Black Diamonds Part 44

It was an undertaking almost superhuman. What had been the work of weeks had to be done in so many days. And yet it must be done.

In their work of clearing away the rubbish Ivan's men had very little a.s.sistance from the company's men for this reason: the explosion had taken place at the time when the miners were relieved. When men are working in collieries it is usual to relieve them four times. It was the time of the midnight relief when the accident happened. One party of the miners had already gone down the shaft; they were undoubtedly suffocated. The other party were on their way out, and were killed at once by the explosion. There was another party who had only reached the resting-stage, where neither the flames nor the fragments could touch them. These men were buried alive. It therefore resulted that of all the company's miners only from twenty to thirty were available.

The men who worked the forge were forbidden by the director to give any help in the work of rescue. In all the ovens the metal was in a liquid state; if it was not attended to it would turn into rammers.

The workmen give the name of _ram_, or _rammer_, to a solid ma.s.s of iron, which, in consequence of faulty melting, cannot be removed from the oven, and it and the oven have to be thrown away as useless lumber. The forge-work was urgently needed. The railway greaves had to be finished by a certain date, or a large fine would have to be paid.

Ivan therefore had to set his men almost unaided to the task of clearing the pit. The women helped with all their strength. Their husbands, the bread-winners, were underneath the ruins.

What a terrible undertaking! In consequence of the falling in of the arches the roof had, at a distance of six feet, to be supported on plugs, and a sort of street made through the ruins, where at every corner a new enemy waited for the intrepid pioneers.

After the explosion the pit had been overflowed by water. The water-pipes had to be set to work, and where these were not sufficient the men were obliged to empty out the black slime in buckets, standing for hours in stinking mud, breathing foul air, threatened with death or mutilation from the constant falling of stones and wreckage.

Undaunted by these obstacles, the men made their way step by step into the bowels of the earth.

In the afternoon Raune arrived. In the middle of a convivial festival he had heard the news. He was raging. He came down the shaft and cursed all the dead men.

"The scoundrels! They have cost the company a million of money! What does it matter if they are all killed? Serves them right! Why should any of them be saved? Stuff and nonsense! Let them suffocate, the drunken dogs!"

The workers made him no answer. First, because they could not take up their time talking, and, secondly, because every man's mouth was covered. The clearing of a mine is very silent work.

But in the midst of his curses Raune encountered one workman, who placed himself in front of him and confronted him with a steady look.

This man was covered with mud and coal like the other laborers, his face was tied up with a cloth, and only the eyes were visible; they, too, were blackened with coal-dust, but Raune knew by their expression that it was Ivan. No one who had ever looked into his eyes could forget him.

Raune turned away without another word, and, in company with his engineer, left the pit. He interfered no further with Ivan's work.

Four days and four nights the men never ceased working. They triumphed over every obstacle and cut a pathway through every difficulty. During those four days Ivan never for one hour left the mine. He ate his meals sitting on a stone, and s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour's sleep in some corner.

On the fourth day the workmen came upon one of the missing men. A man--no, but a ma.s.s, flattened against the wall, of flesh and bones, which had once been a man.

Some feet farther on there lay another body on the ground, but the head was nowhere to be seen. They tried to get him on one of the wheelbarrows which were for drawing coal, but he was all in fragments; splinters and shreds of that human body were sticking to everything.

Then they came upon the charred, blackened corpses of the men who had been burned. They were not recognizable.

Farther on there was a group of fifteen men crushed by a huge weight of slate stratum. This could not be moved, so they were left. It was more necessary to look after the living than the dead. Everywhere they found corpses; still the number of the missing was not complete.

The miners employed by the company told Ivan that if any of the men were still living they would be found at the resting-stage, where they left their coats before they began to work and fetched them again as they went up. In the pa.s.sages, however, there had been such a total upset that the oldest hand could not find his way. In many places the explosion had torn down the part.i.tion wall, in other places the entrance was stopped up with rubbish, or the roof taken off some of the pa.s.sages which led into the inner vaults. It was all in such utter confusion that no one could find out where the large vault lay.

At last it struck Ivan that underneath a ma.s.s of coal and slack he heard a faint, whimpering sound. He said to the men, "Dig this spot."

At once they set to work to clear away the rubbish, and as they cleared the company's men began to recognize different landmarks, which convinced them they were at the right place.

"Yes, here is the door which leads to the resting-stage." The pressure of the air had shut the door close, the side walls had fallen in, and so these, who had been safe from the conflagration, had been buried alive.

The whimpering cry for help, like that of an infant's wail, was heard now more distinctly. The door, too, was plainly visible, and as it was swung off its hinges Ivan took a light and peered into the dark cavern below.

No cry of joy reached him; the rescued men had not the strength to make a sound. They were about a hundred in all. They lay there still, speechless. Life had almost ebbed away, but not altogether.

They had suffered the tortures of hunger and thirst, they had been suffocated by the foul air, broken-hearted, despairing. And now these human skeletons, when they saw the light, could hardly raise a finger to show they were alive. A heart-rending whimper, in which there was no human tone, rose from the hundred parched throats. When the explosion came they had been thrown upon their faces. Their lamps had gone out, and it would have been madness to relight them.

They had remained in total darkness. After a little the danger of their situation increased. Soon they began to feel that the water was gradually--slowly at first--filling the s.p.a.ce which served them as a refuge and a grave, and this s.p.a.ce or vault was, they knew, a fathom deeper than the pit. They tried--for at first they were not so weak--to get hold of some boards and plugs that lay about, and out of these they made a sort of stage or platform, upon which they all clambered, and there waited for death--the death that might come either through hunger, foul air, or drowning. When their rescuers opened the door the water had reached the threshold and touched the bottom of the wooden stage.

Ivan directed that the poor creatures should be carried carefully and silently out of their living grave. They did not press forward, for they could not stand. Each man lay where he was, and waited until his turn came. The foretaste of death made every one tranquil. Some of them could not at first open their eyes, but all were alive, and Ivan could not help thinking how wonderful is the strength of human nature.

He had saved them all, but the work was not yet finished. How if, beyond the breach of which the engineer had spoken, there were more men waiting for deliverance? One thing they must ascertain positively--if the explosion had finished the work begun by the engineer's men, and had carried away the wall which had divided one pit from the other. If this were so, it would considerably lighten the work of those who had come to seek for the victims. At the opening of the breach-tunnel lay a man's body; he was such a charred, burned ma.s.s that he was unrecognizable. The dead man held in his hand his safety-lamp. _It was open._

So this was the accursed one who had done the h.e.l.lish deed, and it was human folly that had caused this demoniacal explosion.

The corpse was not recognizable, the clothing was burned to ashes. In his girdle, however, they found a small steel casket, and in this casket a gold watch; upon the enamelled back was the portrait of a lovely woman.

When the watch was brought to Ivan he recognized the portrait. It was Eveline. With the watch there was also a bank-note for a hundred gulden. It was half burned. Upon the back was written:

"A year ago to-day I received this money; to-day I pay it back." What a fearful repayment!

Ivan was now able to grasp the connection between the words and the acts of this terrible man, whose recollection of his own act of eating human flesh had prompted him to an unexampled and most horrid ma.s.sacre. His threats after Evila's elopement, his entering into the company's service, the last occasion upon which he had drunk brandy, and the breath he had blown into Ivan's face. All was now explained.

This was part of the drama. This man had a character such as Antichrist might be possessed of. His soul and body were full of concealed demons, who prompted him to take revenge of those who had offended him, ridiculed him, stolen from him, scorned him, treated him as a fool, insulted him with money, tempted him with luxuries, and taken advantage of his simplicity to pull him by the nose.

All of them should fall. He would pull the foundation-stone from under their feet, even if he dug his own grave in so doing. They should fall from their high estate--the banker, the pastor, the capitalist, the minister, and the actress.

In h.e.l.l the demons could teach Peter nothing.

Ivan stood before the unsightly corpse deep in thought. In his heart there raged a wild conflict of pa.s.sions. He also had been robbed, oppressed by the wealth of his enemies, his heart wounded by a hundred poisoned arrows, and this by the same men upon whom the revengeful hate of Peter Saffran had fallen. Ivan had come to their help. He had saved the lives and the property of his foes--at least, what they called their property; the monstrous treasure which lies in the very bowels of the earth does not, in truth, belong altogether to any man, but to all men; it is the treasure-trove of the state, destined to serve and minister to all ages.

And yet a great dread, an unconquerable fear, possessed Ivan. He dared not mention his fear to any one, for if he were to share his suspicion with any one of the workmen, who up to this had followed him obediently through every peril, they would, without another word, have turned their backs and fled for their lives.

The wire cylinder of Saffran's safety-lamp was filled to the very top with a red flame. This was a warning that the atmosphere was still charged with one-third of hydrogen gas, and that only two-thirds were of fresh air.

But there is an even greater danger to be feared than the pit-gas. Its fearful spirit had been laid; the victims lay silent upon the wheelbarrows. Yet another and a worse spirit lurks in ambush--a foe who goes about with closed eyes, whose presence is awful in its consequences: it is the carbon from the coals.

When the men had made the breach through the tunnel, they found, just as the engineer had said, that the explosion had burst through the part.i.tion wall, and that the _debris_ had only to be removed, and the pa.s.sage between the east and the north pits would be established. Not one of the workmen could remain long at this work. After some moments each one returned coughing, and complaining that in that place his safety-lamp would not burn.

In the pits the flame of the lamp filled the whole cylinder; this was not rea.s.suring. But in the neighborhood of the ruins it would hardly burn; this was a far more serious sign.

The last miner who returned said that as he removed a large lump of coal such a terrible stench had penetrated through his mouth-protector that he had almost fainted. The smell was like that of putrid vegetable matter.

The old hands knew what this putrid stench signified. Paul suggested to Ivan that he should go and examine whence it came. Let him cover his mouth very carefully, and hasten back as soon as possible.

Ivan took his iron rod and his lamp, and went. Seizing hold of the rod with both hands, he struck it with all his strength into a ma.s.s of coal, upon which the lump rolled with a great noise into the adjoining s.p.a.ce. He then fastened his lamp to the hook of his rod and pushed it into the hollow. The lamp went out at once, and as he looked from the darkness into the hollow, to his horror he saw in the next vault a red glow which lighted up the s.p.a.ce. He knew at once there was no time to lose. He never paused to withdraw his rod, but rushed back to the men.

"The east pit is burning!" he cried.

No one answered, but the men seized hold of Ivan, and bore him with them out of the pit into the open air. Behind them followed the horrible stench--not merely that of foul air such as accompanies "bad weather," often with fatal effect; this was the more insidious carbon, that which kindles pit-fires, baffles the ingenuity of man, respects neither the brave nor the scientific, and which, when once it has begun, can never be turned back. There is nothing to do but to run for the bare life.

In a few minutes the pit was empty.

As they issued into the light of day they were surrounded by countless women and children, weeping and screaming in their joy at being reunited to their lost ones.

The engineer was also there. Ivan went straight to him. Taking the cloth from his mouth, he said:

"Do you know, sir, what is going on down there in your mine? Complete, utter ruin! The east pit is burning; it must have been alight some days, for the whole pit is red-hot. I shall never forget the sight.

Now let me tell you what this means. It is not the hand of human wickedness, neither is it the avenging hand of G.o.d; it is altogether caused by the negligence of the overseer. You, who are a great scientist, know as well as I do that collieries take fire when sulphur gets mixed with coal-dust and is allowed to lie in a heap. It is always hot down there, and when the stuff is fanned by the air it lights of itself. Your pit is full of this dangerous burning mist. And now both your pit and my mine are finished. The colliery fire can never be extinguished. You have heard of the burning mountain of Dutweeler? A hundred and twenty years ago that coal-mine took fire; it is still burning. Here we shall experience another such tragedy.