"You"d better go up, Sir George," he said, in a low voice, "and let me go on. You don"t know the signs of the roof as I do. Eight or nine hours after an explosion is the worst time for falls. Send down another shift, sir, as quick as you can."
"Why should you risk more than I?" said George, quietly. "Stop! What time is it?" He looked at his watch. Five o"clock--nearly nine hours since they descended! He might have guessed it at three, if he had been asked.
Time in the midst of such an experience contracts to a pin"s point. But the sight of the watch stirred a pang in him.
"Send word at once to Lady Tressady," he said, in Madan"s ear, drawing the manager to one side. "Tell her I have gone on a little farther, and may be another hour or two in getting back. If she is down at the bank, beg her from me to go home. Tell her the chances are that we may find the other men as safe as these."
Madan acquiesced reluctantly. George then plundered him of some dry biscuits--of some keys, moreover, that might be useful in opening one or two locked doors farther up the workings.
"Macgregor, you"ll come?"
"Aye, Sir George."
"You, Mr. Burrows?"
"Of course," said Burrows, carelessly, throwing back his handsome head.
Some of the rescued men turned and looked hard at their agent and leader with their sunken eyes. Others took no notice. His prestige had been lost in defeat; and George had noticed that they avoided speech with him. No doubt this rescue party had presented itself to the agent as an opening he dare not neglect.
"Come on, then," said George; and the three men turned back towards the interior of the pit.
Old Moses, from whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short and looked after them. Then he raised a hoa.r.s.e voice:
"Be you going to the West Heading, Sir George?"
"Yes," George flung back over his shoulder, already far away.
"The Lord go with yer, Sir George!"
No answer. The old man, breathing hard, caught hold of one of his stronger comrades and tottered on towards the shaft. Two or three of his fellows gathered round him. "Aye," said one of them, out of Madan"s hearing, "ee"s been a-squeezing of us through the ground, ee ave, but ee"s a plucky lot, is the boss."
"They do say as Burrers slanged "im fine at the station yesterday," said another, hoa.r.s.ely. "Called "im the devil untied, one man told me."
The first speaker, still haggard and bowed from the poison in his blood, made no reply, and the movement of old Moses" lips, as he staggered forward, helped on by the two others, his head hanging on his breast, showed that he was praying.
Meanwhile George and his two companions pushed cautiously on, Macgregor trying the roof with his lamp from time to time for signs of fire-damp.
Two seams of coal were worked in the mine, one of which was "fiery." No naked lights, therefore, were allowed, and all "shots" or charges for loosening the coal were electrically fired.
As they walked, they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the disaster: whereof Dixon, as they pa.s.sed him, had bluntly declined to say a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of miner--disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, took up a provoking line of reply. Suppose a miner, set to choose between the risk of bringing the coal-roof down on his head for lack of a proper light to work by, and the risk of "being blown to h.e.l.l" by the opening of his lamp, did a mad thing sometimes, who were other people that they should blame him? His large, ox-like eyes, clear in the light of his lamp, turned a scornful defiance on his companion. "Try it yourself, my fine gentleman"--that was what the expression of them meant.
"He doesn"t only risk his own life," said George, shortly. "That"s the answer.--I say, Macgregor, isn"t this the door to the Meadows Pit? If anything cut us off from the shaft, and supposing we couldn"t get round yet by the return, we might have to try it, mightn"t we?"
Macgregor a.s.sented, and George as he pa.s.sed stepped up to the heavy wooden door, and tried one of the keys he held, that he might be sure of opening it in case of need.
The door had been unopened for long, and he shook it backwards and forwards to make the key bite.
Meanwhile Macgregor had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of agony rang through the roadway.
"Run, Sir George! run!"
A rattle like thunder roared through the mine. It was heard at the pithead, and the people crowded there ran hither and thither in dismay, thinking it was another explosion.
Hours pa.s.sed. At last in George"s numbed brain there was a faint stir of consciousness. He opened his eyes slowly.
Oh, horror! oh, cruelty! to come back from merciful nothingness and peace to this burning anguish, not to be borne, of body and mind. "I had died,"
he thought--"it was done with," and a wild, impotent rage, as against some brutality done him, surged through him.
A little later he made a first slight movement, which was answered at once by another movement on the part of a man sitting near him. The man bent over him in the darkness and felt for his pulse.
"Burrows!" The whisper was just perceptible.
"Yes, Sir George."
"What has happened? Where is Macgregor? Give me some brandy--there, in my inner pocket."
"No; I have it. Can you swallow it? I have tried several times before, but your mouth was set--it ran down my fingers."
"Give it me."
Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a groan of anguish broke from him.
"Drink it--if you possibly can."
George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few drops. Still the anguish! "O G.o.d, my back! and the legs--paralysed!"
The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the brandy began to sting.
He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding--probably the bleeding has dulled the worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt--"
Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon it were also caked and wet.
He let his hand drop. "How long have I--?" he thought. For already his revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, threatening to drown it like a flood.
"Burrows!"--he felt again with his hand--"where"s Macgregor?"
A sob broke from the darkness beside him.
"Crushed in an instant. I heard one cry. Why not we, too?"
"It was such a bad fall?"
"The whole mine seemed to come down." George felt the shudder of the huge frame. "I escaped; you must have been caught by some of it. Macgregor was right underneath it. But there was an explosion besides."
"Macgregor"s lamp? Broken?" whispered George, after a pause.
"Possibly. It couldn"t have been much, or we should have been killed instantly. I was only stunned--a bit scorched, too--not badly. You"re the lucky one. I shall die by inches."