In the silence the dull thud of their footsteps on the rock beneath mingled with the drip, drip of the water overhead. When they had gone a hundred yards down the narrow working there came another and far more terrible sound. It was such a sound as the sea might have made if it had rushed through a thousand crevices in the rock. It was the sound of the thousands of tons of sand as they forced their way from the dense ma.s.s above. And over the hiss as of the sea was the harsh crack of great timbers splitting like matchwood.
Toward the awful scene of this tumult Hugh Ritson quickened his steps.
The man followed close at his heels. Presently their pa.s.sage was blocked with sand like a wall. Then over their heads the cross-trees cracked, and the upright forks split and bent at the right and left of them. In another moment the ground beneath them shook under the new weight that lay on it. They stepped quickly back, and in an instant, with a groan such as the sea makes when it is sucked by the ebbing tide from a cave in a rock, the floor, with all its freight, went down a score of feet.
It had fallen to an old working that lay below.
Then the bent forks hung from the roof in empty air. Silence followed this shock, and through the silence there came a feeble cry for help.
Hugh Ritson stepped out, plucked his candle from his hat, and held it before his feet.
"Where are you?" he called, and his voice came back through the echoing depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers that still creaked.
Hugh Ritson did not hesitate; he turned to leap down, saying, "Follow me." But the man clung to him from behind.
"For G.o.d"s sake, dunnot!" he cried. "I can not go there. It"s mair nor my life is worth!"
Hugh Ritson twisted about, and looked him steadily in the face.
"What is your name, my man?"
"Davey Braithwaite."
"Then you are the young fellow whose wife died last week?"
"Ey," with a drooping head.
"Your child died before her, did it not?"
"Ey, he did, poor laal thing!"
"Your father and mother are gone, too?"
"They"re gone, for sure!"
"And you have neither kith nor kin left in all the world?"
"Nay, no"but mysel" left."
Hugh Ritson said no more; a hard smile played on his white face, and at the next instant he had leaped down on to the bed of sand below.
The man recoiled a pace or two and wrung his hands. Before he was aware of what had happened, Giles Raisley and the master were standing beside him.
"Where were old Reuben and his gang stationed?" said Hugh Ritson.
"In the main working; but the water is dammed up; we can never pa.s.s."
They returned to the shaft bottom, and walked thence down the cutting that ran from it at right angles. A light burned far away in the dim vista of that long dark burrowing.
It was a candle stuck to the rock. The men who worked by it had left it there when they rushed off for their lives. Through the bottom of this working there ran a deep trough, but it was now dry.
This was the channel by which the whole pit was drained. Beyond the light the three men encountered another wall of sand, and from behind it and through it there came to them the dull thud and the plash of heavy water.
"If auld Reuben"s theer, he"s a dead man," said Giles Raisley, and he turned to go.
Hugh Ritson had struggled to the top of the heap, and was plowing the sand away from the roof with his hands. In a little while he had forced an opening, and could see into the dark s.p.a.ce beyond. The water had risen to a reservoir of several feet deep. But it was still four or five feet from the roof, and over the black, surging, bubbling waves the imprisoned miner could be seen clinging to a ledge of rock. Half his body was already immersed. When the candle shot its streak of light through the aperture of sand, the poor creature uttered a feeble cry.
In another moment the master had wormed his body through the hole and dropped slowly into the water. Wading breast deep, he reached the pitman, gave him his hand, and brought him safely through the closing seam.
When the cage rose to the surface again, bringing back to life and the world the last of the imprisoned miners, a great cheer broke from many a l.u.s.ty throat. Women who had never thought to bless the master, blessed him now with fervent tongues. Men who had thought little of the courage that could rest in that slight figure, fell aside at the sense of their own cowardice. Under the red glow that came from the engine fire many a hard face melted.
Hugh Ritson saw little of this, and heeded it not at all. He plucked the candle, still burning, from his hat, and threw it aside. Then he walked through the people toward his room, and when he got there he shut the door, almost slamming it in the faces of those who followed. He pulled down the window-blinds, and began afresh his perambulation to and fro.
He had grown paler and thinner. There was a somber light in his eyes, and his lips were whitening. His step, once quick and sure, despite his infirmity, was now less certain. He had not slept since the night of Mercy"s death. Determined never to encounter again the pains and terrors of sleep, he had walked through the long hours of the four succeeding nights. He knew what the result must be, and did not shrink from it.
Once only he had thought of a quicker way to the sure goal that was before him. Then he had opened a cupboard, and looked long and intently at a bottle that he took from its shelf. But he had put the bottle back.
Why should he play the fool, and leap the life to come? Thus, night after night, he had walked and walked, never resting, never pausing, though the enfeebled limbs shook beneath him, and the four walls of the room reeled in his dazed eyes.
Before returning to their homes, the people gathered in the darkness about the office on the pit-brow and gave one last cheer.
The master heard them, and his lip curled.
"Simpletons!--they don"t understand," he muttered, beneath his breath, and continued his melancholy walk.
Next morning, a banksman, who acted as personal attendant on Hugh Ritson, brought him his breakfast. It was not early.
The sun had risen, but the blinds of the office were still drawn, and a candle burned on the table. The man would have put out the candle and let in the sunlight, but the master forbid him. He was a Methodist, and hummed psalm tunes as he went about his work. This morning he was more than usually fresh and happy when he entered with his tray; but at the sight of Hugh Ritson"s pallid face his own face saddened.
"You are a young man yet, Luke," said the master. "Let me see, how old are you?"
"Seventy-nine, sir. I was born in ninety-eight. That was when auld Bonnypart was agate of us and Nelson bashed him up."
"I dare say you have grandchildren by this time?"
"Bless you, ey, and great-grandchilder, and ten of them, too; and all well and hearty, thank the Lord!"
The sound of a bell, slowly tolling, came from across the dale. Hugh Ritson"s face contracted, and his eyes fell.
"What bell is that?" he asked, in an altered tone.
"It"s like to be the church bell. They"re burying poor auld Matha"s la.s.s and her wee barn this morning."
Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.
"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."
He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some message, some unimportant explanation.
At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the throb of the engine without.
The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no G.o.d;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about ransom by Christ"s blood.