When Seimin noticed that it was getting close to eight o’clock, he stretched himself before he stood up. At that moment he heard a motorbike approaching at speed towards his shop. The poor fellow got the fright of his life with the noise. He jumped to his feet and he dashed to the window. The bike was standing outside Eoin’s shop, the engine stopped and a tall lanky lad was in the saddle. He was wearing a big coat, a strong pair of boots, leather gloves and a miners cap with a small oil lamp above the peak.
“On my soul it is Marcus who is there.” Seimin said. “Up from Inis Colman on the stroke of eight.”
“Out you go to your work” Sile said. “Out you go in case he thinks that you were lying in your bed in the morning.”
“Mother of God, it’s not in your bed you are in the morning,” Seimin said to Marcus who was parking his bike behind Eoin’s house.
Marcus laughed innocently, as he drew off his gloves. He was wearing working clothes over his day clothes, miner’s clothes that he used to wear when he was in the mines in Scotland.
“They say the new brush sweeps clean, Seimin,” he said. “You know that this is only my first morning; and I was full sure that I would find you asleep.”
Seimin decided he should talk up for himself just in case.
“I am a foreman under ground for your father for twenty years, sir,” he said, “and in all that time you would not get me in the house past eight o’clock any day that there was work in the mine; and as well as that, sir, I was never absent except for one week when I was laid up. Anyone can tell you that, sir.”
“One week sickness!” Marcus said. as they strode over to the eye of the mine. “On my soul I must say that you are as healthy as a deer. Is there a doctor who could tell you what was wrong with you that week?”
“I was hit by something, sir,” he said.
“Under ground, was it?”
“Underground, sir.” “The buck who did it is in America for years. He left immediately after he got out of prison. He wouldn’t ever get work in this mine again.”
“Right,” Marcus said, as he watched the sparks from the engines being taken away by the wind.
“What sentence did he get?”
“Three months, sir; and it wasn’t half enough for the blackguard. It was he who left that scar on my forehead-that is the track of his hand, sir.”
“Was it with his hand, he did it?”
“With his fist, the hangman. You wouldn’t see an eye or a mouth on me, sir. I was red with my own blood when I was taken out of here.”
“And what came between you?”
“What I said to him wasn’t worth a pin. He was complaining about bad air and low passages; and the answer that I gave him was that every other man was as good as he was, and they were also working in bad air and getting in and out of the passages, and that if he didn’t like it he could leave. That is exactly what I said, sir, of course that is often said to miners in this mine. Before I could say another word he knocked me down. That is the kind of buck you meet in this mine, occasionally. A lot of them, sir, and a sizable number at that, haven’t a day’s gratitude for the gentleman who is providing all this employment for them, on their door-step. I believe they don’t like me half the time, and I’m trying to give them every chance I can. But isn’t that the way with the Irish all the time, sir, haven’t the respect of a dog on the work available to them in their own country; but nice mannerly boys, with their two eyes outside their heads slaving when they go among foreigners.”
Marcus was listening to this talk; and while he understood all of it his mind was elsewhere. He was standing outside the eye of the mine; his two hands clasped behind his head; his coat cape tucked up around his ears; the gale force wind taking away his breath occasionally; he was watching the miners coming towards him in twos, and threes, and sometimes alone. A lot of them were big strong men, with a healthy skin. Very few of them had the delicate expression that he had seen on many of the miners in Scotland. He believed the clear mountain air was responsible for that. He often heard that miners did not get long lives, but there were old miners here working with picks who were over seventy, many of whom had spent most of their lives working under ground, and others not far off the hundred years old. Another thing he noticed was that there was no man among them who could be called lazy. When he looked around at the steep hills where people were trying to make a living he thought it was sad, and very sad for the people whom the Creator had left in Gleann Ceo. An odd man nodded his head at him as they passed, a nod that he thought was very humble. Some of them waved nervously at him, and they dashed inside quickly. There was a young boy among them who was barely fourteen years old. Two of them came together and their faces were purple with the cold. As with many of the miners he had seen their clothes were layered. For boys of their age they walked very sluggishly. Every man had two thin candles, a bottle of tea, and a little parcel of bread in the pocket of his jacket, and their hands were buried deeply in the pockets of their britches.
“Thanks be to God we are going inside out of the cold,” the slower man said, as the pair of them escaped into the darkness.
Marcus visited the engine room to see what state the place was in. There was a hard rope running out from the engine house in to the eye of the mine, and running between rails of the main passage, about two thirds of a mile in under the mountain. This was the rope that pulled out the hutches when they were full of coal.
“Let us go in, Seimin,” he said, taking off his big coat and hanging it on the back of the engine room door. “I was only in here once ever, and I was so small that time that I have almost completely forgotten it, I could say.”
The pair went in. They weren’t in very far inside until they were in total darkness. But Marcus lighted the miner’s lamp and Seimin did the same with the little oil lamp that he had in his hand. They were able to walk straight ahead for about fifty yards, or thereabout; but after that they were obliged to bend their heads little by little until they came to where the had to go on their hands and knees for a while. When they were half way in they heard the sound of the hutches coming out; it was like thunder with the sound rising and rising, until they could see the light a short distance from them. The man who was drawing the hutch was lying on his mouth and nose on top of the coal and he was singing. Marcus and Seimin drew in to one side to allow the hutches to pass; and it was difficult enough for them to tighten themselves in well enough, so as not be hurt by the hutches.
“The explosives must have been scarce when they were making this passage,” Marcus said.
Seimin just made a little laugh.
There are narrower places in this pit, sir,” he said.
It was true for him, because when Marcus went in on a branch passage, he saw things that amazed, and shamed, and angered him. Every branch passage was worse than the one he had just come through. The only way that any man who was any size at all could get in into these passages was on his hands and knees. The man who didn’t crawl, would be well scraped before long. You never knew when your forehead would hit the pointed rocks over your head, or your shoulder could be put out of joint, or the flesh torn from your back. It was mostly boys who were dragging out the hutches behind them in these passages, or ’drawing,’ as it is called in the mines. These boys were careful enough about themselves, and their bodies were bent as low as the rails, while they were pulling and dragging over the bumps, and the sweat running off them. But the ones who were not used to the mine were in danger of injuring themselves. Marcus came upon one of these boys and he sitting on the rails behind a hutch; he was crying bitterly. The front wheels of the hutch had come off the rails, and he hadn’t place to get out from behind it to fix it. The poor lad was in a terrible state, his little arms were bare and were scratched and bleeding. He was a sad sight, sitting there in despair, a bit of a thin candle held melting in his little fist; the tears running down his cheeks that were black with the coal dust; and his hutch of coal lying there with no way for him to get
passed it, to fix it.
Seimin Ban laughed at him.
“On my word,” he said.” You’re a nice man. Sitting there like an old hen, instead of pulling that hutch back and putting it right again. Shame on you son.”
When Seimin had finished this talk, he looked around towards Marcus, as if he expected him to talk in the same way. Marcus gave him an angry look, as he sat on his hunkers between the rails in silence.
Seimin thought that the boy would be sacked, and that it would be good enough for him. But when he saw the young master going on his knees and putting the hutch on the rails, he almost lost his breath. His neck veins stood out like ribs with the amazement. The poor man was stuck for words. But the young master didn’t say a word to him one way or the other. His whole attention was with the boy.
“Off you go with your coal at your ease,” he said, “and if the hutch goes off the rails again, don’t worry about it, son. Sit and rest behind it until someone comes to help you, anyhow it won’t be long until you have plenty of space to put your hutch back on the rails in these passages. Off you go now.”
Seimin was thinking that this lad would not stop until he had all of the branch roads as wide as the main passage. This suspicion was confirmed when they went in as far as the brushers. The brusher’s job was to come after the miners and move the coal out.
“Great men,” he said, as he sat on his hunkers in the middle of the passage, “is it for rabbits that you are making these passages?”
A few of them looked at Seimin and of course Marcus also looked towards him.
“I believe that it is you who gives orders for the passages to be left so narrow, Seimin?”
“That is true, sir, ”the bold Seimin said. But I don’t think it is right to blame me, I only did what I was told.”
“You will do what I am going to tell you from now on. Go around on every coal passage and bring every man with a pick here to me. Round up the drawers as well, every man in the mine, and bring them all out to where a man must bend his head just inside the eye of the mine; and let them dig away. Let them leave this prime road six feet high and six feet wide. Then they can start on the secondary branches and do the same until all the branch roads in use are the same. Do that Seimin, and if it takes a year, not an ounce of coal will be mined here until that is done. Now, Seimin get working, man. Every man and every boy will be paid by the day, until they return to their old jobs.”
“Very well, sir,” Seimin said, with a smile on his face that wasn’t in his heart, and he moved off on his hands and knees as well as he could in the darkness, through a place where there was no passage but an empty space between the two rocks left by the removal of the coal, and where tough men were attacking the seam with picks.
“Did you hear me, man?” Seimin said putting his head in between two supports.
“What’s that?” a small voice said from within.
“Leave down the shovel and tell everyone, east and west in the mine, to get out on the double. Tell them to get to the eye of the pit as fast as possible.”
With a black face, gleaming white teeth, open hairy chest, he came out with the light of a candle.
“In God’s name aren’t you contrary?” the driller said.
“It is he who is contrary,” Seimin said, “the young master has ordered every man young and old, big and small, to be out at the eye of the pit in double quick time.
The candle and the face faded out of sight.
FOR THE GOOD OF GLEANN CEO
It was the night of the feast of St. Brigid, and Marcus Mac Alastair had spent his first month in charge of his father’s mine. The last rays of evening were fading, and the house lights were appearing here and there on the hills, when he happened to be riding down the road on his motor -bike. Marcus was heading home after his day’s work, and he was well satisfied with himself and with the world. As for the mine, no day passed that the mine was not getting more like the way that Marcus wanted it to be, and before the end of one more week the tallest man in the Gleann would be able to walk in to the coal face on any of the roads that he chose, without ever having to bend his head. There would be no need for any boy to cry, or any man to cough, when this mine was working to his plan.
He came to Martan’s house on the bank of Loch Eala; and when his engine gave its last rev Marcus could hear the lapping of the waves on the rocks in the darkness, and it seemed to him that they were welcoming him in their own little way. As he put the boat on the waves he noticed a light on top of Sliabh and Iarann; it shook him a little until he realized that it was the moon, which was keeping watch over Gleann Ceo before it moved up without motion. When he reached the house he went around the back and into the kitchen. Ever since he was a child he had little interest in the grandeur of the front rooms. He was the type of person who would rather throw himself down on a stool in the kitchen than lay back in comfort on a soft chair in the parlour. He often sneaked away from the same parlour, when the gentlemen would be visiting his father and he would go to the kitchen and chat with old Nabla. Nabla was an old patriotic colleen from the top of Gleann, she was a servant in the house since Marcus was born, and for long enough before that. She was very fond of him since she was rocking him in the cradle as a baby; and since his mother had died which was seven years earlier, than the time of writing this story, Nabla was as careful with him as if he was her own son. He would chat with Nabla by the fireside exactly as he would have done with his mother, had she lived; and he told her stories in confidence too that he would not tell to a second person. He often asked her advice on questions that he would not dare ask his father-little questions that his father would not have understood as he should- questions about Gleann Ceo that his father would only ridicule him rather than answer them.
On arrival with old Nabla this night, she was busy handling the pots and the skillets from which he could get the smell of dinner. Nansai the young daughter of Seimin Ban was preparing a place for his dinner beside the fire. They had a bright light shining and every thing tidy.
“I sincerely regret, ladies, how late I am tonight,” he said as he threw his gloves on a chair and got out of his big coat.
“We could hear you since you were at Coradh na dhFeadog/Whistle Hill? ”Nabla said. “Don’t be afraid that you shock us in any way, boy. The dreadful noise of that machine would frighten the ghosts let alone the enemy out there.”
“I hope in God that I won’t banish the little people at Dun le Grein, Nabla,” he said as he stood in his shirt and trousers, washing himself at the kitchen sink.
“Maise, wouldn’t it be a great ease to the people if they cleared out body and sleeves from the Gleann altogether.”
“Patience woman! Study yourself before you talk so freely. Think about Gleann Ceo deserted by the droves of fairies. Think about Dun le Grein without its gentry on May Day or Hallowe’en. Nabla love, we will keep the good people in Gleann Ceo as long as we can; because the day we lose them, or that we forget about them, will be a black day for Gleann Ceo”
“Dammy but you should pay them a visit some day if you are so fond of them.”
“They would have no interest in me, Nabla. I wouldn’t expect them to want someone from the group whose people never had a good wish for them. To get to know the fairies, Nabla, a person must be Irish.”
“Maise, aren’t you Irish enough for any fairy!”
“I’m a long way from being as Irish as I would like to be-if I ever will be, Nabla,” he said.
“With God’s help you will, pet,” she said.
“Your father is home since mid-day,” Nansai said “He is in the parlour looking at the mining book. He told me to get them for him.”
“Maise, I thought that he would not return from Dublin so soon.” Marcus said, as he began to take his soup with gusto. “I would rather not see him until I am ready with the changes we are making in the mine. I believe he won’t let tomorrow go by before he charges down, and he won’t be too pleased when he sees all the men brushin
g, and not an ounce of coal mined for a whole month. If he stayed on holidays for another fortnight we would be ready with the roads/passages, and the coal would be coming out, and it wouldn’t be half as difficult to get around him.”
“He had a small drop taken, I think, when he arrived in here today,” Nabla said; and it is less than half an hour ago that he ordered me to bring him in a bowl of punch”
“He is very fond of the spirits,” Marcus said.
“Maise, he hasn’t the same capacity for it lately as he used to have,” Nabla said. “I often seen in the past and he would have drank a five noggin bottle and it would be a sharp eye that would detect a drop on him.”
Marcus was just ready for his dinner when the parlour bell rang. Nansai ran in to the master, and she ran out again to say the master had business with Marcus. The young man got up and went steadily in to him.
Mac Alastair was stretched at his ease on a sofa in front of the fire, with a glass of punch on the small table beside him, and steam rising from it. He had his pipe in his mouth, and there was a pleasant smell from the tobacco he was smoking. He was wearing his slippers, with one leg stretched from him on the sofa and the other foot resting on a small footstool. He looked around when he heard the door opening, and his son noticed that his thin cheeks were flushed with the effects of the spirits. His spectacles were up on his forehead, and his little narrow eyes weren’t half as sharp as they used to be.
West, in the Foggy Valley Page 5
