GRANT ADAMS IS SOLD INTO BONDAGE AND MARGARET FENN RECEIVES A SHOCK
Perhaps the sound of their laughter drowned the mournful voices of the
bells in Grant Adams's heart. But the bells of the New Year left within
him some stirring of their eternal question. For as the light of day
sniffed out, Grant in a cage full of miners, with Dick Bowman and one of
his boys standing beside him, going down to the second level of the
mine, asked himself the question that had puzzled him: Why did not these
men get as much out of life as their fellows on the same pay in the town
who work in stores and offices? He could see no particular difference in
the intelligence of the men in Harvey and the workers in South Harvey;
yet there they were in poorer clothes, with, faces not so quick, clearly
not so well kept from a purely animal standpoint, and even if they were
sturdier and physically more powerful, yet to the young man working with
them in the mine, it seemed that they were a different sort from the
white-handed, keen-faced, smooth-shaven, well-groomed clerks of Market
Street, and that the clerks were getting the better of life. And Grant
cried in his heart: "Why--why--why?"
Then Dick Bowman said: "Red--penny for your thoughts?" The men near by
turned to Grant and he said: "Hello, Dick--" Then to the boy: "Well,
Mugs, how are you?" He spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans
and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and
Dick--excepting Casper Herdicker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they
passed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped
upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil
torches that hung suspended from timbers.
Stretching down long avenues these flickering torches blocked out the
alleys of the mine in either direction from the room, perhaps fifty by
forty feet, six or seven feet high, where they were standing. A car of
coal drawn by forlorn mules and pushed by a grinning boy, came creaking
around a distant corner, and drew nearer to the cage. A score of men
ending their shift were coming into the passageways from each end,
shuffling along, tired and silent. They met the men going to work with a
nod or a word and in a moment the room at the main bottom was empty and
silent, save for the groaning car and the various language spoken by the
grinning boy to the unhappy mule. Grant Adams turned off the main
passage to an air course, where from the fans above cold air was rushing
along a narrow and scarcely lighted runway about six feet wide and lower
than the main passage. Down this passage the new mule barn was building.
Grant went to his work, and just outside the barn, snuffed a sputtering
torch that was dripping burning oil into a small oily puddle on the damp
floor. The room was cold. Three men were with him and he was directing
them, while he worked briskly with them. Occasionally he left the barn
to oversee the carpenters who were timbering up a new shaft in a lower
level that was not yet ready for operation. Fifty miners and carpenters
were working on the third level, clearing away passages, making shaft
openings, putting in timbers, constructing air courses and getting the
level ready for real work. On the second level, in the little rooms, off
the long, gloomy passages lighted with the flaring torches hanging from
the damp timbers that stretched away into long vistas wherein the
torches at the ends of the passage glimmered like fireflies, men were
working--two hundred men pegging and digging and prying and sweating and
talking to their "buddies," the Welsh in monosyllables and the Irish in
a confusion of tongues. The cars came jangling along the passageways
empty and went back loaded and groaning. Occasionally the piping voice
of a boy and the melancholy bray of a mule broke the deep silence of the
place.
For sound traveled slowly through the gloom, as though the torches
sapped it up and burned it out in faint, trembling light to confuse the
men who sometimes came plodding down the galleries to and from the main
bottom. At nine o'clock Grant Adams had been twice over the mine, on the
three levels and had thirty men hammering away for dear life. He sent a
car of lumber down to the mule barn, while he went to the third level to
direct the division of an air shaft into an emergency escape. On one
side of this air shaft the air came down and there was a temporary hoist
for the men on the third level and on the other side a wooden stairway
was to be built up seventy feet toward the second level.
At ten o'clock Grant came back to the second level by the hoist in the
air shaft and as he started down the low air course branching off from
the main passage and leading to the new mule barn, he smelled burning
pine; and hurrying around a corner saw that the boy who dumped the pine
boards for the mule barn had not taken the boards into the barn, nor
even entirely to the barn, but had dumped them in the passage to the
windward of the barn, under the leaky torch, and Grant could see down
the air course the ends of the boards burning brightly.
The men working in the barn could not smell the fire, for the wind that
rushed down the air course was carrying the smoke and fumes away from
them. Grant ran down the course toward the fire, which was fanned by the
rushing air, came to the lumber, which was not all afire, jumped through
the flames, slapping the little blazes on his clothes with his hat as he
came out, and ran into the barn calling to the men to help him put out
the fire. They spent two or three minutes trying to attach the hose to
the water plug there, but the hose did not fit the plug; then they tried
to turn the plug to get water in their dinner pails and found that the
plug had rusted and would not turn. While they worked the fire grew. It
was impossible to send a man back through it, so Grant sent a man
speeding around the air course, to get a wrench from the pump room, or
from some one in the main bottom to turn on the water. In the meantime
he and the other two men worked furiously to extinguish the fire by
whipping it with their coats and aprons, but always the flames beat them
back. Helplessly they saw it eating along the mine timbers far down the
vacant passage. Little red devils of flame that winked maliciously two
hundred feet away, and went out, then sprang up again, then blazed
steadily. Grant and the two men tugged frantically at the burning
boards, trying to drag them out of the passageway into the barn, but
only here and there could an end be picked up, and it took five minutes
to get half a dozen charred boards into the barn. While they struggled
with the charred boards the flames down the passage kept glowing
brighter and brighter. The men were conscious that the flames were
playing around the second torch below the barn. Although they realized
that the man they sent for the wrench had nearly half a mile to go and
come by the roundabout way, they asked one another if he was making the
wrench!
Men began poking their heads into the course and calling, "Need any help
down there," and Grant cried, "Yes, go to the pump in the main balcony
with your buckets and get water." The man sent for the wrench appeared
down the long passage. Grant yelled,
"Hurry--hurry, man!" But though he came running, the fire seemed to be
going faster than he was. They could hear men calling and felt that
there was confusion at the end of the air course where it turned into
the main passage ahead of the flames. A second torch exploded,
scattering the fire far down the course. The man, breathless and
exhausted, ran up with the wrench. Then they felt the air in the air
course stop moving. They looked at one another. "Yes," said the man with
the wrench, "I told 'em to reverse the fans and when we got the water
turned on we'd hold the fire from going to the other end of the
passage." He said this between gasps as he tugged at the water plug with
the wrench. He hit it a vicious blow and the cap broke.
The fan had reversed. The air was rushing back, bringing the flames to
the barn. They beat the fire madly with their coats, but in two minutes
the roaring air had brought the flames upon them. The loose timber and
shavings in the barn were beginning to blaze and the men ran for their
lives down the air course. As they ran for the south passage, the smoke
followed them and they felt it in their eyes and lungs. The lights
behind them were dimmed, and those in front grew dim. They reached the
passage in a cloud of smoke, but it was going up the air shaft and did
not fill the passage. "Mugs," yelled Grant to a boy driving an ore car,
"run down this passage and tell the men there's a fire--where's your
father?"
"He's up yon way," called the boy, pointing in the opposite direction as
he ran. "You tell him." The fire was roaring down the air course behind
them, and Grant and the three men knew that in a few minutes the reverse
air would be sucking the flames up the air shaft, cutting off the
emergency escape for the men on the first and second levels.
Grant knew that the emergency escape was not completed for the third
level, but he knew that they were using the air chute for a temporary
hoist for the men from the third level and that the main shaft was not
running to the third level.
"Run down this passage, Bill," called Grant. "Get all those fellows.
Evans, you call the first level; I'll skin down this rope to the men
below." In an instant, as the men were flying on their errands, his red
head disappeared down the rope into the darkness. At the bottom of the
hoist in the third level Grant found forty or fifty men at work. They
were startled to see him come down without waiting for the bucket to go
up and he called breathlessly as his feet touched the earth: "Boys,
there's a fire above on the next level--I don't know how bad it is; but
it looks bad to me. They may get it out with a hose from the main
bottom--if they've got hose there that will reach any place."
"Let's go up," cried one of the men. As they started toward him, Grant
threw up his hand.
"Hold on now, boys--hold on. The fans will be blowing that fire down
this air shaft in a few minutes. How far up have you got the ladders?"
he asked.
Some one answered: "Still twelve feet shy." There was a scramble for the
buckets, but no one offered to man the windlass and hoist them up the
air shaft. Grant was only a carpenters' boss. The men around the buckets
were miners. But he called: "Get out of there, Hughey and Mike--none of
that. We must make that ladder first--get some timbers--put the rungs
three feet apart, and work quick."
He pointed at the timbers to be used for the ladders, stepped to the
windlass and cried:
"Here, Johnnie--you got no family--get hold of this windlass with me.
Ready now--family men first--you, Sam--you, Edwards--you, Lewellyn."
Then he bent to the wheel and the men in the bucket started up the
shaft. The others pounded at the ladder, and those who could find no
work clambered up the stairs to the bottom of the gap that separated
them from the second level. As the men in the buckets were nearly up to
the second level, where the hoist stopped, Grant heard one of them call:
"Hurry, hurry--here she comes," and a second later a hot, smoky wind
struck his face and he knew the fan was turned again and soon would be
blowing fire down the air course.
The men had the ladder almost finished. The men above on the stairs
smelled the smoke and began yelling. The bucket reached the top and was
started down. Grant looked up the air shaft and saw the fire--little
flickering flames lighting up the shaft near the second level. The air
rushing down was smoky and filled with sparks. The ladder was ready and
the men made a rush with it up the stairway. Most of their lamps were
put out and it was dark in the stairway. The men were uttering
hysterical, foolish cries as they rushed upward in their panic. The
ladder jolting against the sides of the chamber knocked the men off
their feet and there was tumbling and swearing and tripping and
struggling.
Grant grabbed the ladder from the men and held it above his head, and
called out:
"You men go up there in order. You'll not get the ladder till you
straighten up."
The emergency-passage was filling with smoke. The men were coughing and
gasping.
Up and down the stairs men called:
"Brace up, that's right."
"Red's right."
"We'll all go if we don't straighten up."
In a moment there was some semblance of order, and Grant wormed his way
to the top holding the ladder above him. He put one end of it on a
landing and nailed the foot of the ladder to the landing floor. Then he
stood on the landing, a great, powerful man with blazing eyes, and
called down: "Now come; one at a time, and if any man crowds I'll kill
him. Come on--one at a time." One came and went up; when he was on the
third rung of the ladder, Grant let another man pass up, and so three
men were on the ladder.
As the top man raised the trapdoor above, Grant and those upon the
ladder could see the flames and a great gust of smoke poured down. The
man at the top hesitated. On the other side of the partition in the air
chute the smoke was pouring and the fire was circling the top of the
emergency escape through which the men must pass.
"Go ahead or jump down," yelled Grant.
Those on the ladder and on the landing who could see up cried:
"Quick, for God's sake! Hurry!"
And in another second the first man had scrambled through the hole,
letting the trapdoor fall upon the head of the scrambling man just under
him. He fell, but Grant caught him, and shoved him into the next turn
upon the ladder.
After that they learned to lift their hands up and catch the trapdoor,
but they could see the flames burning the timbers and dropping sparks
and blowing smoke down the emergency shaft. Ten men went up; the fire in
the flume along the stairs below them was beginning to whip through the
board partition. The fan was pumping the third level full of smoke; it
was carried out of the stairway by the current. But the men were calling
below. Little Ira Dooley tried to go around Grant ahead of his turn at
the ladder. The cheater felt the big man's hand catch him and hold him.
The men below saw Grant hit the cheater upon the point of the jaw and
throw him half conscious under the ladder. The men climbed steadily up.
Twenty-five went through the trapdoor into the unknown hell raging
above. Again and again the ladder emptied itself, as the flames in the
shaft grew longer, and the circle of fire above grew broader. The men
passed through the trapdoor with scorching clothes.
The ladder was filling for the last time. The last man was on the first
rung. Grant reached under the ladder, caught Dooley about the waist and
started up with him. On the ladder Dooley regained consciousness, and
Grant shoved him ahead and saw Dooley slip through the trapdoor and then
stop in the smoke and fire and stand holding up the door for Grant. The
two men smiled through the smoke, and as Grant came through with his
clothes afire, he and Dooley looked quickly about them. Their lights
were out; but the burning timbers above gave them their directions. They
headed down the south passage, but even as they entered it the flames
barred them there. Then they turned to go up the passage, and could hear
men calling and yelling far down in the dark alley. The torches were
gone. Far ahead through the stifling smoke that swirled about the damp
timbers overhead, they could see the flickering lights of men running.
They started to follow the lamps. Dooley, who was a little man, slowly
dropped back. Grant caught his hand and dragged him. Soon they came up
to the others, who paused to give them lights. Then they all started to
run again, hoping to come out of that passage into the main bottom by
the main shaft in another quarter of a mile. Occasionally a man would
begin to lag, but some one always stopped to give him a hand. Once Grant
passed two men, Tom Williams and Evan Davis, leaning against a timber,
Davis fagged, Williams fanning his companion with his cap.
From some cross passage a group of men who worked on the second level
came rushing to them. They had no lights and were lost. Down the passage
they all ran together, and at the end they saw something cluttering it
up. The opening seemed to be closed. The front man tumbled and fell; a
dozen men fell over him. Three score men were trapped there, struggling
in a pile of pipes and refuse timber that all but filled the passage
into the main bottom. Five minutes were lost there. Then by twos they
crawled into the main bottom. There men were working with hose, trying
to put out the fire in the air course leading to the mule stables. They
did not realize that the other end of the mine was in flames.
Coal was still going up in the cages. The men in the east and west
passages were still at work. Smoke thickened the air. The entrance to
the air course was charred, and puffing smoke. The fans relaxed for a
moment upon a signal to cease until the course was explored. A hose was
playing in the course, but no man had ventured down it. When Grant came
out he called to the men with the cage boss: "Where's Kinnehan--where's
the pit boss?" No one knew. Some little boys--trimmers and drivers--were
begging to go up with the coal. Finally the cage boss let them ride up.
While they were wrangling, Grant said: "Lookee here--this is a real
fire, men; stop spitting on that air course with the hose and go turn
out the men."
The men from the third level were clamoring at the cage boss to go up.
Grant stopped them: "Now, here--let's divide off, five in a squad and go
after the men on this level, and five in a squad go up to the next level
and call the men out there. There's time if we hurry to save the whole
shift." He tolled them off and they went down the glimmering passages,
that were beginning to grow dim with smoke. As he left the main bottom
he saw by his watch under a torch that it was nearly eleven o'clock. He
ran with his squad down the passage, calling out the men from their
little rooms. Three hundred yards down the smoke grew denser. And he met
men coming along the passage.
"Are they all out back of you?" he called to the men as they passed.
"Yes," they cried, "except the last three or four rooms."
Grant and his men pushed forward to these rooms. As they went they
stumbled over an unconscious form in the passage. The men behind
Grant--Dooley, Hogan, Casper Herdicker, Williams, Davis, Chopini--joined
him. Their work was done. They had been in all the rooms. They picked up
the limp form, and staggered slowly back down the passage. The smoke
gripped Grant about the belly like a vise. He could not breathe. He
stopped, then crawled a few feet, then leaned against a timber. Finally
he rose and came upon the swaying group with the unconscious man.
Another man was down, and three men were dragging two.
The smoke kept rolling along behind them. It blackened the passage ahead
of them. Most of the lights the men carried were out. Grant lent a hand,
and the swaying procession crawled under the smoke. They went so slowly
that one man, then two on their hands and knees, then three more caught
up with them and they were too exhausted to drag the senseless man with
them. At a puddle in the way they soused the face of the prostrated man
in the water. That revived him. They could hear and feel another man
across the passage calling feebly for help. Grant and Chopini, speaking
different languages, understood the universal call of distress, and
together crawled in the dark and felt their way to the feeble voice.
Chopini reached the voice first. Grant could just distinguish in the
darkness the powerful movement of the Italian, with his head upon the
ground like a nosing dog's as he wormed under the fallen body and got it
on his back and bellied over to the group that was slowly moving down
the passage toward the glimmering light. As they passed the rooms
vacated by the miners, sometimes they put their heads in and got
refreshing air, for the smoke moved in a slow, murky current down the
passage and did not back into the rooms at first.
Grant and Chopini crawled on all fours into a room, and found the air
fresh. They rose, holding each other's hands. They leaned together
against the dark walls and breathed slowly, and finally their diaphragms
seemed to be released and they breathed more deeply. By a hand signal
they agreed to start out. At the door they crouched and crawled. A few
yards further they found the little group of a dozen men feebly pushing
on. Seven were trying to drag five. Further down the passage they could
hear the shrill cries of the men in the main bottom, as they came
hurrying from the other runways, and far back up the dark passage behind
them they could hear the roar of flames. They saw that they were
trapped. Behind them was the fire. Before them was the long, impossible
stretch to the main bottom, with the smoke thickening and falling lower
every second. So thick was the smoke that the light ahead winked out.
Death stood before them and behind them.
"Boys--" gasped Grant, "in here--let's get in one of these rooms and
wall it up."
The seven looked at him and he crawled to a room; sticking his head in
he found it murky. He tried another. The third room was fresh and cool,
and he called the men in.
Then all nine dragged one after another of the limp bodies into the room
and they began walling the door into the passage. There were two lights
on a dozen caps. Grant put out one lamp and they worked by the glimmer
of a single lamp. Gradually, but with a speed--slow as it had to
be--inspired by deadly terror, the wall went up. They daubed it with mud
that seemed to refresh itself from a pool that was hollowed in the
floor. After what seemed an age of swiftly accurate work, the wall was
waist high; the smoke bellied in, in a gust, and was suddenly sucked out
by an air current, and the men at the wall tapping some spring of
unknown energy bent frantically to their task. Three of the six men were
coming to life. They tried to rise and help. Two crawled forward, and
patted the mud in the bottom crevices. The fierce race with death called
out every man's reserves of body and soul.
Then, when the wall was breast high, some one heard a choking cry in the
passage. Grant was in the rear of the room, wrestling with a great rock,
and did not hear the cry; but Chopini was over the wall, and Dooley
followed him, and Evans followed him in an instant. They disappeared
down the passage, and when Grant returned, carrying the huge rock to the
speeding work at the wall, he heard a voice outside call:
"We've got 'em."
And then, after a silence, as the workmen hurried with the wall, there
came a call for help. Williams and Dennis Hogan followed Grant through
the hole now nearing the roof of the room, out into the passage. The air
was scorching. Some current was moving it rapidly. The second party came
upon the first struggling weakly with Dick Bowman and his son. Father
and son were unconscious and one of the rescuing party had fainted.
Again the vise gripped Grant's abdomen, and he put his face upon the
damp earth and panted. Slowly the three men in the darkness bellied
along until they felt the wall, then in an agony of effort raised
themselves and their burden. Up the wall they climbed to their knees, to
their feet, and met the hands of those inside who took the burden from
them. One, two, three whiffs of clean air as they stuck their heads in
the room, and they were gone--and another two men from the room followed
them. They came upon the first party working their gasping, fainting
course back to the wall, with their load, rolling a man before them. And
they all pulled and tugged and pushed and some leaned heavily upon
others and all looked death squarely in the face and no man whimpered.
The panic was gone; the divine spark that rests in every human soul was
burning, and life was little and cheap in their eyes, compared with the
chance they had to give it for others.
Flicks of fire were swirling down the passage, and the roar of the
flames came nearer and Grant fancied he could hear the crackle of it.
Chopini was on his knees clutching at the crevices in the wall; Hogan
and Dooley dug with their hands into the chinks, then four men were on
their feet, with the burden, and in the blackness, hands within the wall
reached out and took the man from those outside. The hands reached out
and felt other hands and pulled them up, and five, six men stood upon
their feet and were pulled, scrambling and trembling and reeling, into
the room. The blackness outside became a lurid glare. The flickering
lamp inside showed them that one man was outside. Grant Adams stood
faint and trembling, leaning against a wall of the room; the room and
the men whirled about him and he grew sick at the stomach. But with a
powerful effort he gathered himself, and lunged to the hole in the
rising wall. He was trying to pull himself up when Dooley pulled him
down, and went through the hole like a cat. Hogan followed Dooley and
Evans followed Hogan. "Here he is, right at the bottom," called Hogan,
and in an instant the feet of Casper Herdicker, then the sprawling legs,
then the body and then the head with the closed eyes and gaping mouth
came in, and then three men slowly followed him. Grant, revived by the
water from the puddle under him, stood and saw the last man--Dennis
Hogan--crawl in. Then Grant, seeing Hogan's coat was afire, looked out
and saw flames dancing along the timbers, and a spark with a gust of
smoke was sucked into the room by some eddy of the current outside. In a
last spurt of terrible effort the hole in the wall was closed and
plastered with mud and the men were sealed in their tomb.
It was but a matter of minutes before the furnace was raging outside.
The men in the room could hear it crackle and roar, and the mud in the
chinks steamed. The men daubed the chinks again and again.
As the fire roared outside, the men within the room fancied--and perhaps
it was the sheer horror of their situation that prompted their
fancy--that they could hear the screams of men and mules down the
passage toward the main bottom. After an hour, when the roar ceased,
they were in a great silence. And as the day grew old and the silence
grew deep and the immediate danger past, they began to wait. As they
waited they talked. At times they heard a roaring and a crash and they
knew that the timbers having burned away, the passages and courses were
caving in. By their watches they knew that the night was upon them. And
they sat talking nervously through the night, fearing to sleep, dreading
what each moment might bring. Lamp after lamp burned out in turn. And
still they sat and talked. Here one would drowse--there another lose
consciousness and sink to the ground, but always men were talking. The
talk never ceased. They were ashamed to talk of women while they were
facing death, so they kept upon the only other subjects that will hold
men long--God and politics. The talk droned on into morning, through the
forenoon, into the night, past midnight, with the thread taken from one
man sinking to sleep by another waking up, but it never stopped. The
water that seeped into the puddle on the floor moistened their lips as
they talked. There was no food save in two lunch buckets that had been
left in the room by fleeing miners, and thus went the first day.
The second day the Welsh tried to sing--perhaps to stop the continual
talk of the Irish. Then the Italian sang something, Casper Herdicker
sang the "Marseillaise" and the men clapped their hands, in the twilight
of the last flickering lamp that they had. After that Grant called the
roll at times and those who were awake felt of those who were asleep and
answered for them, and a second day wore into a third.
By the feeling of the stem of Grant Adams's watch as he wound it, he
judged that they had lived nearly four days in the tomb. Little Mugs
Bowman was crying for food, and his father was trying to comfort him, by
giving him his shoe leather to chew. Others rolled and moaned in their
sleep, and the talk grew unstable and flighty.
Some one said, "Hear that?" and there was silence, and no one heard
anything. Again the talk began and droned unevenly along.
"Say, listen," some one else called beside the first man who had heard
the sound.
Again they listened, and because they were nervous perhaps two or three
men fancied they heard something. But one said it was the roar of the
fire, another said it was the sound of some one calling, and the third
said it was the crash of a rock in some distant passageway. The talk did
not rise again for a time, but finally it rose wearily, punctuated with
sighs. Then two men cried:
"Hear it! There it is again!"
And breathless they all sat, for a second. Then they heard a voice
calling, "Hello--hello?" And they tried to cheer.
But the voice did not sound again, and a long time passed. Grant tried
to count the minutes as they ticked off in his watch, but his mind would
not remain fixed upon the ticking, so he lost track of the time after
three minutes had passed. And still the time dragged, the watch kept
ticking.
Then they heard the sound again, clearer; and again it called. Then Dick
Bowman took up a pick, called:
"Watch out, away from the wall, I'm going to make a hole."
He struck the wall and struck it again and again, until he made a hole
and they cried through it:
"Hello--hello--We're here." And they all tried to get to the hole and
jabber through it. Then they could hear hurrying feet and voices
calling, and confusion. The men called, and cried and sobbed and cheered
through the hole, and then they saw the gleam of a lantern. Then the
wall crumbled and they climbed into the passage. But they knew, who had
heard the falling timbers and the crashing rocks, for days, that they
were not free.
The rescuers led the imprisoned miners down the dark passage; Grant
Adams was the last man to leave the prison. As he turned an angle of the
passage, a great rock fell crashing before him, and a head of dirt
caught him and dragged him under. His legs and body were pinioned.
Dennis Hogan in front heard the crash, saw Grant fall, and stood back
for a moment, as another huge rock slid slowly down and came to rest
above the prostrate man. For a second no one moved. Then one man--Ira
Dooley--slowly crept toward Grant and began digging with his hands at
the dirt around Grant's legs. Then Casper Herdicker and Chopini came to
help. As they stood at Grant's head, quick as a flash, the rock fell and
the two men standing at Grant's head were crushed like worms. The roof
of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the
lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out.
He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis
and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over
Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above
and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as it fell.
"Mugs, come here," called Dick Bowman. "Take that shovel," commanded the
father, "and hold it over Grant's face to keep the dirt from smothering
him." The boy looked in terror at the roof dropping dirt and ready to
fall, but the father glared at the son and he obeyed. No one spoke, but
four men worked--all that could stand about him. They dug out his body;
they released his legs, they freed his feet, and when he was free they
helped him up and hurried him down the passage which he had traversed
four days ago. Before they turned into the main bottom room, he was sick
with the stench. And as he turned into that room, where the cage landed,
he saw by the lantern lights and by the flaring torches held by a dozen
men, a great congregation of the dead--some piled upon others, some in
attitudes of prayer, some shielding their comrades in death, some
fleeing and stricken prone upon the floor, some sitting, looking the foe
in the face. Men were working with the bodies--trying to sort them into
a kind of order; but the work had just begun.
The weakened men, led by their rescuers, picked their way through the
corpses and went to the top in a cage. Far down in the shaft, the
daylight cut them like a knife. And as they mounted higher and higher,
they could hear the murmur of voices above them, and Grant could hear
the sobs of women and children long before he reached the top. The word
that men had been rescued passed out of the shaft house before they
could get out of the cage, and a great shout went up.
The men walked out of the shaft house and saw all about them, upon flat
cars, upon the dump near the shaft, upon buildings around the shaft
house, a great crowd of cheering men and women, pale, drawn, dreadful
faces, illumined by eager eyes. Grant lifted his eyes to the crowd.
There in a carriage beside Henry Fenn, Grant saw Margaret staring at
him, and saw her turn pale and slide down into her husband's arms, as
she recognized Grant's face among those who had come out of death. Then
he saw his father and little Kenyon in the crowd and he dashed through
the thick of it to them. There he held the boy high in the air, and
cried as the little arms clung about his neck.
The great hoarse whistles roared and the shrill siren whistles screamed
and the car bells clanged and the church bells rang. But they did not
roar and scream and peal and toll for money and wealth and power, but
for life that was returned. As for the army of the dead below, for all
their torture, for all their agony and the misery they left behind for
society to heal or help or neglect--the army of the dead had its requiem
that New Year's eve, when the bells and whistles and sirens clamored for
money that brings wealth, and wealth that brings power, and power that
brings pleasure, and pleasure that brings death--and death?--and death?
The town had met death. But no one even in that place of mourning could
answer the question that the child heard in the bells. And yet that
divine spark of heroism that burns unseen in every heart however high,
however low--that must be the faltering, uncertain light which points us
to the truth across the veil through the mists made by our useless
tears.
And thus a New Year in Harvey began its long trip around the sun, with
its sorrows and its joys, with its merry pantomime and its mutes
mourning upon the hearse, with its freight of cares and compensations
and its sad ironies. So let us get on and ride and enjoy the journey.