THE SULPHUR MINES
It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before Derby's party was
ready to start. The pack mules, with a bulging load on either side,
looked like great bales on legs. Long steel pieces needed for the drills
were strapped lengthwise between two mules. The saddled animals, which
were to carry the members of the party were held at a short distance
while the men were seeing to the final preparations. Four horses had
been procured for Derby, Porter, Tiggs, and Jenkins; the _carabinieri_
had their own horses, and Padre Filippo his mule.
As it happened, the priest had come to Vencata the evening before, so
that the archbishop had been able to turn over at once to his especial
guidance the Americanos who had been sent by the Blessed Virgin to
rescue the _bambinos_ from the inferno of the mines. Padre Filippo was
short, rotund, with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful crop of
carrot-colored hair. The two _carabinieri_ were splendid specimens of
men, but after all, to say _carabinieri_ is enough: for the Italian
cavalry must stand not only a physical, but also a moral examination
that goes back three generations. It is not sufficient for a candidate
to be above suspicion himself; his father and his father's father must
have been so as well. These two men were both over six feet, lean and
dark-skinned, with that trace of the Arab which one sees all through the
people of Sicily; and they were silent and serious, in great contrast to
another type of Sicilians who smile much. They wore the _carabiniere_
uniform for the mountain districts--a double-breasted coat with two rows
of silver buttons, coat tails bordered with red, two strips of red down
the trouser seams, a visored cap, and high black boots. They were
mounted on magnificent black horses, with rifles hung across their
saddles.
Finally, as the procession started and the hoofs clattered on the hard
road leading up over the mountain, people crowded out on the little iron
balconies, heads appeared at the windows--heads that seemed gigantic by
comparison with the miniature houses, which were painted brilliant pink
and blue, mauve and Naples yellow.
As the road ascended, it turned inward away from the sea, and after a
short distance narrowed into a rocky mountain path that looked like the
dry bed of a stream, winding through the wilderness. After an hour's
ride the character of the landscape changed. The semi-tropical
vegetation grew gradually sparse, and after a while in the distance,
seemingly in the midst of the path, a great rock loomed gigantic and
gaunt, cutting in two the blue dome of the sky. Still farther on, they
came upon stretches of straggling wild peach, olive, and lemon trees.
Beyond again, tangles of hawthorn were interspersed with patches of
dried weeds and grass. But as they neared the mining district the soil
was bleak and barren. The mountain rivers were dry, and their beds made
yawning gaps as though the earth had violently shuddered at her own
desolation.
At last, about noon, they came to the village of Vencata Minore, which
stood in a little plain of green. The house of Donna Marcella was set on
a slight eminence and, compared with the surrounding habitations, was
quite pretentious. It was kalsomined white, had a courtyard of its own,
and back of it was a little fruit and flower garden. Donna Marcella was
a buxom, thrifty, and dominating woman. Had she been a man she would
assuredly have migrated to America and become a captain of industry;
however, circumstances having placed her under heavier responsibilities,
she came smiling to the door, followed by a troop of brown-skinned and
curly-haired babies. She courtesied and beamed and gesticulated her
delighted welcome of the strangers and, upon being shown the
archbishop's missive, kissed the red seal. A few words were intelligible
to her, but the reading of a whole letter was beyond the measure of her
accomplishments, and she looked to Padre Filippo to explain. She could
write the few nouns and do sums quite well enough, though, to make out
the bills for her occasional guests,--if in doubt she added another
figure.
Sometimes she had guests--ah, but illustrious! The Gran Signore, Sua
Eccellenza il Duca di Scorpa--that name to be whispered, and yet to be
dwelt upon--no less a personage than such an exaltedness had come to
sleep a night under her humble roof! The distinguished _forestieri_
should have the very room His _Eccellentissimo_ had occupied! She seemed
to choose among the Americans by instinct, assigning to Derby and Porter
this apartment in which she took such evident pride.
It was, in fact, airy and good sized, scantily furnished, but
scrupulously clean, and with two great beds heaped high with the red and
yellow flowered quilts which in Sicilian houses serve the double purpose
of warmth and decoration: not alone do they lend supreme elegance to the
bedrooms, but suspended from the windows, they most gayly embellish the
house front on days of _festa_.
As soon as his belongings were unpacked, Porter, with an eye for beauty
as well as a view to making himself popular, began to draw a pencil
sketch of the little Marcella, a witch of five and beautiful as a doll.
Tiggs and Jenkins saw to the unloading of the mules. But Derby and the
_carabinieri_, with Padre Filippo, after a hasty luncheon of bread,
figs, and goats' milk, pushed on to the mines. Beyond the outskirts of
the little village the land soon grew dead again--not a bird fluttered,
not a living thing was heard. A few patches of green had sprouted here
and there in the lava blackness of the soil, but otherwise the country
seemed under a curse.
A new bend in the road brought them close to a small abandoned
settlement whose windowless houses gaped, staring like lidless eyes, at
the pits which had been dug and left like caverns of the dead--as, in
truth, they were. Yet nature had softened the graveyard with straggling
spots of new green. A vapor rose from one of the pits as though a
monster lay in wait below to destroy his victims with the poison of his
breath. This was "Little Devil," the priest told Derby. Through the jaws
of that yawning hole many had entered the gates of paradise! His lips
muttered a fragment of the prayer for the dead; he crossed himself, and
Derby noticed that the _carabinieri_ did the same.
During the day Derby had been slowly unfolding to Padre Filippo his
plans, and now the priest looked anxiously into the American's
face--could he still be hopeful of such a cemetery as this? Derby rode
slowly, making a cursory survey of the conditions. It was much as he had
expected to find it, he told the priest; he was not disheartened.
They did not stop, as Derby was anxious to go to the Scorpa mines, where
he expected to secure his men. He had heard enough to know what lay
before him; and even in anticipation he felt oppressed. Another sudden
turn in the road gave them a near view of the settlement. Over the arid
earth spread a dense haze of smoke and yellow vapor, and down in it--in
this vapor whose metallic fumes gripped lungs and throat and burned like
fire--crawled human beings! Close to the earth they crept, so that the
rising smoke might spend its worst above them.
Derby had thought himself prepared, but with the horrors actually before
him, he shuddered uncontrollably; unconsciously, he gripped the pommel
of the saddle so tensely that his knuckles whitened. The mine of "Golden
Plenty!" From the horrible mockery of the name, the devil might well
have taken notes in planning hell! Copper Rock was paradise indeed,
compared to this inferno.
Little forms passed by him with faces wizened and wrinkled--were they
gnomes?--or what? Surely not children! Small, narrow, stooped shoulders,
backs bent under loads buckled to tottering legs. Ragged the creatures
were to the point of nakedness, and on their arms and legs were scars
fresh and scarlet from the torches of the overseers. Women and men
crawled near the caldrons, and down the ladders into the hell pits went
the children--up with the heavy loads past the torch and lash of the
devil servers, whose duty it was to see that no panting being loitered.
Day in, day out, these miserable wretches stumbled under the stinging
pain of burning flesh--and once in a while a child's faltering feet
slipped from the ladder rungs, his weak hands lost hold--a cry, a fall,
and the "Golden Plenty" had swallowed one more victim.
As Derby's party drew near, a straggling group gathered around the
strangers. They stared dully and without intelligence, and yet like
animals in whom savagery is ever ready to burst restraints. The stronger
men among them glowered at the intruders, turning against a strange face
with the snarl they dared not show to one grown familiar. Beyond the
mines, ranged at different heights on the barren mountain slope, were
huts much like the abandoned ones at "Little Devil"--black caverns,
smoke-stained and gaping, where stooping human beings moved in and out,
maimed and broken like insects whose wings some brutal boy has pulled.
And yet the priest affirmed that to get half a dozen families to leave
this place and go to the new settlement would be no easy task. They were
too dull to grasp the promise of betterment, and the very mention of
"Little Devil" filled them with alarm. It would need many days and much
patient handling to convince them that the _forestieri_ meant them good
instead of harm.
Padre Filippo was the one who most persuaded them--he and a Sicilian
workman, a native of Vencata who had lately returned from America.
Between these two the miners' fears were partly allayed, and in less
than a week's time Derby received a small company of men, women, and
children into his new settlement. They came like prisoners, under the
guard of the _carabinieri_, and so feeble and debilitated were the
wretched creatures that, for a few weeks after their arrival, Derby
turned his settlement into a hospital.
Yet suspicion surrounded him on every side. It was one of the
_carabinieri_--the taller one--who ventured his opinions one day:
"Signore does not know these people! Signore is letting them grow strong
that they may the better use their fangs. They cannot believe that
Signore is not the devil in paying such wages--in pretending to give
them a life of ease. The great Duke Scorpa is their friend--he has been
able to do nothing. The good and honorable His Eminence the Archbishop,
not even he may help--none in this world; not even the Holy Virgin on
her throne in heaven. If any one comes to interfere it must be the
devil--since none but the devil comes to such a land."
"That's all right, my friend," Derby answered. "Just you wait and see.
Animals never resent kindness, and that's all these poor creatures
are--just animals."
In the meantime he and the engineers and the carpenters from Vencata
Minore had worked day and night getting up the scaffolding for the first
well. The first boiler was set up in a shanty, and pens were hammered
together to hold the molten sulphur.
From the moment of Derby's arrival in the Vencata mines, the
_carabinieri_ kept him under the closest guard and accompanied him
wherever he went. But in spite of this there were a few mild outbreaks.
One day a stone was hurled at him. Another time some half-crazed wretch
tried to stab him; and once a pit was dug across the road, in which his
horse broke a leg, so that it had to be shot. This last nearly brought
Derby to the point of meting out punishment to the offenders. Yet when
he realized again the sufferings of these people, his anger gradually
subsided.
However, these disturbances had all taken place within the week after
his arrival in Sicily, and at the end of the second week he strongly
objected to being guarded. Each day he knew he gained in the confidence
of the people, and each day he knew also that they must be improving. He
felt sure that as their bodies were put in something like human
condition, their intellects must follow. The _carabinieri_ protested
that he would be making a needless target of himself should he attempt
to ride alone in the early dawn from the village of Vencata Minore to
the mines. The road led between rocks and underbrush where a man might
hide with perfect safety. But the apprehension of the _carabinieri_ did
not trouble Derby in the least. "Nonsense," he said. "Why, the miners
are all beginning to like me--I can see it in their faces."
What he said was true, and under the new treatment the people were
beginning to look and act like human beings. Even two weeks were enough
to show a settlement beyond Padre Filippo's highest hopes. No child was
employed in the mines, neither were the women allowed to work outside
their huts and plots of ground. They might dig and plant the soil, but
they were barred out of the mines. With the elimination of the refining
vats and the reduction of the scorching heat, and with the presence of
moisture from the steam and water required in the new mining, conditions
became favorable for luxuriant vegetation.
Besides, Derby had received by cable approval of certain quixotic
measures: Each family was given a milk goat. The houses were furnished
with cook stoves, beds, chairs, and tables. And although it would be
some time before "Little Devil" would seem inappropriate as a name, less
than three weeks had passed when Derby, sitting in the tent which served
as his office, felt a real thrill as he footed up assets and
liabilities. One well had been sunk, and the boilers and engines needed
to operate it were going full blast. The scaffoldings for two more were
nearly up.
In the doorway near him Porter lounged, drawing a picture of Padre
Filippo, who, in turn, was writing on his knees, his fine penmanship
covering page after page--all about the miracles of the Americano, and
addressed to the archbishop.
But his Eminence needed no letters from Padre Filippo to announce
miracles, since a miracle had happened in his own house--a marvel that
had made Marianna cross her hands in speechless wonder. The new lamp
burned on the table, the green reading shade reflected almost as much
light on the page as the sun itself, and His Eminence might now read any
book he pleased. The archbishop thoughtfully stroked the cat that lay
curled on his lap.
"It is not in this world," he mused, "that we shall journey, thou and I,
to the land of the Americanos, the miracle workers; but assuredly the
Santa Vergine sent the young Signore Americano to bless our people with
his miracles--even as he has sent this one to thee and me."
But beyond the bright radius of the good archbishop's lamp a figure
waited and watched in the darkness--the figure of a man with a sinister
face and across it a mouth that looked like a seam.