The trouble in Thor

by Armstrong Charlotte

  "That what you were tr^'ing not to say to Gilchrist?"

  "Hell, maybe it's not the same spot." (They were both trained not to go too far on a guess.)

  "Where else were they working?"

  "On the tenth? No place."

  "That's the spot, then. Men in there." It was not a guess any more.

  "Well, you know Gilchrist," Davies said, young, breathless, and bitter. "Somebody don't agree with him, he gets unhappy. Just unhappy."

  "I understand Trezona was pretty vague."

  "Yeah, vague and religious. Gilchrist doesn't know how to handle it."

  ""Fhere's the Old Man." A big, black car debouched from a side road and proceeded majestically ahead of them. Henry bit at its heels a short way and then swung off on the upper road. They climbed swiftly and ripped past Trezona's high-standing house in which there were many lights.

  "Captain's gone," said Davies.

  "Hell be on the job."

  "Bible and all . . ." Davies snorted.

  "You don't want to underestimate that old boy," said Henry.

  "What did he know though?" gloomed Davies.

  "He either didn't know what he knew or didn't know anything. Obviously he couldn't say."

  "I'd have—" Davies stopped. "Well, you get a craving to blame somebody. I suppose the captain will get God into it. And call it the Will of God."

  Henry said, "Funny, when we get something else to call it, that's when we seem to think we got God out of it."

  "Huh?"

  "If He's there. He's always there," Henry said as if this were arithmetic.

  "You surprise me," murmured Davies. He was amused.

  Mr. McKeever was riding the cage. He was in his fifties, spare, white-haired, a man with a deep drawling voice, poised and deliberate in all he did or said. His face was set now in a mold of grave, but nerveless, concern. Davies and Duncane and others, miners who had been called, made up the descending load. They were all, except possibly Duncane, men who were going down to see what was to be done now. So there was a simplicity about them, something quiet and direct that did not make for excited chatter. The remarks exchanged were all brief and bitten off. Henry Duncane made no remarks at all.

  At the tenth level the cage stopped. The group strode off along the drift dividing like beads slipping apart on a string. They plodded between the timbered walls, their feet catching the rhythm of the ties under the narrow track on which the trams, or dump cars, ran. They were going along a passage cut into the iron ore itself which ran the long way through the irregularly shaped ore body. The passage, having been exploratory in the first place, was not straight but bent gently.

  The ore lies in the ground, and it is not square nor round nor any strict shape.

  Men first go down into the ground in a vertical shaft, a straight line, the first dimension. On this they measure off

  units of one hundred feet. At each one hundred feet within the ore body a level is established.

  Now the explorator}' drift goes off, probing, bending, and at irregular intervals crosscuts go in at various angles to probe sideways.

  But when the work begins, men imagine and impose another straight line—a second dimension—which they draw the long way of the ore. At right angles to this line—a third dimension—they plot (according to tlie metliod used at West Thor) a system of rooms and pillars.

  They start at the bottom of each level. They attack from below. They begin to take the ore out of a room, drilling and blasting it down in units called sets. The sets are the measure of the timber that goes in to hold the roof and the walls apart.

  A room is from two to four sets wide and it will go into the ore the entire width of the ore body. When this has been done there exists a hole from fifteen to thirty feet wide and as deep as the ore goes, but only nine feet high. It is all timbered and held by the honeycombing of square-set timber, with the lagging placed behind the outermost legs to hold the rock walls there from caving in upon the work. One layer out they begin on a second. A hole is cut upward. They proceed as before, placing the sets of timber directly above those already in place, and dropping this second layer of ore down. It is let fall. It goes down into chutes, down into the cars and down out of the cars and, finally, at the very last, rides up and out of the shaft in the skip. But gravity takes it down first and that is why they begin at the bottom.

  Once the second layer of a room is out and the honeycomb of timber is two stories high, they go up yet another layer; and so on until the room is all mined out, the hundred feet of that level. Rooms in a series are simultaneously being mined and exist in various stages, some worked almost to the limit, some barely begun. But between the rooms are left the pillars which are standing masses as wide as the rooms that remain untouched blocks of the earth's own structure to hold the great timber-latticed caves apart. A time comes when, the rooms being emptied, they must take the ore out of the pillars too. To do so they first fill the rooms, dropping

  into them, from the level above, broken rock from other places. The timber is left and never recovered but the emptiness is filled, and lagging now lies against the same supports, but on the inside to prevent the filled rooms from caving in upon the new work in the pillars.

  But sometimes when the pillar is very wide, when no strain appears on the timbers of the rooms at either side, it seems wise to take a side-slice. This means that they proceed, beginning at the bottom, to cut off another set's worth of the ore, thus widening the room by one set and of course narrowing the pillar by the same. Sometimes, indeed, even a second slice is taken.

  To leave such a very wide unfilled room, and so narrow a pillar, is somewhat risky. But it can be done and has been done. In fact the entire project carries so much normal and continuing risk that the term loses meaning.

  For there are ways that the earth can move. Sometimes timbers cannot withstand pressures commg at them awr}'. A roof will fall, a wall will crumble. The torn-out places do not remain. The earth closes and they are gone.

  The little procession, turning, had come to a place where something had happened. A soft indrawn whistling breath passed through young Davies' lips.

  It was not easy to see at once that anything was wrong. The confusion in the pattern was not quickly visible, unless the eye knew the pattern very well.

  Here, glistening moist, was the rough rock, the crude timber that was everywhere, but the discipline, the imposition of a mind's plan, was gone. Here where there ought to have been order there was a mess. And there were men, standing or milling, the light from their hats dipping and washing around them. There was Captain Trezona, who came to Mr. McKeever.

  The pillar had caved in. The roof was down and a confusion of rock, wood, and human bodies had been spilled sideways and down. There must have been noise as it happened but now all was silent.

  It was not good; it was prettv bad. The voices, the captain's tenor, McKeever's soft baritone, began to discuss what was to be done. Captain Trezona, in charge, had

  already assembled a group of good men, the reliable and the experienced. Most of these were in middle ears, shrewd canny old hands. There were a few strong young backs among them, but all were cool heads, all were subdued and resolute, tending to be quiet. This was no place for temperament; this was a nasty, ticklish, dangerous, delicate, difficult job.

  For somewhere in that vast mess and tangle someone was alive. This was known.

  To find and remove the living human bodies was like playing a gigantic game of jackstraws, with a death penalty.

  "Be openin' of the pipe now," the captain said. "See if us can talk."

  McKeever nodded. Someone was alive, for there was a way to signal and the signal had come. This, of course, made the job harder.

  The captain was getting ready to drive with his picked group and every ounce of experience and skill he had. They would make a way into that confusion and inch by inch, foot by foot, pulling with them, over them, and around them, the shell of a timber shelter, they would go narrow
ly in to find and extract the living, safe and alive.

  They must go slowly and yet be quick. No man must make the slightest error, nor yet hesitate. The direction of their effort had to be exactly right and it was a half-blind guess. The whole mass could quake and shudder and chew down at any moment upon the already desperately imperiled men, and their rescuers as well.

  There was not a lot of time for discussion, either.

  Now as the men wheeled into the pattern of their attack, Henry Duncane slipped quietly away. McKeever was talking to a pale Gilchrist now and Davies was edging around them. None of this was Henry's business. He had seen all that could be seen. He was not useful here so he began to walk back the way he had come.

  Part way along the crosscut a man came running toward him.

  "Got the pipe open," he gasped out in passing. "They're a tapping of it, all right. They're alive in there."

  "Who is it in there?"

  The man threw the answer back over his shoulder as he slogged on, "Don't know; checking. Don't know yet."

  At the main drift, a group crouched and huddled over the angle of wall and floor.

  "Listen," said one, his smudged face turned up. "Listen to it, Mr. Duncane!"

  There was a network of these pipes. Tlie compressed air ran dowTi the shaft, branched off at each level, and branched from the branches. Here was the point at which the small pipe tapped into the main supply and carried the compressed air to feed the drills, the tools the men had been using.

  Now men had shut valves and taken the branch pipe out of its fitting, for it was a connection. Wherever the lost men were, the other end of this little pipe was still with them.

  Henry went on his knees. Traveling on the pipe that was so thin a connection to the lost men, the thin sound came, distant but clear. Tap, tap, tap. Monotonous but yet irregular, it stopped at odd—deliberately odd—intervals to betray its humanity.

  The man with the dirty face put his mouth down and hollered: "Are you all right, in there?"

  Tap, tap, tap.

  No code to that.

  "It looks like they can't hear shoutin'," the man said, "but listen—" He picked up a piece of rock and tapped briskly on the pipe. When he stopped, at once the far-distant tapping responded with a frenzied acceleration.

  'They hear that, see." He bawled again, "You all right, hey! Helloo—"

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Henry Duncane said with angry sarcasm, "What do you expect them to answer? 'Oh yes, certainly, we're fine, thank you.' Give them something they can answer. Get away, let me tr}' that!"

  He lay his mouth close and after summoning his composure somehow and his breath, he began to speak very, very slowly, without much volume but with a cr)'Stal clarit', the sharp, distinct, clean-cut, blurless separation of syllables that was natural to him:

  "HOW . . . MANY . . . MEN . . . ALIVE?"

  He was heard, for the tapping gave him at once that quickened reaction. "Then you hear me? I hear you! Then you hear me?" the quick taps seemed to say.

  He tried it again.

  "HOW . . . MANY . . . MEN . . . ALIVE?"

  No sound returned. No sound at all.

  "HOW . . . MANY . . . MEN . . . ALIVE?" He called it a third time.

  Now the answer came, if it was an answer. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap—and silence.

  The men around Duncane looked at him with rolling eyes. He repeated the question and got the same answer, five.

  "Five men alive," said Duncane into the pipe.

  It answered: "Five."

  He moistened his lips. "HOW . . . MANY . . . HURT?"

  It took time. At last there seemed to return an answer to this too.

  Tap, tap, tap, and silence. Three.

  "WE'LL . . . GET . . . YOU . . . OUT."

  And to this the taps danced urgency. Tap, tap, tatatatap, tatatap, tatap, tap. They seemed to say: Good, good, but hurry up, hurry up about it.

  "They seem to hear you, Mr. Duncane!" said the dirty-faced man in awe.

  "Five in there. I'll tell Captain." A man began to run.

  "Wonder who 'tis, though," said another.

  For several minutes, Henry Duncane kept calling to the lost that they would be found.

  It was a matter of record, of course. Sooner or later the timekeeper would be able to say. It would be known which five men were buried in West Thor mine.

  Mabel Marcom was in bed. The knocking woke her. "Middle of the night." Grumbling, she cracked the door and saw the sharp, thin face of her niece, Milly.

  "Oh, Aunt! Ma's coming right over. They're saying five men's down the cave-in alive. Aunt, Ma said I was to tell you. They say Uncle's down there. But he's alive, see!"

  "Eh?" Mrs. Marcom rocked on her heels. "Caved in? eh?"

  "West Thor. Oh, Aunt!" Milly's face was reddening to weep.

  " 'Oo says Ehsha's in it?" said Ehsha's wife tartly.

  "Everybody, and Ma, and all. But he's alive. Were you sleeping? Oh Aunt . . ."

  Mrs. Marcom reached up and began to pull the metal curlers off her hair. "No need for you to be running out in your night clothes," she snapped. "Go 'ome."

  "Oh, Aunt . . ."

  "And I'll believe it when somebody tells me 'oo knows what 'e's talking about." She closed the door. Never liked that Milly. Never had.

  She pulled five curlers oflf, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink— they dropped in a china dish. Her hand hesitated. She listened. The house was very quiet. Very quiet. She could hear that mouse back of the baseboard. Hear it plain. The house had never been as quiet as this before.

  In Benevenuto Pilotti's little plaster house back of the Catholic Church, there was a kind of family party going on. When the news came, Benevenuto's wife, Luella, threw herself on the floor before Jesus' picture. His sister, Marie, and his mother, Anna, fell on their knees beside her. The sister's husband ran out. A neighbor found candles. Somebody hid the wine. The house began to rock with rhi:hmic sounds of wailing which softened and quieted to the gentler rhythm of prayer. All the children woke up, because the sound of the house was different, and came creeping in. But it was quite a long time before they understood what was the matter.

  Alice Beard had been in the kitchen setting bread so she was still up and about when her own mother came to her door. When her mother told her she said, plaintively, "But Charley only went to work yesterday. 'E was 'ome all the week. 'Is cough was that bad." She swallowed. She had a thin throat. "I didn't think he ought to go," she said in a puzzled way. "I told 'im, with 'is cough 'anging on, he didn't ought to go back yet. But yesterday 'e went. And tonight 'e went. 'E was bound 'e'd go."

  "I won't leave you/' her mother said flouncing in. "I won't leave you, Alice."

  "Bound 'e'd go," Alice said shaking her head. "To think, eh?" She began to cry.

  That night Eedie Trezona had been praying a long time before the messenger came. She had been begging God to be kind to those in fear and in sorrow. Now when she heard that one of the five lost men was her son, Wesley, she could only go on asking the same of Him in every breath she drew.

  The younger children, ^^'ho had wakened when Pa was called out, could not go to bed again any more than she. So they were beside her.

  John Pengilly, who had brought the news, watched her closely a minute or two. But she stood quietly in the kitchen, the children quiet beside her. So he sighed deeply and left them.

  When he had gone, Dorothy suddenly took one wild look around the room, and cried out, "Ma . . . isn't Wesley going to come home? Won't he come home?" And she clung to Eedie with both arms.

  "Your farther will 'ave 'im out. Your fayther's there. Your fayther will never come 'ome 'til 'e 'as 'im out."

  Eedie knew this was true. Nor would she and the children ha'e one word from Pa, nor one backward thought of his until, one way or another, the boy was out. Pa was not here but they could be sure what he was doing. "You can be sure," she said.

  Now Dickie clawed and slapped at his sister.

  "You keep s
till. You stop that. Let Ma be. Ma doesn't need you to cry. Ma isn't cr}dng. You keep still, you big crybaby."

  Dorothy, who was taller, stooped and rubbed her face dry on Eedie's shoulder. "What can I do then. Ma?" she shuddered, pulling herself away.

  Eedie could feel the children's eyes, like four burning lights, searing her stiff face. She said, "Build up the stove. Best think of food. There's 'ard work for Pa and the rest."

  " 'Ard work's nothing to be ascared of," said Dickie. "It's nothing. Wesley's not going to be afraid there, waiting for Pa.

  It's nothing." The boy stood hke a httle cock, his throat working. He flew into the bathroom, which was so awkwardly off the kitchen in this unhandy old house. He shut the door.

  Eedie put up her hands and loosened the skin on her face. Every breath was prayer. Dorothy rattled the sticks of wood into the range, all the energy of her anxiety put into the task. But Dick was making strange sounds in there.

  Eedie took her hands dowTi, tapped on the bathroom door and went in. He was being a very sick little boy as she had expected. She held his head and soaked a cloth and wiped his forehead and pale cheeks very gently.

  "Don't do to imagine," she said quite severely. "We don't know how 'tis, Dick, there where Wesley's to. Now we don't know. It's 'ard to know nothing. That's true. But imagining, that don't do. It's Wesley there. Not you. You stay 'ere, where the Lord leaves you."

  She gave him one swift spank of her hand on his bottom. "Get busy. Fill that wood box."

  Her hands began to squeeze soap and water through the cloth mechanically. "God keep us from imagining," she prayed. "Give us something to do."

  Cyril Varker took the message, and thanked the messenger soberly. He said he would tell Mrs. Cole.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The dark was absolute. After awhile the eye surrendered and quit straining. Even the memory of light danced only spasmodically on the inside of the eyelid. The ear quickened.

  Each other's breathing, every gasp and every sigh, became what they could know of each other, lacking the eye. They were close, they touched and entangled. In the fraction of time before it happened they had swarmed together, and they had been caught together. They dared not now move more than a cautious finger or a chin in a slow arc.