Gold Mine

by Wilbur Smith

  He climbed down and gingerly lowered himself into the water. Instantly it dragged at his lower body, shocking in its power. It was waist-deep here, but he found that by bracing his body against the steel ladder he could maintain his footing.

  Big King climbed down beside him, and Rod had to raise his voice above the hissing thunder of water.

  "All right?"

  "Yes. Let them send down the boat." Rod flashed his lamp up the shaft, and within minutes the dinghy was swaying slowly down to them.

  They reached up and guided it right side up to the surface of the water, before untying the rope.

  The dinghy was sucked firmly against the wire mesh, and Rod checked its contents quickly. All was secure.

  "Right." Rod tied a bight of the nylon rope around his waist, and climbed up the wire mesh barrier until he could reach the roof of the tunnel. Behind him Big King was paying out the nylon line.

  Rod leaned out until he could get his hands on the compressed air pipes that ran along the roof of the tunnel.

  The pipes were as thick as a man's wrist, bolted securely into the hanging wall of the drive; they would support a man's weight with ease.

  Rod settled his grip firmly on the piping and then kicked his feet free from the barrier. He hung above the rushing waters, his feet just brushing the surface.

  Hand over hand, swinging forward with feet dangling, he started up the tunnel. The nylon rope hung down behind him like a long white tail. It was 300 feet to where the water boiled from the drive into the main haulage, and Rod's shoulder muscles were shrieking in protest before he reached it. It seemed that his arms were being wrenched from their sockets, for the weight of the nylon rope that was dragging in the water was fast becoming intolerable.

  There was a back eddy in the angle formed by the drive and the haulage.

  Here the flood swirled in a vortex, and if Rod lowered himself slowly into it. The water buffeted him, but again he was able to cower against the side wall of the haulage and hold his footing. Quickly he began tying the rope onto the rawlbolts that were driven into the sidewall to consolidate the rock. Within minutes he had established a secure base from which to operate, and when he flashed his lamp back down the haulage he saw Big King following him along the compressed air piping.

  Big King dropped into the waist-deep water beside Rod, and they gripped the nylon rope and rested their burning arm muscles.

  "Ready?" asked Rod'at last, and Big King nodded.

  They laid hold of the rope that led back to the dinghy and hauled upon it. For a moment nothing happened, the other end might just as well have been anchored to a mountain.

  "Together!" grunted Rod, and they recovered a foot of rope.

  "Again!" And they drew the dinghy inch by inch up the haulage against the rush of water.

  Their hands were bleeding when they at last pulled the laden dinghy up to their own position and anchored it to the rawlbolts beside them. It bounced and bobbed with the water drumming against its underside.

  Neither Rod nor Big King could talk. They hung exhausted on the body lines with the water ripping at their skin and gasped for breath.

  At last Rod looked up at Big King, and in the lamp light he saw his own doubts reflected in Big King's eyes. The drop-blast matt was 1,000 feet up the drive. The strength and speed of the water in the drive was almost double what it was in the haulage. Could they ever fight their way against such primeval forces as these that were now unleashed about them?

  "I will go next," Big King said, and Rod nodded his agreement.

  The huge Bantu drew himself up the rope until he could reach the compressed air pipe. His skin in the lamplight glistened like that of a porpoise. Hand over hand he disappeared into the gaping black maw of the drive. His lamp threw deformed and monstrous shadows upon the walls of rock.

  When Big King's lamp flashed the signal to him, Rod climbed up to the pipe and followed him into the drive.

  Three hundred feet later he found Big King had established another base. But here they were exposed to the full force of the flood, and they were pulled so violently against the body lines that the harsh nylon smeared the skin from their bodies. Together they dragged the dinghy up to them and anchored it.

  Rod was sobbing softly as he held his torn hands to his chest and wondered if he could do it again.

  "Ready?" Big King asked beside him, and Rod nodded.

  He reached up and placed the raw flesh of his palms onto the metal piping, and felt the tears of pain flood his eyes.

  He blinked them back and dragged himself forward.

  Vaguely he realized that should he fall, he was a dead man. The flood would sweep him away, dragging him along the jagged side walls of the drive, ripping his flesh from the bone, and finally hurling him against the mesh surrounding the shaft to crush the life from his body.

  He went on until he knew he could go no farther. Then he selected a rawlbolt in the side wall and looped the rope through it. And they repeated the whole heart-breaking procedure. Twice as he strained against the dinghy rope Rod saw his vision explode into stars and pinwheels. Each time he dragged himself back from the brink of unconsciousness by sheer force of will.

  The example that Big King was setting was the inspiration which kept Rod from failing. Big King worked without change of expression, but his eyes were bloodshot with exertion. Only once Rod heard him grunt like a gut-shot lion, and there was bright blood on the rope where he touched it.

  Rod knew he could not give in while Big King held on.

  Reality dissolved slowly into a dark roaring nightmare of pain, wherein muscles and bone were loaded beyond all endurance, and yet continued to function. It seemed that for all time Rod had hung on arms that were leadened and slow with exhaustion. He was inching his way along the compressed air pipe for yet another advance up the drive.

  Sweat running into his eyes was bluffing his vision, so at first he did not credit what he saw ahead of him in the darkness.

  He shook his head to clear his eyes, and then squinted along the beam of his lamp. A heavy timber structure was hanging drunkenly from the roof of the drive. The bolts that held it were resisting the efforts of the water to tear it loose.

  Rod realized abruptly that this was what remained of the frame which had held the ventilation doors. The doors were gone, ripped away, but the frame was still in position.

  He knew that just beyond the ventilation doors the drop blast matt began. They had reached it!

  New strength flowed into his body and he swung forward along the pipe.

  The timber frame made a fine anchor point and Rod secured the rope to it, and flashed back the signal to Big King. He hung in the loop of rope and rested awhile, then he forced himself to take an interest in his surroundings. He played the beam over the distorted timber frame and saw instantly why the blasting circuit had been broken.

  In the lamp light the distinctive green plastic-coated blasting cable hung in festoons from the roof of the drive; clearly it had become entangled in the ventilation doors and been severed when they were ripped away. The loose end of the cable dangled to the surface of the racing water.

  Rod fastened his eyes on it, drawing comfort and strength from the knowledge that they would not have to continue their agonized journey down the drive.

  When Big King came up out of the gloom, Rod indicated the dangling cable.

  "There!" he gasped, and Big King narrowed his eyes in acknowledgement; he was unable to speak.

  It was five minutes before they could commence the excruciating business of hauling the dinghy up and securing it to the door frame.

  Again they rested. Their movements were slowing up drastically.

  Neither of them had much strength left to draw upon.

  "Get hold of the end of the cable." Rod instructed Big King, and he dragged himself over the side of the dinghy and lay sprawled full-length on the floor boards.

  His weight forced the dinghy deeper, increasing its resistance to the racing water,
and the rope strained against the wooden frame. Rod began clumsily to unpack the battery blaster. Big King stood waist-deep clinging with one arm to the wooden frame, reaching forward with the other towards the end of the green-coated cable. It danced just beyond his fingertips, and he edged forward against the current, steadying himself against the timber frame, placing a greater strain on the retainin bolts.

  His fingers closed on the cable and with a grunt of satisfaction he passed it back to Rod.

  Working with painstaking deliberation, Rod connected the crocodile clips from the reel of wire to the loose end of the green cable. Rod's plan was for both he and Big King to climb aboard the dinghy, and, paying out the nylon rope, let themselves be carried back down the drive. At the same time they would be letting the wire run from its reel. At a safe distance they would fire the drop-blast matt.

  Rod's fingers were swollen and numbed. The minutes passed as he completed his preparations and all that while the strain on the wooden frame was heavy and constant.

  Rod looked up from his task, and crawled to his knees.

  "All right, Big King," he wheezed as he knelt in the bows of the dinghy and gripped the wooden frame to steady the dinghy. "Come aboard. We are ready." Big King waded forward and at that instant the retaining bolts on one side of the heavy timber frame gave way. With a rending, tearing sound the frame slewed across the tunnel.

  The beams of timber crossed each other like the blades of a pair of gigantic scissors. Both Rod's arms were between the beams. The bones in his forearms snapped with the loud crackle of breaking sticks.

  With a scream of pain Rod collapsed onto the floorboards of the dinghy, his arms useless, sticking out at absurd angles from their shattered bones. Three feet away Big King was still in the water. His mouth was wide open, but no sound issued from his throat. He stood still as a black statue and his eyes bulged from their sockets. Even through his own suffering Rod was horrified by the expression on Big King's contorted features.

  Below the surface of the water the bottom timber beams had performed the same scissor movement, but this time they had caught Big King's lower body between them. They had closed across his pelvis and crushed it. Now they held him in a vice like grip from which it was not possible to shake them.

  The white face and the black face were but a few feet apart. The two stricken companions in disaster looked into each other's eyes and knew that there was no escape. They were doomed.

  "My arms," whispered Rod huskily. "I cannot use them." Big King's bulging eyes held Rod's gaze.

  "Can you reach the blaster?" Rod whispered urgently.

  "Take it and turn the handle. Burn it, Big King, burn it! Slow comprehension showed in Big King's pain-glazed eyes.

  "We are finished, Big King. Let us go like men. Burn it, bring down the rock!" Above them the rock was sown with explosive. The blaster was connected. In his agitation Rod tried to reach out for the blaster. His forearm swung loosely, the fingers hanging open like the petals of a dead flower, and the pain checked him.

  "Get it, Big King," Rod urged him, and Big King picked up the blaster and held it against his chest with one arm.

  "The handle!" Rod encouraged him. "Turn the handle!" But instead Big King reached into the dinghy once more and drew the machete from its sheath. "What are you doing?" Rod demanded, and in reply Big King swung the blade back over his shoulder and then brought it forward in a gleaming arc aimed at the nylon rope that held the dinghy anchored to the wooden frame.

  Clunk! The blade bit into the wood, severing the rope that was bound around it.

  Freed by the stroke of the machete, the dinghy was whisked away by the current. Lying in the dancing rubber dinghy, Rod heard a bull voice bellow above the rush of the water.

  "Go in peace, my friend." Then Rod was careening back along the drive, a hell ride during which the dinghy spun like a top and in the beam of his lamp the roof and walls melted into a dark racing blur as Rod lay maimed on the floor of the dinghy.

  Then suddenly the air jarred against his ear drums, a long rolling concussion in the confines of the drive and he knew that Big King had fired the drop-blast matt. Rodney Ironsides slipped over the edge of consciousness into a soft warm dark place from which he hoped never to return.

  Dimitri squatted on his haunches above the shaft at 65 level. He was smoking his tenth cigarette. The rest of the men waited as impatiently as he did; every few minutes Dimitri would cross to the shaft and flash his lamp down the hundred-foot hole to 66 level.

  "How long have they been gone?" he asked, and they all glanced at their watches.

  "An hour and ten minutes."

  "No, an hour and fourteen minutes." "Christ, call me a liar for four minutes!" and they lapsed into silence once more. Suddenly the station telephone shrilled, and Dimitri jumped up and ran to it.

  "No, Mr. Hirschfeld, nothing yet!" He listened a moment.

  "All right, send him down then." He hung up the telephone, and his men looked at him enquiringly.

  "They are sending down a policeman," he explained.

  "What the hell for?"

  "They want Big King."

  "Why?"

  "Warrant of arrest for murder."

  "Murder?"

  "Ja, they reckon he murdered the Portuguese storekeeper."

  "Jeer!"

  "Big King, is that so!" Delighted to have found something to pass the time, they fell into an animated debate.

  The police inspector arrived in the cage at 65 level, but he was disappointing. He looked like a down-at-heel undertaker, and he replied to their eager questions with a sorrowful stare that left them stuttering.

  For the fifteenth time Dimitri went to the shaft and peered down into it. The blast shook the earth around them, a long rumbling that persisted for many seconds.

  "They've done it! yelled Dimitri, and began to caper wildly. His men leapt to their feet and began beating each other on the back, shouting and laughing. The police inspector alone took no part in the celebrations.

  "Wait," yelled Dimitri at last. "Shut up all of you! Shut up! Damn it! Listen!" They fell silent.

  "What is it?" someone asked. "I can't hear anything."

  "That's just id" exulted Dimitri. "The water! It has stopped Only then did they become aware that the dull roar of water to which their ears had become resigned was now ended. It was quiet; a cathedral hush lay upon the workings.

  They began to cheer, their voices thin in the silence, and Dimitri ran to the steel ladder and swarmed down it like a monkey.

  From thirty feet up Dimitri saw the dinghy marooned amongst the filth and debris around the shaft. He recognized the crumpled figure lying in the bottom of it.

  "Rod!" he was shouting before he reached the station at 66 level.

  "Rod, are you all right?" The floor of the haulage was wet, and here and there a trickle of water still snaked towards the shaft. Dimitri ran to the stranded dinghy and started to turn Rod onto his back. Then he saw his arms.

  "Oh, Christ!" he gasped in horror, then he was yelling up the ladder.

  "Get a stretcher down here." Rod regained consciousness to find himself covered with blankets and strapped securely into a mine stretcher. His arms were sprinted and bandaged, and from the familiar rattle and rush of air he knew he was in the cage on the way to the surface.