton, the
hewer--Atkinson, the retired Salvationist, shovelled and wheeled away
in a tub what Denton hewed--had awoken from an uneasy sleep, and was
listening to the conversation. Of all that little band, probably he
was the least prepared to die. He was a drunkard, a blasphemer, and an
evil liver. But like the rest of us, he had his redeeming features. He
had inspired and kept alive for a period of ten years the love of his
wife--a feat which many an ex-sidesman, buried beneath a mountain of
expensive masonry adorned by an epitaph beginning, "Well done, good
and faithful servant!" has signally failed to accomplish. He sat up
now.
"Ah niver 'ad nowt to do wi' churches or chapels," he began defiantly.
"But ah knaws this. When my Maggie were lyin' badly four years agone,
and us thought she was goin' to die, she asked me to go and fetch her
pastor--that's what she called him. Ah ran along to his house and
begged him to come. He said"--the man's voice grew thick, and one
could almost see his sombre eyes glow in the gross darkness--"he said
he were busy! There was a swarry that neet that 'twas his duty to
attend, and next day he was goin' off to a political meeting to
protest against t' Education Bill, or summat. He said, too, that he
had enough to do ministerin' to the wants o' them that deserved
ministerin' to, wi'out comin' to the house o' the likes o' me. When
had he last seen me in t' chapel, he would like to knaw? Yes, _that_
was what he wanted to knaw! He wanted to stand and ask me questions
like that when my Maggie----!... Ah cursed him, and his chapel, and
his fat-bellied deacons till Ah were out o' puff with it: then Ah went
off down the street half-crazed. There Ah runs straight into a young
feller wi' a soft black hat and long legs. He was standing outside t'
door of his lodgings, smoking a pipe in the dark. He was t' curate at
t' parish church, and when he saw I wasn't in liquor, he asked me what
was my trouble. I telled him. 'Is that all?' says he. 'Will I do? I've
just come off my day's work, and I ain't got nothing to do but amuse
myself now.' It were nigh ten o'clock. Well, he comes with me, and he
sat by my Maggie all the neet through, and sent me with a note to a
doctor that were a friend of his, and only went away himsel' at seven
o'clock next morning, because he had to get shaved and take early
service or summat. _That's_ all your chapel folk ever done for me,
Amos Entwistle."
"That was a special case, and proves no rules. Besides," said
Entwistle soberly, "this is no time for religious differences. We are
in God's hands now, and I doubt we shall all be in a place soon where
there is neither Church nor Chapel."
"Would it no be best for us all tae keep silence for a matter o' ten
minutes," suggested Wilkie, "and pit up a bit prayer each of his ain,
we bein' no all of the same way of thinkin' in these matters? That
gate, wi' so many prayers o' different denominations goin' up, yin at
least should get gettin' through the roof of the pit. Are ye agreed,
chaps?"
"Ay, ay!" said Entwistle.
The others all murmured assent, save Master Hopper, who shrieked out
in sudden fear. The proximity of death had become instantly and
dreadfully apparent to him on Mr Wilkie's suggestion. Carthew reached
out and pulled him to his side.
"Come over here, by me," he said.
Master Hopper, greatly soothed, crept close, and settled down
contentedly enough with an arm round Carthew's shoulders. Presently
Carthew heard him repeating The Lord's Prayer to himself in a low and
respectful whisper.
The silence lasted longer than ten minutes. For one thing, the
supplicants were exhausted in body, soul, and spirit, and their
orisons came slowly. For another, there was no need to hurry. For
nearly an hour no one spoke.
At length some one sat up in the darkness, and the voice of Atkinson
inquired--
"Mr Carthew, sir, I think a song of praise would hearten us all."
"I believe it would," said Carthew. He was not enamoured of the
corybantic hymnology of the Salvation Army, but the horror of black
darkness was beginning to eat into his soul, and he knew that the
others were probably in a worse plight. "What shall we sing?"
"At the meeting where I were saved," said Atkinson deferentially, "we
concluded worship by singing a hymn I have never forgotten since:
_Hold the Fort!_"
"That sounds a good one," said Carthew, struggling with an
unreasonable sensation of being in the chair at a smoking-concert.
"Does any one else here know _Hold the Fort!_?"
Yes, Entwistle knew it. Master Hopper had heard it. Mr Wilkie had not.
He did not hold with hymns: even paraphrases were not, in his opinion,
altogether free from the taint of Popery. If it had been one of the
Psalms of David, now! Still, he would join. Denton knew no hymns, but
was willing to be instructed in this one.
Atkinson, trembling with gratification, slowly rehearsed the words,
the others repeating them after him.
"We will sing it now," he said.
He raised the tune in a clear tenor. Most north-countrymen are
musicians by instinct. In a few moments this grim prison was flooded
by a wave of sonorous melody. The simple, vulgar, taking tune swelled
up; the brave homely words rang out, putting new heart into every one.
Each and all joyfully realised that there are worse ways of going to
one's death than singing a battle-song composed by Moody and Sankey.
With drawn white faces upturned to the heaven they could not see they
sang on, flinging glorious defiance into the very teeth of
Death--gentleman and pitman, Church and Chapel, zealot and infidel.
"Last verse again!" commanded Atkinson.
"Wait a moment!" cried Entwistle, starting up.
But no one heard him. The chorus was rolling out once more--
"_Hold the Fort, for I am coming_----"
Tap, tap, tap! Scrape, scrape, scrape! Hammer, hammer, hammer!
The hymn paused, wavered, and stopped dead on the final shout.
"By God!" screamed a voice--it was Denton's--"here they are!"
Carthew, with Hopper's arms tightening convulsively round him, started
up.
"Is it true?" he asked hoarsely.
"Ay! Listen! They have found us. They are within a few yards of us,"
said Entwistle.
"_Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!_" sang Atkinson suddenly
and exultantly, and the others joined him.
* * * * *
Entwistle was right. They were found. Reasoned calculation, dogged
persistence, and blind indifference to their own safety had brought
the search party triumphantly along the mouldering rickety passages of
Shawcliffe Pit to the nearest point of contact with Number Three in
Belton; and _Hold the Fort!_ proceeding from a subterranean cave of
harmony not many yards away, had done the rest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
THE LAST TO LEAVE.
It was night once more, and the great arc lights snapped and sizzled
above the waste-heaps and truck-lines surrounding the head of Belton
Pit. But the scene was deserted. The centre of interest had shifted to
Shawcliffe, a mile away. Here a vast silent throng of human beings
stood expectantly in groups, their faces illuminated by the naphtha
flares which had been erected here and there about the long-abandoned
pithead.
There was news--tense, thrilling news--and the prospect of more. The
ancient shaft had been opened and a bucket and tackle rigged--there
was no time to ship a cage--and a search party had gone down at dusk.
Word had shortly been sent up that the road to the south was still
open, though the air was foul and the props rickety. Then came a
frantic tug at the rope, and a messenger was hauled to the surface,
crying aloud that men were alive in Belton Pit. It was hoped, he
added, that the search party would reach them by midnight, for the
dividing wall was surprisingly thin. Sir John Carr's order was that
blankets and stretchers should be prepared; also food and medical
comforts, for the prisoners had fasted for something like sixty hours.
With that the messenger had dived below once more, and the game of
patience was resumed.
It was past midnight now, and everything was in readiness. On the
outskirts of the throng, at the side of the rough and lumpy road,
stood a motor-car with two occupants--women. One of them was her
ladyship; the other the spectators failed to recognise. But there were
rumours about to the effect that she was a visitor to Belton recently
arrived from London. Lady Carr had been seen meeting her at the
station that afternoon.
The stranger's name, had it been told, would not have conveyed much
information to the watchers. It was Nina Tallentyre.
* * * * *
There was a sudden swirl and heave in the crowd. The hand-turned
windlass was at work again, and some one was being hauled slowly up
the shaft. It was Mr Walker, the manager.
They made a lane for him, until he reached a convenient rostrum formed
by an inverted and rusty truck. This he mounted and very briefly told
them the news--news which made them laugh foolishly and sob by turns.
There was no cheering: they were past that.
In the excitement the next man who followed him up the shaft passed
unnoticed. It was Sir John Carr. He saw the hooded motor standing
apart, Mr Vick sitting motionless at the wheel. Next moment he was in
beside the two women, overalls and all, holding Daphne's hands in a
single grimy fist and telling them what we know already.
"Is he _perfectly_ safe?" asked Nina for the tenth time. She did not
possess Daphne's aristocratic composure under critical circumstances.
"Yes--but very weak. I am sending him up second. The first is a
pit-boy. When Carthew arrives you had better put him in the motor and
take him straight home."
"Jack!" said Daphne.
She slipped out of the car and accompanied her husband into the
darkness outside the radius of flaring lights.
"Are you going down again?" she asked.
"I am."
"And when are you coming up?" The unflinching courage which upholds so
many women in the face of danger had never failed Daphne during those
long days and nights. But now the courage was receding with the
danger.
Juggernaut smiled.
"When would you have me come up?" he asked.
"Last," said Daphne, suddenly proud. "It is the only place for you. I
will wait here. Nina can take her Jim home, and the car can come back
later for you and me. Jack!"
Her husband turned and regarded her curiously. Their eyes met.
"Well?" he said.
"Jack," continued Daphne in a low voice, "is there much risk down
there--for you, I mean?"
"There is always risk, of a sort, down a coal-pit," replied her
husband pontifically. "A little explosive marsh-gas, or a handful of
finely divided coal-dust lying in a cranny, might suddenly assert
itself. Still, there are risks everywhere. One might be struck down by
apoplexy at a vestry meeting."
Daphne gave his arm a squeeze, an ingratiating childish squeeze,
suggestive of the Daphne of old negotiating for extension of dress
allowance.
"Jack, stay up here! You have done enough."
"_Post me, Satanella!_" smiled her husband. Then, more seriously:
"Daphne, if I came to you and asked for orders _now_, where would you
send me, I being what I am--the proprietor of the pit--and you being
what you are--the proprietress of my good name?"
Daphne's fit had passed.
"I should send you," she answered bravely, "down the shaft, with
orders to stay there until every one else was safely out."
"I obey," said Juggernaut. "_Au revoir!_"
"Jack!" said Daphne faintly. Her face was uplifted.
"It will be a coaly one!" said her husband, complying. Then came an
accusation.
"Daphne, you are trembling! This is not up to your usual standard."
"I can't help it," said Daphne miserably. "I am a coward. But I don't
mind," she added more cheerfully, "so long as no one else knows. _You_
won't give me away!"
At that Juggernaut held her to him a moment longer.
"Daphne, my wife," he whispered suddenly--"thank God for you--at
last!"