But that was before he was sent underground… andThe Horror began…
ELEVEN
For Casca, the years assumed a sameness that was torture in itself. He was unable to differentiate the passage of time other than through the change of seasons, and each seemed to last forever. Always he dug deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, always deeper and deeper…
In his seventh year he was sent underground.
The surface overseer had become uneasy when Casca was around. The other slaves died or grew emaciated or sickly; Casca did none of these things. The only thing that he had in common with the other prisoners was the covering of filth and encrusted dirt and clay that only came off his body when it rained. He looked less human than animal — more, a mechanical thing of earth as timeless as the soil itself.
The emperors in Rome changed. Politicians and heroes rose and fell. And still Casca toiled.
He grew sullen and quiet, an object of wonder and fear to the other slaves. His beard was almost to his waist and matted with knots and tangles. He would have become a total beast, insane and non-human, but it was his mind that saved him. He used his imagination to keep from going mad. Eleven chain mates he went through-and still he remained unchanged.
When he first went underground, the overseer of his shift wondered at this strange man. Under filth, Casca's age was indeterminate, but his strength was unreal. He could do the work of three, and he could lift more than any two other men in the mines. Casca was a solid knot of sinewy muscle and tendons. He always got his full share at feeding time. No one cared to challenge him for his choice of a sleeping place. Casca could have been the boss of the underground if he had so chosen. But he did not. The overseer wondered why. He could not read Casca's mind.
Casca was trying to figure out his fate, spending hours, days, every waking moment, trying to comprehend his plight. The enormity of it…I cannot die. The Jew won't let me. Then, if I cannot die, all I have to do is wait. Everything changes in time, and I have all time to myself… at least all time until, as the Jew said, 'Until we meet again.' Meet again? Perhaps he is in the next shaft, shoring up the sides with timbers. But I will get out of here. An opportunity will present itself. It would do no good to attack the guards and try to escape. They would just overpower me and put me in chains. No, I must get my way to the surface again. Down here, there is nothing but the prospect of being buried alive Buried alive!..
The thought slammed into his brain.
Buried alive!..
He could not die!
If he were buried alive, it would be for all eternity.
Now the days of real horror began.
There was always a very good chance of being buried alive in the mine. It happened often to others. Periodically tons of earth would claim a slave. Stay here long enough, and it would happen to him. And he had all of time itself, not just the short lifetime of these others who had been buried alive. The thought of being buried alive for eternity drove Casca almost mad… the thought of lying, unable to die, under tons of earth was a horror that consumed his hours.
It would not go away. It preyed on his mind… like some monstrous animal gnawing at his brain. Out. Out. I must get out! Before the mine caved in on him.
In the seventh year of the Emperor Gaius Nero the cave-in came.
There was little warning. Casca was working in his shaft, not far from his overseer, Lucius Minitre. Ironically, it was one of the few times when he had forgotten his obsession momentarily since the vein of unusual rock they were working had caught his interest.
The rumbling started… the shifting of the earth overhead.
There was an almost unbearable feeling that came with the change in air pressure. Millions of tons of earth and rock began to settle.
The slaves froze.
For one seemingly eternal but uncertain moment time stopped. Then the roof covering two hundred feet of tunnel dropped, crushing the lives out of forty slaves.
The fall of the first roof started a chain reaction that spread through the other galleries. Throughout the network of tunnels the screams of panic-stricken men echoed one upon the other as the walls grumbled and heaved around them.
Minitre, the overseer, was not a particularly brave man. This was just a job to him. He hid himself behind one of the slaves cowering in a side passage.
Casca paid little attention to the overseer. His own chain mate lay beside him with only part of his head visible under the boulder that had relieved him of the honor of toiling for the glory of Rome. It had also relieved him of two-thirds of his brain case. Casca was wondering how to get free from the ankle chains that bound him to his dead mate. The overseer was only a few feet away, cowering, his hands over his head and his face to the dirt floor. His eyes were closed tightly, and he knew nothing except the depths of his fear. Now Casca took a look at the overseer and saw the short knife in the belt of Lucius. A broken piece of timber lay close by. Casca reached over, hefted the lump of wood in his hand, turned rapidly, and knocked the overseer into the bliss of unconsciousness.
Taking the small blade, he went to work cutting his chain mate's foot off at the ankle. The job took longer than it should have due to the dullness of the blade and the smallness of the knife, but finally he cut all the way through, having a particularly rough time with the ankle joint. He had to cut through the tendons so that he could get to the other side, and that meant working the blade back and forth in the socket. For a moment he thought the blade would break, but it held, and he was through to the other side.
Casca was free of his chain. Well enough, he thought. Ididn't like him much anyway. Talked too much. But he was chained to me. I wasn't going to cut my own leg off… not yet, anyway. He looked at the unconscious overseer. Imay have my way out of here lying at my feet.
Wiping the sticky blood from the amputation off on his dusty beard, Casca bent down and put the shift overseer on his shoulders and began to make his way out of the depths and up to where the sun waited. He carried, pulled, and crawled with Lucius past sealed-off tunnels where men by the dozen were dying or already dead, knowing that only one thought was running through the minds of the trapped slaves: Would the mine superintendent think them valuable enough to try and save-or would he just requisition some more slaves from the penal colony on Cyprus?
Casca ignored all pleas for help. One man grasped at his feet, begging to be helped to the surface. Casca kicked him in the face to break his grip. The man cried through sobbing lips for pity, 'Don't leave me to die!'
Casca sneered at him. 'Fool, is that all you have to worry about?' Taking the small knife from his waistband, he tossed it to the terrified slave. 'Here is your way out. Use it and be free. It's more than I can do.' He turned away and began his trek back to the surface.
Crawling and dragging his unconscious burden over rocks and rubble, he at last reached the entrance. The full light hurt his eyes, nearly blinded him after all the time in the dimness underground, but to him it was a glorious sight for it lit the way to the pits.
As he forced his way out among the crowd of slaves trying to reach safety, a great rumble began deep in the mine, one that grew and grew, louder and deeper in tone. The growing rumble finally burst its way to the surface in a great spout of dust and flame.
Somewhere deep below a gas pocket had been ignited by one of the flickering torches, and level after level of the mine fell in on itself, carrying hundreds of men to their deaths beneath the falling rock. He had escaped just in time.
Now he broke through the jam beyond the entrance, past the overseers with their whips and the guards trying to get the slaves into a semblance of order. Twice someone tried to help him with Lucius, but Casca strongly rebuffed them with kicks and curses. Lucius was his. Laying the overseer down, Casca arose and tried to keep his balance. The world was moving. He felt a strange sensation, like seasickness, from the swaying the earth was
