At moments in the midst of this confusion, Hal found himself trying to
recall who had worked in Number One, among the people he knew. He
himself had been employed in Number Two, so he had naturally come to
know more men in that mine. But he had known some from the other
mine--Old Rafferty for one, and Mary Burke’s father for another, and at
least one of the members of his check-weighman group--Zamierowski. Hal
saw in a sudden vision the face of this patient little man, who smiled
so good-naturedly while Americans were trying to say his name. And Old
Rafferty, with all his little Rafferties, and his piteous efforts to
keep the favour of his employers! And poor Patrick Burke, whom Hal had
never seen sober; doubtless he was sober now, if he was still alive!
Then in the crowd Hal encountered Jerry Minetti, and learned that
another man who had been down was Farenzena, the Italian whose
“fanciulla” had played with him; and yet another was Judas
Apostolikas--having taken his thirty pieces of silver with him into the
deathtrap!
People were making up lists, just as Hal was doing, by asking questions
of others. These lists were subject to revision--sometimes under
dramatic circumstances. You saw a woman weeping, with her apron to her
eyes; suddenly she would look up, give a piercing cry, and fling her
arms about the neck of some man. As for Hal, he felt as if he were
encountering a ghost when suddenly he recognised Patrick Burke, standing
in the midst of a group of people. He went over and heard the old man’s
story--how there was a Dago fellow who had stolen his timbers, and he
had come up to the surface for more; so his life had been saved, while
the timber-thief was down there still--a judgment of Providence upon
mine-miscreants!
Presently Hal asked if Burke had been to tell his family. He had run
home, he said, but there was nobody there. So Hal began pushing his way
through the throngs, looking for Mary, or her sister Jennie, or her
brother Tommie. He persisted in this search, although it occurred to him
to wonder whether the family of a hopeless drunkard would appreciate the
interposition of Providence in his behalf.
He encountered Olson, who had had a narrow escape, being employed as a
surface-man near the hoist. All this was an old story to the organiser,
who had worked in mines since he was eight years old, and had seen many
kinds of disaster. He began to explain things to Hal, in a matter of
fact way. The law required a certain number of openings to every mine,
also an escape-way with ladders by which men could come out; but it cost
good money to dig holes in the ground.
At this time the immediate cause of the explosion was unknown, but they
could tell it was a “dust explosion” by the clouds of coke-dust, and no
one who had been into the mine and seen its dry condition would doubt
what they would find when they went down and traced out the “force” and
its effects. They were supposed to do regular sprinkling, but in such
matters the bosses used their own judgment.
Hal was only half listening to these explanations. The thing was too raw
and too horrible to him. What difference did it make whose fault it was?
The accident had happened, and the question was now how to meet the
emergency! Underneath Olson’s sentences he heard the cry of men and boys
being asphyxiated in dark dungeons--he heard the wailing of women, like
a surf beating on a distant shore, or the faint, persistent
accompaniment of muted strings: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!”
They came upon Jeff Cotton again. With half a dozen men to help him, he
was pushing back the crowd from the pit-mouth, and stretching barbed
wired to hold them back. He was none too gentle about it, Hal thought;
but doubtless women are provoking when they are hysterical. He was
answering their frenzied questions, “Yes, yes! We’re getting a new fan.
We’re doing everything we can, I tell you. We’ll get them out. Go home
and wait.”
But of course no one would go home. How could a woman sit in her house,
or go about her ordinary tasks of cooking or washing, while her man
might be suffering asphyxiation under the ground? The least she could do
was to stand at the pit-mouth--as near to him as she could get! Some of
them stood motionless, hour after hour, while others wandered through
the village streets, asking the same people, over and over again, if
they had seen their loved ones. Several had turned up, like Patrick
Burke; there seemed always a chance for one more.