Complete Short Story “Old Jack’s” Last Shift

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 221, 4 September 1926, Page 9

Complete Short Story “Old Jack’s” Last Shift

(By

G. E. Moore

in “The English Beview.”)

J" EAVIN G the village street and picking his way over a rough colliery railway, “Old Jack” entered the pit yard. Passing by the stacks of pit props and, here and there, the rusted debris pi broken and discarded machinery, he reached the lamp-cabin. The one-legged man inside swung away from the humming little machine at which he was cleaning safety lamps and nodded a greeting. “Howdee, Jack?” “Howdee, Bill?” Taking his lamp and little brass taken, Old Jack crossed through the thick mud to a rickety iron staircase which led to the upper portion of the pit-head* building. As he climbed, all the familiar picture of the pit yard and the colliery village opened out beneath him. To the right lay the winder-house, from which two greasy steel ropes rose to the overhead winding gear. Close by it was the building in which compressors sucked the outside air in huge, thudding gulps and sent it through a big pipe to coal-cutters in the workings below. Away to the left there spread a vast, ugly heap of rubble. Underneath him ran the railway, Aid on it a fussv little engine was urging a train of empty trucks into the yard. Here and there lay all the useful or forgotten impedimenta of colliery work. At the yard entrance stood an electric sub-station, its clean new brickwork in strange contrast to aM the drab surroundings; from it the overhead feeder wires stretched over pole after pole away across the fields into the mist on the distant hills. Around the pit yard lay the col liery village; a little community with row after row of one-storied cottages in roygh stonework—many of them with weird aerials slung precariously over the long strips of back garden. At one end of the main street the Miners’ Institute rose above the cottage roofs, while, farther along, the imposing frontage of the newly-built Co-operative Stores overwhelmed the modest old colliery offices next door. At the edge of the village the green fields •eemed to begin suddenly. Old Jack’s mind received all these impressions with a certain instinctive and quiet satisfaction. Though all the details of the scene were engraved upon his mind, he yet awaited them as he slowly made his daily ascent of the staircase. All this around him was his whole world, the only real world. Newspapers, gossip. a twenty-year-ora* visit to the neighbouring town, and even the wonderful coming of wireless, were but vague evidence of a vaster world beyond his ken. This was his world, and he was a part of it. His gaze sought for a cottage near the Institute and lingered on it for a moment. Home! Then he turned into the pit-head building. From comparative quiet he came into all the clangour of pit-hbad work. As the cage appeared from the shaft and jerked up the gates with a crash ,tow empty tubs were rushed at the full tubs inside; these helped onward by the banksman, came running out. At a signal from the banksman the cage “decked” upwards and the two lower tubs rattled out. Another signal, a pause, and then suddenly the cage dropped out of sight and the gates crashed into place. The banksman turned and noticed Old Jack. “Howdee Jack?” “Howdee, Sam?” Old Jack settled himself on a battered Beat and watched the familiar scene. The tubs of coal were rushed along the iron floor to the weighcabin. As they passed over the platform a boy read the collier’s brass tally hung on each, and his shrill voice carried the number to the weighman and check-weighman inside the cabin. With a final push from the lad each tub continued its noisy journey to an inclined runway where, with the last human guidance, it was gripped by a travelling rack and jerkily passed out of sight. t length when a “set’ of tubs had been hauled to the surface, the banksman hung a swing-gate at each end of the cage. Old Jack and two others crept in. Quietly and stealthily the cage moved down into the mouth of the shaft, and the heavy gates crashed into place. Then suddenly, as daylight vanished, the cage dropped with a surge. Save for an occasional gentle thud against the guides and, half-way down, the rattle of the other cage passing up, the journey was silent. Then, from beneath, and strangely near, came the sound of singing. Presently the cage readied the bottom, and the yellow rays of a solitary electric lamp shot in through a curtain of dripping water. The onsetter finished his song as be pulled up the swing-gate. “Howdee, Jack?” “Howdee, Bob?” A Ket of laden tub® came thundering out of the darkness and stopped suddenly. Old Jack, with a parting nod to the onsetter Bob, pushed his way between the tubs and the whitewashed wall. Then, when the roof lower-*d abruptly, he tuned oif down nn incline. The gleam turn his jer' :ng lamp showed a n ! ow tunnel ;< out four | feet high; over bis head loomed a i twelve-inch iron ppe and Mung he- | side it. a snake-iJKC electric cable i Underfoot the way was steep and slimy. Suddenly the pipe turned at right-angles into a recess. Old Jack ' halted. For a moment there was deep and penetrating rileii' Then— strange .-nd ' • nay sound came the plaintive cry of a cat. A smile slowlv dawned on Old Jack’s face, and he nodded his head as though in answer. As he opened a door and switched on the light, a cat sprang from overhead and purred a delighted welcome into his ear Stroking the ent. and still nodding and smiling, Old Jack entered the pump-heuse. The door olosgd, and

this quiet chamber, fathoms below the earths’ surface, became, in an uncanny sense, a place without position.

In this pump-house Old Jack spent the hours of his “shift” each day. it was a large, arched cavern lined in whitewashed brickwork. In n was installed an electric motor which drove a massive pump. A ‘ sump underneath received the drainei water from tfle pit workings, and tht pump forced it through the big pip» away up to the surface far above Here amid the roar of the -pumping machinery, old Jack worked his shiti —the Cat his sole companion- Bui while the man spent one-third oj each day below, his feline friend wa> fated to pass its whole existence here, ostensibly on account of th* mice.

Placing the cat on a rough seat Gid Jack reached up to a shelf ano brought down a saucer. Intent!) watched by the cat he fumbled ii his pocket and produced a smab bottle of milk. He slowly emptier this into the saucer, the cat, afte a tentative lick, patiently waiting waiting until the saucer was lull Having seen the bottle placed upon the shelf, the cat glanced at Ok. Jack’s grinning face and then begin to lap the milk. Old Jack crossed to the sump am examinedthe height of the water, which, with the time, he carefully marked in a book. He closed the big iron switch and started-iip the electric motor. With a startling clangour the machinery slowly cam* into motion, and ere iong its steady relentless roar dominated the con lined space. An hour later Old Jack slowi*. made his way around the plant oi> one of his periodical inspections. h» bad but a vague idea as to how ele< trical energy became available .frou a power-station twenty miles away nad, down here, drove the pump which forced great volumes of watei to the surface; yet he had a deep and abiding interest in these connect ed and subtle masses of metal and within Cue narrower limits of hi.' duty, allowed nothing to pass un done, and tell no small care to be wasted.

So now, swinging himself by the guard -rail, he reached over and felt the bearings. One seemed warmei than usual and, hesitating as he half stepped back, he again reached for wards. He had made such an exami nation many hundreds of times before, so assuredly as to be unaware of the ever-present danger. But this time, out of all the innumerable opportunities, that danger tool swift shape as the particular pois* pt his body and fiis foothold on the greasy metal favoured it. Old Jack slipped, overbalanced, and fell forwards

The machinery roared on with un slackening energy*, while the man who 'had set it in motion lay smash ed and lifeless amid its relentless mechanism. On the seat the cat dozed fitfully. Hours later the door opened, and the man who arrived to relieve Old Jack was surprised to meet a distraught cat. He entered the pumhouse and, vaguely puzzled and and easy, looked around. Suddenly a mighty shiver ran through him and he leapt to the switch, his usual greeting never being uttered. Yet, perhaps, ■then Old Jack’s, shift liad come to tragic close hour.before and this narrow confine eighty fathoms deep in the earth had given place to a tfiist and limitless sphere, he may have been welcomed there by the familiar greeting: “Howdee, Jack?’’