Gold Mine

by Wilbur Smith

"daddy, you're vintage!" she told him vehemently.

  "yes, sometimes i feel that way." he stood up. "let's go."

  "you go. i'll lock up when i leave." "no sale," he said, the last one he had left in the flat had cleaned it out groceries, liquor, glasses, towels, even the ashtrays. "five minutes to dress. "fortunately she lived on his way. she directed him to a run-down block of flats under the mine dumps at booysens.

  "i'm putting three blind sisters through school. you want to help?" she asked as he parked the maserati.

  "sure." he eased a five-rand note out of his wallet and handed it to her.

  "ta muchly." and she slipped out of the red leather seat, closed the door and walked away. she did not look back before she disappeared into the block, and rod felt an unaccountable wave of loneliness wash over him. it was so intense that he sat quiescent for a full minute before he could throw it off, then he hit the gears and screeched away from the kerb.

  "my little five-rand friend," he said. "she really cares!" he drove fast, so that as he topped the kraalkop ridge the shadows were still long, and the dew lay silver on the grass. he pulled the maserati into a lay by and climbed out.

  leaning against the bonnet he lit a cigarette, grimacing at the taste, and looked down at the valley.

  there was no natural surface indication of the immense treasure house that lay below. it was like any of the other countless grassy plains of the transvaal. in the centre stood the town of kitchenerville, which for half a century had rejoiced in the fact that lord kitchener had camped one night here in pursuit of the wily boer: a collection of three dozen buildings which had expanded miraculously into three thousand, around a magnificent town hall and shopping complex. dressed in public lawns and gardens, wide streets and bright new houses, all of it paid for by the mining houses whose lease areas converged on the town.

  out of the bleak veld surrounding the town their head gears stood like colossal monuments to the gold hunger of man. around the head gears clustered the plants and workshops. there were fourteen head gears in the valley.

  the field was divided into five lease areas, following the original farm titles, and was mined by five separate companies.

  thornfontein gold mining, blaauberg gold mining, west tweefontein mining, deep gold levels, and the sander ditch gold mining company.

  it was to this last that rod naturally directed his attention.

  "you beauty, he whispered, for in his eyes the mountainous dumps of blue rock beside the shafts were truly beautiful.

  the complex but carefully thought out pattern of the works buildings, even the sulphur-yellow acres of the slimes dam, had a functional beauty.

  "get it for me, manfred," he spoke aloud. "i want it. i want it badly." on the twenty-eight square miles of the sander ditch's property lived 14,000 human beings, 12,000 of them were bantu who had been recruited from all over southern africa. they lived in the multi-storied hostels near the shaft heads, and each day they went down through two small holes in the ground to depths that were scarcely credible, and came up again out of those same two holes.

  12,000 men down, 12,000 up. that was not all: out of those two same holes came 10,000 tons of rock daily, and down them went timber and tools and piping and explosive, ton upon ton of material and equipment.

  it was an undertaking that must evoke pride in the men who accomplished it.

  rod glanced at his watch, 7.35 a.m they were down already, all 12,000 of them. they had started going down at three-thirty that morning and now it was accomplished.

  the shift was in. the sander ditch was breaking rock, and bringing the stuff out.

  rod grinned happily. his loneliness and depression of an hour ago were gone, swallowed up in the immensity of his involvement. he watched the massive wheels of the head gears spinning, stopping briefly, and then spinning again.

  each of those shafts had cost fifty million rand, the surface plant and works another fifty million. the sander ditch represented an investment of 150 million rand, 220 million dollars. it was big, and it would be his.

  rod flicked away the butt of his cigarette. as he drove down the ridge, his eyes moved eastward down the valley.

  all mining activity ceased abruptly along an imaginary north-south line, drawn arbitarily across the open grassland.

  there was no surface indication why this should be so, but the reason was deep down.

  on that line ran a geological freak, a dyke, a wall of hard serpentine rock that had been named "the big dipper. it cut through the field like an axe stroke, and beyond it was bad ground. the gold reef existed in the bad ground, they knew this; but not one of the five companies had gone after it. they had prospected it tentatively and then shied away from it, for the boreholes that they sank were frightening in their inconsistency.

  a big percentage of the sander ditch lease area lay on the far side of the dipper, and there was a diamond-drilling team working there now.

  they had already completed five holes.

  rod could remember accurately the results.

  borehole sd no. 1. abandoned in water at 4,000feet.

  sd no. 2: abandoned in dry hole at 5,250 feet.

  sd no. 3: intersected carbon leader reef at 6,600 feet.

  first deflection. 6,212-inch penny-weights.

  second deflection. 2,"4-inch penny-weights.

  sd no. 4. abandoned in attensian water at 3500 feet.

  sd no. 5. intersected carbon leader at 8116 feet.

  and they were drilling the deflections on that one now.

  the problem was to build up a picture from results like that. it looked like a mess of faulted and waterlogged ground with the gold reef fragmented and fluky, showing unbelievably high values at one spot, and then more than likely pinching out fifty feet away.

  they may mine it one day, thought rod, but i hope to hell i'm on pension by the time they do.

  in the distance beyond the slimes dam he could just make out the spidery triangle of the drilling rig against the grown grass.

  "go to it, boys," he muttered. "whatever you find there won't make much difference to me." and he went in through the imposing gates at the entrance to the mine property, halting carefully at the stop sign where the railway line crossed the road and he forked two fingers at the traffic policeman lurking behind the gates.

  the traffic cop grinned and waved; he had caught rod the previous week, so he was still one up.

  rod drove down to his office. -"that monday morning allen popeye"

  worth was preparing to drill his first deflection "on the sd no. 5. borehole. allen was a texan not a typical texan. he stood five feet four inches tall, but was as tough as the steel drill with which he worked. thirty years before he had started learning his trade on the oilfields around odessa and he had learned it well.

  now he could start at the surface and drill a four-inch hole down 13,000 feet through the earth's crust, keeping the hole straight all the way, an almost impossible task if you took into account the whippiness and torque in a jointed rod of steel that long.

  if, as happened occasionally, the steel snapped and broke off thousands of feet down, allen could fit a fishing tool on the end of his rig, and patiently grope for the stump, find it, grapple it and pull it out of the borehole. when he hit the reef down there, he could purposely kick his drill off the line and pierce the reef again and again to sample it over an area of hundreds of feet. this was what was meant by deflecting.

  allen was one of the best. he could command his own salary and behave like a prima donna, and his bosses would still fawn on him, for the things he could do with a diamond drill were almost magical.

  now he was assessing the angle of his first deflection.

  the previous day he had lowered a long brass bottle to the end of his borehole and left it overnight. the bottle was half filled with concentrated sulphuric acid, and it had etched the brass of the bottle.

  by measuring the angle of the etching he knew just how his drill was branching off from his orig
inal hole.

  in the tiny wood and iron building beside the drilling rig he finished his measurements and stood back from the work bench, grunting with satisfaction.

  from his hip pocket he drew a corncob pipe and pouch.

  once he had stuffed tobacco into the pipe and lit it, it became very clear as to why his nickname was "popeye'. he was a dead ringer for the cartoon character, aggressive jaw, button eyes, battered maritime cap and all.

  he puffed contentedly, watching through the single window of the shack as his gang went about the tedious business of lowering the drilling bit down into the earth.

  then he took the pipe from his mouth and spat accurately through the windows replaced the pipe and stooped to minutely check his measurements.

  his foreman driller interrupted him from the doorway.

  "on bottom, and ready to turn, boss."

  "huh!" popeye checked his watch. "two hours forty to get down, you don't reckon to rupture a gut do you?"

  "that's not bad, protested the foreman.

  "and it sure as hell isn't good either! okay, okay, cut the cackle and let's get her turning." he bounced out of the shed and set off for the rig, darting quick beady little glances about him. the rig was a fifty-foot-high tower of steel girders and within it the drill rod hung down until it disappeared into the collar. the twin 200 horsepower diesel engines throbbed expectantly, waiting to provide the power, their exhausts smoking blue in the early morning sunlight.

  beside the rig lay a mountainous heap of drilling rods, beyond them the 10,000-gallon puddling reservoir to provide water for the hole. water was pumped into the hole continuously to cool and lubricate the tool as it cut into the rock.

  "stand by to turn her," popeye called to his gang, and they moved to their stations. dressed in blue overalls, coloured fibreglass helmets, and leather gloves, they stood ready and tensed. this was an anxious moment for the whole team: power had to be applied with a lover's touch to the mile and a half length of rod, or it would buckle and snap.

  popeye climbed nimbly up onto the collar, and glanced about him to make sure all was in readiness. the foreman driller was at the controls, watching popeye with complete absorption, his hands resting on the levers.

  "power up!" shouted popeye and made the circular motion with his right hand. the diesels bellowed harshly, and popeye reached out to lay his left hand on the drilling rod. this was how he did it, feeling the rod with his bare hand as he brought in the power, judging the tension by ear and eye and touch.

  his right hand gestured and the foreman delicately let in the clutch the rod moved under popeye's hand, he gestured again and it revolved slowly. he could feel it was near breaking point and he cut down the power instantly, then let it in again. his right hand moved eloquently, as expressively as an orchestral conductor, and the foreman followed it, the junior member of a highly skilled team.

  slowly the tension of the gang relaxed as the revolutions of the drill built up steadily, until popeye gave the clenched fist "okay" and jumped down from the collar. they scattered casually to their other duties, while popeye and the foreman strolled back to the shed, leaving the drill to grind away at a steady four hundred revolutions a minute.

  "got something for you," said the foreman, as they entered the shed.

  "what?" demanded popeye.

  the latest playboy."

  "you're kidding!" popeye accused him delightedly, but the foreman fished the rolled magazine out of his lunch box.

  "hey, there!" popeye snatched it from him and turned immediately to the coloured foldout.

  "isn't that something!" he whistled. this dolly could get a job in a stockyard beating the oxen to death with her boo-boos!" the foreman joined the discussion of the young lady's anatomy, and so neither of them noticed the change in the sound of the drill until two minutes had passed. then popeye heard it through an erotic haze. he flung the magazine from him, and went through the door of the shed white-faced.

  it was fifty yards from the shed to the rig, but even at that distance popeye could see the vibration in the drilling rod. he could hear the labouring note of the diesels as they carried increased load. he ran like a fox terrier, trying to reach the controls and shut off the engines before it happened.

  he knew what it was. his drill had cut into one of the many fissures with which this badly faulted ground was crisscrossed. the puddling water from his borehole had drained away leaving the bit to run dry against dry rock.

  the friction head had built up, the dust from the cut was not being washed away and in consequence the rod had jammed. it was being held tightly at one end while at the other the two big diesels were straining to turn it. the whole rig was seconds away from a twist-off.

  there should have been an operator at the controls to meet just such an emergency, but he was a hundred yards away, just emerging from the wood and iron latrine beyond the puddling dam. he was desperately trying to hoist his pants, clinch the buckle of his belt and run all at the same time.

  "you whore's chamber pot roared popeye, as he ran.

  "what the hell you goofing off-" the words choked off in his throat, for as he reached the door of the engine room there was a report like a cannon shot as the rod snapped, and immediately the diesels screamed into over-rev as they were relieved of the load.

  just too late, popeye punched the earth buttons on the magnetos, and the engines spluttered into silence.

  in that silence popeye was sobbing with exertion and frustration and anger.

  "a twist-off, he sobbed. "a deep one. oh no! god, now it might take two weeks to fish out the broken rod, pump cement into the fissure to seal it, and then start again.

  he removed the cap from his head, and with all his strength hurled it on the engine room floor. he then proceeded to jump on it with both feet. this was standard procedure. popeye jumped on his cap at least once a week, and the foreman knew that when he had finished doing it, that he would then assault anybody within range.

  quietly the foreman slipped behind the wheel of the ford truck, and the rest of the gang scrambled aboard. they all bumped away down the rutted track. there was a roadhouse on the main road where they went for coffee at times like this. when the mists of rage had dispersed sufficiently from his mind for popeye to start seeking a human sacrifice, he looked about to find the drilling area strangely still and deserted.

  "stupid bunch of yellow-bellied baboons!" he bellowed in frustration after the retreating truck, and, as the next best thing, went into the shed to phone his managing director.

  this gentleman sitting in the air-conditioned offices of "hart drilling and cementation" high above rissik street in johannesburg was a little taken aback to learn from popeye worth that he, the managing director, was directly responsible for the twist-off of an expensive diamond drill at the sander ditch no. 5 hole.

  "if you used that sack of custard that passes for a brain, you'd fight shy of trying to sink holes into this bunch of knitting," popeye yelled into the mouthpiece. "i'd prefer to stick my old man into a meat grinder than put a drill into this ground. it stinks, i tell you!

  it's really ugly down there.

  god help the poor son of a bitch who tries to mine it!" he slammed down the phone and stuffed his pipe with trembling fingers. ten minutes later his breathing had returned to normal and his hands were steady. he picked up the phone again and dialled the number of the roadhouse. the proprietor answered.

  "jose, tell my boys it's okay, they can come home now," said popeye.

  for rod ironsides there was more excitement than usual in meeting and solving the dozen paper problems that lay an his desk to welcome him back to the office. as he worked he kept remembering that manfred steyner might be able to do it, might just be able to do it.