COLLIER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 172, 22 July 1936, Page 19

COLLIER.

STELLA HARRISON.

(SHORT STORY.)

A I first tlie time dragged heavily, sitting there chatting desultorily

with Garry. The whole of the first evening had been filled with the talk with which they had tried to cover the dank silence and the reminiscence of hot toast and dripping normal to the hour. They had been round the whole of tlieir world in conversation, whiling awuv the hours, till the rescue party should break through. He could smell that toast all the time, savoury whill's mixed with the strong lung of black tea and the odour of hot soot that hung about tlie kitchen and came sharply to table with the boiling kettle; till about midnight sensation was blotted out in a consuming hunger for toast-and dripping. Some time during the first night that had passed, Garry had dozed fitfully and he ■ had remained wide awake, alert, agonisingly conscious of physical discomfort. Thirst had begun to tell, and cramp. The first night in the pit had been an agony of cold and clammy silence, punctuated with uneasy movements and the guttural speech of water seeping through the loose debris 011 the uneven floor of the low chamber.

The space measured something like five feet square and eight feet high at its highest point, and by lying diagonally they had been able to stretch out, one at a time, for an hour or so, while the other stood or sat or moved about in their dungeon. By morning, however, water was lying ill a shallow puddle over half the floor, and put an effective stop to real sleep or to lying stretched out dpzing, and by noon their ankles ached with standing, and their lean buttocks with sitting on the rough, damp earth. They had not spoken much on the second day. Only now and then as the crackling of a clriil vibrated a long way overhead, they looked across at each other with weary eyes, and in the failing light of their lamps exchanged a gallant grin of encouragement. "They're boring through from the old shaft," Garry said, and Joe had answered: "Ay, they'll be through in a couple of hours now." But the second evening had passed and the second night, and still the rescue party had not made contact. By now the whole of the floor was under water, and they had clambered on to a ledgo at shoulder height. Unfortunately, on this side tlie roof sloped down abruptly, and they could only sit with shoulders hunched and heads forward, balancing precariously on a narrow seat, huddled together. Garry had dozed again, and Joe had sat clutching him by the knee lest, unconscious, he should slip off and break a bone or twist a joint in his fall.

He was no longer hungry, only very tired and cold, for the water was creeping up relentlessly and the soles of their boots were dangling just above it. Garry, waking suddenly from troubled sleep and yawning, had hit his head on the roof and cursed. "I've got to stretch my neck if I drown," he said, and, slithering to his feet, had stood there knee-deep in the dirty, smelly water. But only for a moment. Shivering and sick with the shock of cold he had climbed back to the perch, intensely awake now and regretting his rash gesture. Within an hour he was sneezing and by the third evening he was delirious with fever. Now" Joe felt very lonely. He could do nothing for his sick companion but keej) firm hold of him, while the water came up slowly, licking their boots, then covering them and now gripping icily at their ankles.

"I'll back my Rollicker against all comers," Garry babbled, his mind with the whippets, "and I'll bash any fellow s face in that don't agree."

Joe, thinking it over, decided it was better than being alone, even if Garry could only threaten and blaspheme unconsciously. There was comfort in the other's body lurching against his own and in tlie sour smell of sweat of the fevered man, acrid and very human.

He had not slept now for seventy hours and weariness had fallen away from him, leaving his head light with faintness and his brain distraetinglv clear.

It was a grim business, this waiting, with a sick man chattering to fray the nerves.

"Come on, Rollicker, show 'em, show 'em."

The noise of boring would come nearer, the shrill scream of the drills dulled to a low hum by the intervening wall" of stone, then rising and swelling until it seemed that in another moment he must hear the voices of the gang.

Then it would stop and after a pause start again, further away. Joe knew what that meant. The passage they were forcing was unsafe and another fall was feared, trapping the rescuers just as Garry and he were trapped. There was a reason, certainly. Nothing happened without cause. But what was it? . . . Rotten timbering, perhaps. The old wood, crumbling with moisture, had not been renewed when the pit, disused for two years, had been reopened; just a few new beams added to prop up old joists. And the old props had given 'way, bringing the roof down with a roar at the close of the shift and cutting him off, with Garry, while those in front scampered away to safety.

Self-preservation was instinctive, a reflex action in the collier, to run for safety. But this animal instinct would be put aside before they reached the pithead, and the very men whose lives had been' threatened would volunteer to go down again, to find a way through the crumbling underground pathways to reach their mates.

. . . This was Thursday—niglit-scliool evening. Joe liated missing night-school. This year he was taking English literature.

Waiting down here, he had to miss night-school. Waiting . . . what was that about waiting they had read last week ?

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

Well, they were sitting and waiting, and he supposed it came to the same thing: sitting on a rough, narrow ledge whose jagged surface bit into their Jean ilesh, cramped and still" legs dangling up to the calves in dirty water. . . .

The poet who wrote that lino had been blind. And here they were with eyes to see, but nothing to look upon save enveloping black darkness, for their lamps had given up tlie unequal struggle to combat it. "They also serve . . ." "Serve what, who? Not God. surely. What service could it be to God, to sit here starving and drowning by inches, a hundred and liftv feet below the surface of the earth He made green and sweet in patches at this season? . . . The owners maybe? But no, the owners had no need of them, fainting and exhausted. They were only useful so long as they could wield a pick. Kneeling . . . they spent a good share of time on their knees. Perhaps that might be accounted to them for righteousness in the final reckoning, even though rough jokes were on their lips in place of the prayers becoming to that attitude, and music hall songs more often tlian hymns. It was so natural and obvious a thing that he should sit there still, after three days and nights without sleep or food or drink, clutching his mate fast through dozing and delirium, lest the weaker one should slip down to destruction; it never occurred to Joe in his profound searching after an answer, that this was service. Each time Garry came to, Joe began to talk quickly of anything, of nothing, to hold his attention, to keep him present in the spirit as in the poor, sweating body aching with cramp. Each time Garry relapsed into feeble sobbing and babbling, terror came up close to Joe and cast its deeper shadow in that dark cavern. ...

Then, after a long, breathless moment of intent silence, the echo of blasting rumbled through the hollow passagewav behind them.

The gang had abandoned the approach direct from above and, fearing to lose all by waiting, had staked their own lives on this faint chance, dynamiting in the already hideously unsafe work-

ingfi. The echo died away and there followed the roar and hiss of falling stone and dust. . . . Another pause, eerie, a holding of breath . . . then, crack! right behind their hunched shoulders the crash of pick on rock. "Hello, there," called Joe, with all liis feeble power.

"Hello, Garry! Joe!" came clearly from the other side. "God be praised!" groaned Garry, revived by Joe's shout. . . . • » * • When the rescue gang passed the bottle of brandy through an opening the size of a man's hand, it was Garry who seized it and held it to Joe's white lips. Joe was in a dead faint. ... He awoke in the cool, pleasant ward of the Welfare Home. Mr. Heddon, the night-school teacher, was there watching at his bedside as Joe opened incredulous eyes on tlie unaccustomed glory of morning sunshine. "What's the bother, Joe?" asked Mr. Heddon, seeing the hewer's look of puzzlement. "I was wanting to ask you something, Mr. Heddon," Joe answered. "Something about a poem. I couldn't figure out what it meant exactly. . . . And then, I fell asleep, and I can't recall the piece now."