These were the last words Hal spoke. They were obvious enough words, yet
when he looked back upon the coincidence, it seemed to him a singular
one. For while he was sitting there chatting, it happened that the poor
under-dogs inside the mountain were in the midst of one of those
experiences which make the romance and terror of coal-mining. One of the
boys who were employed underground, in violation of the child labour
law, was in the act of bungling his task. He was a “spragger,” whose
duty it was to thrust a stick into the wheel of a loaded car to hold it;
and he was a little chap, and the car was in motion when he made the
attempt. It knocked him against the wall--and so there was a load of
coal rolling down grade, pursued too late by half a dozen men. Gathering
momentum, it whirled round a curve and flew from the track, crashing
into timbers and knocking them loose. With the timbers came a shower of
coal-dust, accumulated for decades in these old workings; and at the
same time came an electric light wire, which, as it touched the car,
produced a spark.
And so it was that Hal, chatting with the marshal, suddenly felt, rather
than heard, a deafening roar; he felt the air about him turn into a
living thing which struck him a mighty blow, hurling him flat upon the
floor. The windows of the room crashed inward upon him in a shower of
glass, and the plaster of the ceiling came down on his head in another
shower.
When he raised himself, half stunned, he saw the marshal, also on the
floor; these two conversationalists stared at each other with horrified
eyes. Even as they crouched, there came a crash above their heads, and
half the ceiling of the room came toward them, with a great piece of
timber sticking through. All about them were other crashes, as if the
end of the world had come.
They struggled to their feet, and rushing to the door, flung it open,
just as a jagged piece of timber shattered the side-walk in front of
them. They sprang back again, “Into the cellar!” cried the marshal,
leading the way to the back-stairs.
But before they had started down these stairs, they realised that the
crashing had ceased. “What is it?” gasped Hal, as they stood.
“Mine-explosion,” said the other; and after a few seconds they ran to
the door again.
The first thing they saw was a vast pillar of dust and smoke, rising
into the sky above them. It spread before their dazed eyes, until it
made night of everything about them. There was still a rain of lighter
debris pattering down over the village; as they stared, and got their
wits about them, remembering how things had looked before this, they
realised that the shaft-house of Number One had disappeared.
“Blown up, by God!” cried the marshal; and the two ran out into the
street, and looking up, saw that a portion of the wrecked building had
fallen through the roof of the jail above their heads.
The rain of debris had now ceased, but there were clouds of dust which
covered the two men black; the clouds grew worse, until they could
hardly see their way at all. And with the darkness there fell silence,
which, after the sound of the explosion and the crashing of debris,
seemed the silence of death.
For a few moments Hal stood dazed. He saw a stream of men and boys
pouring from the breaker; while from every street there appeared a
stream of women; women old, women young--leaving their cooking on the
stove, their babies in the crib, with their older children screaming at
their skirts, they gathered in swarms about the pit-mouth, which was
like the steaming crater of a volcano.
Cartwright, the superintendent, appeared, running toward the fan-house.
Cotton joined him, and Hal followed. The fan-house was a wreck, the
giant fan lying on the ground a hundred feet away, its blades smashed.
Hal was too inexperienced in mine-matters to get the full significance
of this; but he saw the marshal and the superintendent stare blankly at
each other, and heard the former’s exclamation, “That does for us!”
Cartwright said not a word; but his thin lips were pressed together,
and there was fear in his eyes.
Back to the smoking pit-mouth the two men hurried, with Hal following.
Here were a hundred, two hundred women crowded, clamouring questions
all at once. They swarmed about the marshal, the superintendent, the
other bosses--even about Hal, crying hysterically in Polish and
Bohemian and Greek. When Hal shook his head, indicating that he did not
understand them, they moaned in anguish, or shrieked aloud. Some
continued to stare into the smoking pit-mouth; others covered the sight
from their eyes, or sank down upon their knees, sobbing, praying with
uplifted hands.
Little by little Hal began to realise the full horror of a
mine-disaster. It was not noise and smoke and darkness, nor frantic,
wailing women; it was not anything above ground, but what was below in
the smoking black pit! It was men! Men whom Hal knew, whom he had
worked with and joked with, whose smiles he had shared; whose daily
life he had come to know! Scores, possibly hundreds of them, they were
down here under his feet--some dead, others injured, maimed. What would
they do? What would those on the surface do for them? Hal tried to get
to Cotton, to ask him questions; but the camp-marshal was surrounded,
besieged. He was pushing the women back, exclaiming, “Go away! Go
home!”
What? Go home? they cried. When their men were in the mine? They crowded
about him closer, imploring, shrieking.
“Get out!” he kept exclaiming. “There’s nothing you can do! There’s
nothing anybody can do yet! Go home! Go home!” He had to beat them back
by force, to keep them from pushing one another into the pit-mouth.
Everywhere Hal looked were women in attitudes of grief: standing rigid,
staring ahead of them as if in a trance; sitting down, rocking to and
fro; on their knees with faces uplifted in prayer; clutching their
terrified children about their skirts. He saw an Austrian woman, a
pitiful, pale young thing with a ragged grey shawl about her head,
stretching out her hands and crying: “Mein Mann! Mein Mann!” Presently
she covered her face, and her voice died into a wail of despair: “O,
mein Mann! O, mein Mann!” She turned away, staggering about like some
creature that has received a death wound. Hal’s eyes followed her; her
cry, repeated over and over incessantly, became the leit-motif of this
symphony of horror.
He had read about mine-disasters in his morning newspaper; but here a
mine-disaster became a thing of human flesh and blood. The unendurable
part of it was the utter impotence of himself and of all the world. This
impotence became clearer to him each moment--from the exclamations of
Cotton and of the men he questioned. It was monstrous, incredible--but
it was so! They must send for a new fan, they must wait for it to be
brought in, they must set it up and get it into operation; they must
wait for hours after that while smoke and gas were cleared out of the
main passages of the mine; and until this had been done, there was
nothing they could do--absolutely nothing! The men inside the mine would
stay. Those who had not been killed outright would make their way into
the remoter chambers, and barricade themselves against the deadly “after
damp.” They would wait, without food or water, with air of doubtful
quality--they would wait and wait, until the rescue-crew could get to
them!