The Burning Land

by John Fletcher

  Half a mile away a shaft collapsed at the seventy foot level and entombed three diggers. Everyone broke off work to try to reach them but the shaft was vertical with no side adits and the neighbouring claims had not driven so deep. It took a day and a half to reach them and the men were dead long before they recovered their bodies.

  The water flow increased steadily as they went down. At the eighty foot level it was all they could do to contain the flood.

  ‘Much more and it’ll be too much for us,’ Matthew said. ‘As it is, we’re barely keeping pace with it.’

  ‘Well have to take on some other fellows,’ Hamish said gloomily. ‘It’s the only way.’

  ‘Don’ ’ave no spare cash fer wages,’ Luke said.

  He was right: digging the shaft was bleeding their capital to the point where they would barely have enough to reach the gutter.

  ‘What do you suggest we do, then?’ Matthew said impatiently. ‘We’re about exhausted as it is.’

  ‘We buys an engine.’

  Hamish was dubious. ‘Can we afford to have one?’

  ‘Can we afford not to?’

  They made enquiries. There were no pumps to be had in Ballarat; the only ones in the area were already fully committed.

  ‘We’ll have to get one sent up from Melbourne,’ Matthew said. ‘The haulage will set us back a few quid for a start.’

  It would indeed. They found that a new engine at the Melbourne docks would cost two hundred pounds. Installed at Ballarat it would be over twice as much.

  ‘More than two years’ wages,’ Matthew grieved.

  If they were not going to bring in outsiders it was the only way.

  ‘There’d better be gold when we get down there,’ Hamish said grimly.

  While they waited for the engine they dug and shuttered and rammed clay and dug again, trying to keep pace with the water and drifting sand.

  ‘I’ll ’ave three dead men on me ’ands, that engine don’ get ’ere soon,’ Nance said.

  As long as he lived Matthew would never forget the torment of working at the bottom of the shaft.

  First, to get down without falling when he had scarcely woken from the drugged unconsciousness that was sleep. Ninety feet from top to bottom and only the footholds carved in the clay or the wooden cross-pieces securing the shuttering to keep him from pitching to his death. Ninety feet, with a stump of candle stuck on the brim of his hat and the flame leaping and lurching crazily over the restraining lengths of stringybark, the yellow teeth of clay and drift sand smiling through the gaps, the creak and groan of wood under pressure, the constant grey run and splash of water, the smell of the grave coming up from the black depths beneath his boots. Step by step he went down, feet groping, hands groping, as the stink and the heat grew close about him and his lungs laboured to find oxygen. And then the bottom, water a foot deep or more in the few minutes it had taken for them to change shifts, the sullen clay waiting for the pickaxe, the bucket to be filled again and again with water before there was any hope of filling it with clay.

  Always the thought that, at ninety feet, they were little more than half way to the gutter. That might make their fortunes. That might be empty.

  The bucket rose swinging and dripping out of sight. The pickaxe rose and fell, shadows flapped their black wings against the walls of the shaft. Muscles settled for the hundredth time to their work. Somehow, inch by inch, with sweat and sometimes close to tears, the shaft went down.

  They had started by working eight-hour shifts but were now too tired to keep it up. Now they worked two four-hour shifts a day. The rest of the time they hoisted buckets, cut and split wood for shuttering, hoisted buckets, split wood …

  Life was a nightmare of sodden clothes, muscles that had gone beyond screaming into the sullen pain of exhaustion, eyes gritty with sand and weariness.

  At the end of one shift, as Matthew hauled his exhausted body foot by foot from the depths of the shaft, he noticed perhaps ten feet from the bottom a shadow across one wall that he had not seen before. He paused to examine it. One of the sections of stringybark shuttering had shifted, perhaps by as much as an inch. He prodded it with the tip of a finger, pressing down on it as hard as he could. It did not move and looked safe enough. No more water or sand than usual seemed to be coming in.

  He climbed on and out of the shaft into air so fresh that his head spun with it as he hauled himself into the light.

  ‘Have a look at the shuttering near the bottom,’ he said to Luke. ‘It may have shifted a bit.’

  Luke nodded silently. None of them wasted more energy than they could help on talking. Even breathing had become a burden.

  He lowered himself over the side of the shaft, boots groping for the first foothold, and disappeared from view.

  Matthew sat on the ground, breathing the air, feeling the sunlight on his face, too weary even to get to his feet and go in search of food or bed. He managed it eventually and turned to look down the shaft. Far down, he could see the black mass of shadow that was Luke against the faint flutter of candle flame. Little ripples of light ran up the sides of the shaft, too far away and too faint to see detail.

  He heard a crack, like a stick snapping.

  Luke gave a cry, sharp with surprise. A hundred feet above him, Matthew heard it clearly. A sudden rush of black quenched the light. There was a rumble. A puff of air, stale as a five day corpse, came up the shaft.

  Matthew was running.

  Nance was asleep. He cursed, shaking her wildly, shouting at her. Her eyes flew open but it took a minute that seemed hours to get her to understand.

  ‘Where’s Hamish?’ Matthew shouted.

  ‘He’s gone to fetch wood. Why?’ Strands of hair like black silk trailed across her face.

  ‘There’s been a fall.’

  He saw the impact of his words in her eyes.

  ‘Luke …?’ Scrambling to her feet, face white, hands to the red mouth.

  ‘Down the bottom of the shaft. I’m going down now. Get Hamish, quick as you can. And anyone else who can give a hand.’

  He was down the shaft in what seemed seconds.

  The blow-in had ripped away a ten feet section of shuttering, leaving a gaping wound in the earth. One look told him it was unsafe. As he watched, a dribble of wet sand and gravel slid down to join the fall at the bottom of the shaft. Below his boots was a mess of fallen earth, water, shattered strips of timber. And somewhere, underneath it all, Luke.

  Even standing on it might add hurt to anyone beneath but there was no other way. It was soft earth and not more than six feet deep. Provided he wasn’t underwater, Luke had a chance.

  He started to shovel, furiously yet with as much care as he could, stacking the fallen ground against one side of the shaft, boots squelching in mud as he did so.

  At least the run of water seemed no worse than before.

  There was a creak and a groan from above his head and he looked up, frozen in an instant of terror, but apart from a thin sifting of sand nothing more fell.

  He dug with increasing frenzy.

  Two feet and nothing.

  Three feet and nothing.

  Where was he?

  A voice called from the top of the shaft, ‘Need anyone else down there?’

  Hamish. He knew as well as Matthew there was no room for more than one person at a time to work at the bottom of the shaft, but he had to ask.

  ‘No,’ Matthew shouted back. There was no time, no breath, to say more than that.

  The shovel rose, fell. Shadows flared. His breath echoed harshly in his throat. The broken soil sucked and complained, spilling water, resisting the blade.

  Luke’s foot appeared.

  Energy redoubled, Matthew drove the shovel blade down into the gluelike mass of clay, forcing it back from the body. Now the leg was exposed, both legs, one of them twisted at an ominous angle. He changed position, trying to free the body. He was frightened of going directly for the head until he knew which way Luke was lying. Get the ang
le wrong, he could kill him.

  A dozen shovelfuls of soil and he tossed it aside, kneeling and scrabbling at the clay with bare hands. God, how it resisted him. His shoulders creaked as he hauled it away, nails ripped, fingers bled from a hundred nicks and cuts.

  How could Luke breathe under this lot?

  A section of fallen shuttering lay across the upper part of Luke’s body. Cursing monotonously, Matthew worked it free. He seized the shoulders and tried to drag the whole body out of the earth. Failed. He worked up the side of Luke’s head. Groping, working by feel.

  He took a deep breath, hauled again. He slipped, stumbled and his hat fell off. The candle went out.

  ‘Christ!’ His scream of outrage, exhaustion, agony, echoed up the shaft. He was half-aware of shouts coming from far above him.

  He had no time to think of that, no time to think of finding the candle or relighting it. He pulled and worked in a paroxysm of energy, knowing as he did so that the moment was rushing inexorably upon him when the bruised and abused mechanism would simply stop.

  He felt the body shift under his hands. Renewed energy powered through him. He crouched, feet together, arms under Luke’s shoulders, and heaved. Blood-red patterns flared before his bulging eyes.

  The body moved, sucking, out of the mud and stones.

  He did not know if Luke were alive or dead. At that moment, after all the energy he had expended, he did not care.

  He had got him out. That was all.

  Nance waited at the top of the shaft. Hamish had gone down when Matthew’s candle went out but several men still surrounded her—the Goods from the next working, the Devines and Landers from the one beyond that, several more whose names she did not know.

  She could not stay still. She paced to and fro, brushing loose strands of hair off her face, feeling the slow claws of dread tighten upon her. First brother Michael, she thought. Now Luke. It was more than she could bear. To be alone again. No one caring if you were alive or dead.

  Luke Bryant, she thought, feeling laughter rise hysterically in her throat, if you’ve died on me I’ll kill you.

  There was shouting from the open shaft, Patrick Lander had his head down it as he listened. He straightened, turning to Nance.

  ‘They got him.’

  Time still, heart still. ‘And?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’

  The men drove the capstan around, putting their backs into it. She watched, nerves screaming under her skin. The windlass groaned, bitten by the weight on the rope’s end. The rope came into the light, yard by taut yard. Water dripped from it. The object on the end of the rope rose bobbing and swaying into the light.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Luke had a broken leg and abrasions but otherwise, miraculously, was unscathed.

  Two weeks later the pumping engine arrived. It took another month to get it assembled and working but work it did and soon the thick yellow water was gushing from the mine.

  It was Nance’s idea they should go out to celebrate. Luke’s leg was giving him trouble and the men were exhausted after all their work but she would not let them ignore what they had achieved.

  ‘Luke could’ve died down that shaft and didn’t‚’ she said. ‘Now we got the engine running. I reckon we got a lot to be thankful for. Besides, it’ll do us all good.’

  She got her way and was glad of it. An hour later she began to have her first doubts.

  They started at the Gold Diggers Arms and moved in turn to the Albion, the New Inn and the Grand Imperial. Hamish had a disagreement with a fierce little cockerel of a man with a quiff of red hair and a body caked with dirt. They argued it out amicably, then not so amicably, until Hamish brought his tankard down on the head of his new acquaintance and followed it with an elbow to the nose.

  They left him sprawled on the floor and went on to the Kerry Grand Hotel, a slab and bark structure with a banner hanging above the door, declaring ‘PACQUITA FLORES’. Beneath it, in letters only slightly smaller, ‘Tonight’.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ Matthew wondered.

  ‘A dancer,’ Nance said. ‘There was something in the paper about her.’

  Inside there was a crowded open-air courtyard with a small dais at one end and at the other a window opening onto the street. Tobacco smoke billowed in blue clouds about the lamps and waiters in dirty aprons moved through the noisy throng, trays of drinks held high.

  A man in a white shirt, black bow tie and black pants was making an announcement from the front of the stage but the hubbub was too great to hear more than the odd phrase.

  ‘By popular request … one of the greatest artistes … The greatest pride in presenting …’

  Pacquita Flores came forward, face wreathed in smiles, blowing kisses at the audience. She was small and well rounded with jet black hair, heavily rouged lips and cheeks and the blackest of black flashing eyes. She was wearing a dress of red satin with net over and embroidered with large black flowers.

  She had a man with her, dressed in black and carrying a guitar. He settled to a steady strumming that increased rapidly in tempo as the dancer stamped her feet and began a shrieking and discordant singing accompanied by a series of flamboyant gestures that might have been oddly impressive had it not been for a problem that became immediately apparent. The great artiste was utterly and catastrophically drunk.

  The rhythm faltered as her stamping feet stumbled, the gestures became increasingly wild, the crowd grew restive. Murmurs turned to shouts of protests. The dancer responded by raising her voice to an ear-piercing crescendo.

  Nance felt the pressure of a hand on her thigh and turned to see a man in a blue shirt looking down at her. ‘This is bloody lethal‚’ he said. ‘I kin think o’ better ways o’ passing the time. How about you?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  His expression changed at once. ‘What you ’ere for then?’ he said belligerently.

  ‘Not for that.’

  The caterwauling grew louder. The crowd surged restlessly, looking for trouble.

  Luke looked at the man across the top of Nance’s head. ‘Piss off.’

  He wasn’t a big man but was tough as a strip of dried leather—dark, thin face, dark hair swept back, frown lines etched deep between dangerous eyes. He did not reply but leaned across Nance and clipped Luke very hard on the side of the jaw. Luke staggered, off-balance, and the leg let him down. He fell, clawing at the man on the other side of him, and two or three fell together.

  Violence swept the room. Within seconds the crowd had become a mob, fists swinging, heads butting, boots thudding into the bodies of the fallen.

  ‘Keep close.’

  The dark-faced man was still there, hand once again clamped on her thigh. ‘I’ll git us outa here.’

  Holding her tight, he thrust his way through the crowd. She went with him willingly—anything to get out of this place. She would get rid of him later.

  Within seconds they were in the street. Nance was panting with the stress of escaping from a mob of roaring, fighting, toppling men. Her dress was torn and sweat was running over her.

  She tried to escape from his iron grip. ‘Thanks for getting me out of there.’

  He held her tight. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

  ‘Home, of course.’ Hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.

  ‘Not till I’m finished with yer. Why d’you think I got you out?’ He grinned sardonically. ‘Don’ worry. I’ll pay yer price. If yer worth it.’

  He was scaring her now. This one wasn’t like the randy boys she had known at Sofala. He was bad. She could tell it from the way his fingers held her, the expression in the close-set eyes. She wanted nothing to do with him.

  ‘I reckon the back of the hotel’s as good as anywhere‚’ he said, talking more to himself than her. He started to walk in that direction, dragging her along at his side.

  ‘No!’ She beat at him with her fists, starting to panic. Through his clothes his body was hard with muscl
e. It was like hitting a tree.

  He stopped and looked at her. ‘Want me to belt you?’

  She could see he meant it. She thought of appealing to the passers-by but in Ballarat strangers did not get involved in disputes between men and women. While she was thinking about it the man walked on, fingers digging painfully into her thigh. She stumbled along beside him, struggling to keep upright. They went around the side of the hotel and shadows engulfed them.

  The three men enjoyed themselves for a few minutes but when broken bottles appeared they climbed through the window, now shattered, into the street.

  Matthew flexed bleeding knuckles. ‘Where’s Nance?’

  Hamish said, ‘I saw some guy helping her get out at the start of it.’

  ‘Where is she now then?’

  They looked up and down the street. Plenty of people but no sign of Nance.

  A thin screech came from the back of the hotel.

  ‘You reckon …?’ They looked at each other.

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  They ran.

  Shadows. Two figures wrestling. One tall, a man. The other … Nance.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Matthew shouted.

  And he was gone. A dark shadow that flickered once in the broken light from the hotel, a hint of movement in the distance. Nothing.

  Nance sobbing, distraught.

  ‘I told ’im and told ’im. He didn’t take no notice.’

  Luke, limping and puffing behind the others, was raging. ‘What did ’e look like? We’ll find ’im, by God.’

  ‘He was dark. Thin face. Swept-back black hair.’ She covered her face with her hands, weeping. ‘I was that frightened.’

  Matthew stared, heart pounding arhythmically.

  He couldn’t know. He hadn’t even set eyes on the man. Yet something had set his instincts fluttering.

  Six weeks later, on a cold day of low cloud and driving rain, at a depth of twenty-seven fathoms from grass, the shaft of California Deep reached the gutter.

  All three men squeezed themselves down the shaft to look at what they had uncovered, Light from the candles played on the shuttered walls, the streaks of moisture, the inlet of the pumping engine. Far above their heads, daylight showed as a distant square of brightness against the black shaft.