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DERRICK STERLING
A STORY OF THE MINES
BY KIRK MUNROE
Author of "THE FLAMINGO FEATHER"
[Illustration: IN THE BURNING BREAKER.]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
COPYRIGHT, 19l6, BY KIRK MUNROE
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
I. IN THE BURNING BREAKER
II. A FEARFUL RIDE
III. THE MINE BOSS TAKES DERRICK INTO HIS CONFIDENCE
IV. INTRODUCING HARRY, THE BUMPING-MULE
V. ATTACKED BY ENEMIES, AND LOST IN THE MINE
VI. THE SECRET MEETING.--A PLUNGE DOWN AN AIR SHAFT
VII. A CRIPPLE'S BRAVE DEED
VIII. DERRICK STERLING'S SPLENDID REVENGE
IX. SOCRATES, THE WISE MINE RAT
X. IN THE OLD WORKINGS.--MISLED BY AN ALTERED LINE
XI. A FATAL EXPLOSION OF FIRE-DAMP
XII. THE MINE BOSS IN A DILEMMA
XIII. LADIES IN THE MINE.--HARRY MULE'S SAD MISHAP
XIV. A LIFE IS SAVED AND DERRICK IS PROMOTED
XV. A "SQUEEZE" AND A FALL OF ROCK
XVI. BURSTING OF AN UNDERGROUND RESERVOIR
XVII. IMPRISONED IN THE FLOODED MINE
XVIII. TO THE RESCUE!--A MESSAGE FROM THE PRISONERS
XIX. RESTORED TO DAYLIGHT
XX. GOOD-BY TO THE COLLIERY
ILLUSTRATIONS
In the burning breaker
"Here, lad, lead this mule down the rest of the way, will ye?"
Suddenly there came a blinding flash, a roar as of a cannon
Good-by to the colliery
DERRICK STERLING: A STORY OF THE MINES
CHAPTER I
IN THE BURNING BREAKER
"Fire! Fire in the breaker! Oh, the boys! the poor boys!" These cries,
and many like them--wild, heartrending, and full of fear--were heard on
all sides. They served to empty the houses, and the one street of the
little mining village of Raven Brook was quickly filled with excited
people.
It was late in the afternoon of a hot summer's day, and the white-faced
miners of the night shift were just leaving their homes. Some of them,
with lunch-pails and water-cans slung over their shoulders by light iron
chains, were gathered about the mouth of the slope, prepared to descend
into the dark underground depths where they toiled. The wives of the day
shift men, some of whom, black as negroes with coal-dust, powder-smoke,
and soot, had already been drawn up the long slope, were busy preparing
supper. From the mountainous piles of refuse, of "culm," barefooted
children, nearly as black as their miner fathers, were tramping homeward
with burdens of coal that they had gleaned from the waste. High above
the village, sharply outlined against the western sky, towered the huge,
black bulk of the breaker.
The clang of its machinery had suddenly ceased, though the shutting-down
whistle had not yet sounded. From its many windows poured volumes of
smoke, more dense than the clouds of coal-dust with which they were
generally filled, and little tongues of red flame were licking its
weather-beaten timbers. It was an old breaker that had been in use many
years, and within a few days it would have been abandoned for the new
one, recently built on the opposite side of the valley. It was still in
operation, however, and within its grimy walls a hundred boys had sat
beside the noisy coal chutes all through that summer's day, picking out
bits of slate and tossing them into the waste-bins. From early morning
they had breathed the dust-laden air, and in cramped positions had
sorted the shallow streams of coal that constantly flowed down from the
crushers and screens above. Most of them were between ten and fourteen
years of age, though there were a few who were even younger than ten,
and some who were more than sixteen years old.[1]
[Footnote 1: A law of the State of Pennsylvania forbids the employment
of boys less than twelve years old in breakers, or less than fourteen in
mines. This law is not, however, strictly enforced.]
Among these breaker boys two were particularly noticeable, although they
were just as black and grimy as the others, and were doing exactly the
same work. The elder of these, Derrick Sterling, was a manly-looking
fellow, whose face, in spite of its coating of coal-dust, expressed
energy, determination, and a quicker intelligence than that of any of
his young companions. He was the only son of Gilbert Sterling, who had
been one of the mining engineers connected with the Raven Brook
Colliery. The father had been disabled by an accident in the mines, and
after lingering for more than a year, had died a few months before the
date of this story, leaving a wife and two children, Derrick and little
Helen.
For nearly five years before his father's death Derrick had attended a
boarding-school near Philadelphia; but the sad event made a vast
difference in his prospects for life, and compelled his return to the
colliery village that he called home.
Mr. Sterling had always lived up to his moderate income, and though his
salary was continued to the time of his death, the family then found
themselves confronted by extreme poverty. They owned their little
vine-covered cottage, at one end of the straggling village street, and
in this Mrs. Sterling began to take boarders, with the hope of thus
supporting her children. Her struggle was a hard one, and when one of
the boarders, who was superintendent of the breaker, or "breaker boss,"
offered Derrick employment in his department, the boy was so anxious to
help his mother that he gladly accepted the offer. Nothing else seemed
open to him, and anything was better than idleness. So, after winning a
reluctant consent from his mother, Derrick began to earn thirty-five
cents a day, at that hardest and most monotonous of all forms of
youthful labor, picking slate in a coal-breaker.
He had been brought up and educated so differently from any of his
companions of the chutes that the life was infinitely harder for him
than for them. He hated dirt, and loved to be nice and clean, which
nobody could be for a minute in the breaker. He also loved the sunlight,
the fields, and the woods; but no sunshine ever penetrated the thick
dust-clouds within these walls. In the summer-time it shone fierce and
hot on the long sloping roof, just above the boys' heads, until the
interior was like an oven, and in winter they were chilled by the cold
winds that blew in through the ever-open windows.
Here, and under these conditions, Derrick must work from seven o'clock
in the morning until six in the evening. At noon the boys were allowed
forty minutes in which to eat the luncheons brought in their little tin
pails, and draw a few breaths of fresh air. During the first few weeks
of this life there were times when it seemed to Derrick that he could
not bear it any longer. More than once, as he sat beside the rattling
chute, mechanically sorting the never-ending stream, with hands cut and
bruised by the sharp slate, great tears rolled down his grimy cheeks.
Over and over again had he been tempted to rush from the breaker, never
to return to it; but each time he had seemed to see the patient face of
his hard-working mother, or to feel the clinging arms of little Helen
about his neck. He would remember how they were depending on his two
dollars a week, and, instead of running away, would turn again to his
work with a new energy, determined that, since he was to be a breaker
boy, he would be the best in the colliery.
In this he had succeeded so well as to win praise, even from Mr. Guffy,
the breaker boss, who usually had nothing but harsh words and blows for
the boys who came under his rule. He had also been noticed by the
superintendent of the colliery, and promised a place in the mine as soon
as a vacancy should occur that he could fill. In the breaker he had been
promoted from one seat to another, until for several weeks past he had
occupied the very last one on the line of his chute. Here he gave the
coal its final inspection before it shot down into the bins, from which
it was loaded into cars waiting to carry it to cities hundreds of miles
away. Above all, Derrick was now receiving the highest wages paid to
breaker boys, and was able to hand his mother three big silver dollars
every Saturday night.
The first time he did this seemed to him the proudest moment of his
life, for, as she kissed him, his mother said that this sum was
sufficient to pay all his expenses, that he was now actually supporting
himself, and was therefore as independent as any man in the colliery.
It was a wonderful help to him, during the last few weeks of his breaker
boy life, to think over these words and to realize that by his own
efforts he had become a self-supporting member of society. It really
seemed as though he increased in stature twice as fast after that little
talk with his mother. At the same time his clothes appeared to shrink
from the responsibility of covering an independent man, instead of the
boy for whom they had originally been intended.
Beside Derrick Sterling, that hot summer afternoon, sat Paul Evert, a
slender, delicate boy with a fine head set above a deformed body. He did
not seem much more than half as large as Derrick, though he was but a
few months younger, and his great wistful eyes held a frightened look,
as of some animal that is hunted. He too had been compelled by poverty
to go into the cruel breaker, and try to win from it a few loaves of
bread for the many little hungry mouths at home, which the miner father
and feeble mother found it so hard to feed.
For a long time the rude boys of Raven Brook had teased and persecuted
"Polly Evert," as they called him, on account of his humped back and
withered leg, and for a long time Derrick Sterling had been his stanch
friend and protector. While the even-tempered lad used every effort to
avoid quarrels on his own behalf, he would spring like a young tiger to
rescue Paul Evert from his persecutors. Many a time had he stood at bay
before a little mob of sooty-faced village boys, and dared them to touch
the crippled lad who crouched trembling behind him.
On this very day, during the noon breathing-spell, he had been compelled
to thrash Bill Tooley, the village bully, on Paul's behalf. Bill had
been a mule-driver in the mine, but had been discharged from there a few
days before, and taken into the breaker. He now sat beside Paul, and
during the whole morning had steadily tormented him, in spite of the
lad's entreaties to be let alone and Derrick's fierce threats from the
other side.
That Derrick had not escaped scot-free from the noon-hour encounter was
shown by a deep cut on his upper lip. That Bill Tooley had been much
more severely punished was evident from the swollen condition of his
face, and from the fact that he now worked in sullen silence, without
attempting any further annoyance of the hump-backed lad beside him. Only
by occasional glances full of hate cast at both Derrick and Paul did he
show the true state of his feelings, and indicate the revengeful nature
of his thoughts.
This was Paul's first day in the breaker, where he had been given work
by the gruff boss only upon Derrick Sterling's earnest entreaty. Derrick
had promised that he would initiate his friend into all the details of
the business, and look after him generally. He had his doubts concerning
Paul's fitness for the work and the terrible life of a breaker boy, and
had begged him not to try it.
Paul's pitiful "What else can I do, Derrick? I have got to earn some
money somehow," completely silenced him; for he knew only too well that
in a colliery there is but one employment open to a boy who cannot drive
a mule or find work in the mine. Therefore he had promised to try and
secure a place for his crippled friend, and had finally succeeded.
Paul was struggling bravely to finish this long, weary first day's work
in a manner that should reflect credit upon his protector; but the hours
seemed to drag into weeks, and each minute he feared he should break
down entirely. He tried to hide the cruel slate cuts on his hands, nor
let Derrick discover how his back ached, and how he was choked by the
coal-dust. He even attempted to smile when Derrick spoke to him, though
his ear, unaccustomed to the noise of the machinery and the rushing
coal, failed to catch what was said.
While the crippled lad, in company with a hundred other boys, was thus
anxiously awaiting the welcome sound of the shutting-down whistle, at
the first blast of which the torrents of coal would cease to flow, and
they would all rush for the stairway that led out-of-doors, the air
gradually became filled with something even more stifling than
coal-dust--something that choked them and made their eyes smart. It was
the pungent smoke of burning wood; and by the time they fully realized
its presence the air was thick with it, and to breathe seemed wellnigh
impossible. Then, just as the boys were beginning to start from their
seats, and cast frightened glances at each other, the machinery stopped;
and amid the comparative silence that followed they heard the cry of
"Fire!" and the voice of the breaker boss shouting, "Clear out of this,
you young rascals! Run for your lives! Don't you see the breaker's
afire?"
As he spoke a great burst of flame sprang up one of the waste chutes
from the boiler-room beneath them, and with a wild rush the hundred boys
made towards the one door-way that led to the open air and safety.
Obeying the impulse of the moment, Derrick sprang toward it with the
rest. Before he could reach it a faint cry of "Derrick, oh, Derrick,
don't leave me!" caused him to turn and begin a desperate struggle
against the mass of boys who surged and crushed behind him. Several
times he thought he should be borne through the door-way, but he fought
with such fury that he finally won his way back out of the crowd and to
where Paul was still sitting.
"Come on, Polly," he cried, "we haven't any time to lose."
"I can't, Derrick," was the answer; "my crutch is gone."
Surely enough, the lame boy's crutch, which had been leaned against the
wall behind him, had disappeared, and he was helpless.
At first Derrick thought he would carry him, and made the attempt; but
his strength was not equal to the task, and he was forced to set his
burden down after taking a few steps towards the door.
He called loudly to the last of the boys, who was just disappearing
through the door-way, to come and help him. At the call the boy turned
his face towards them. It was that of Bill Tooley, and it bore a grin of
malicious triumph.
The next instant the great door swung to with a crash that sounded like
a knell in the ears of Derrick Sterling, for he knew that it closed with
a powerful spring lock, the key of which was in Mr. Guffy's pocket.
The crash of the closing door was followed by a second burst of flame
that came rushing and leaping up the chutes, and above its roar the boys
heard shrill voices in the village crying, "Fire! Fire in the breaker!"