chief ventilation officer general manager's office.' rod turned away, as the outer door of his office opened and jimmy paterson, his electrical engineer, came in.
'i felt it, rod. how's it look?' 'bad,' said rod, then there were the other line managers crowding into his office talking quietly, lighting cigarettes, coughing and shuffling their feet, but all of them watching the white telephone on rod's desk.
the minutes crawled by like crippled insects.
'dimitri,' rod called out to break the tension. 'have- you got a cage held at the shaft head?' they're holding the mary anne for us.'
'i've got five men checking the high tension cable on 95 level,' said jimmy paterson, and they ignored him. they were watching the white phone.
'have you located the boss yet, dimitri?' rod asked again; he was pacing in front of his desk. it was only when he stood close to other men that you saw how tall he was.
'he's underground, rod. he went down at twelve-thirty.' put in an all-stations call for him to contact me here.'
'i've done that already.' the white phone rang.
only once, a shrill note that ripped along rod's nerve ends. then he had the receiver up to his ear.
'underground manager,' he said. there was a long silence and he could hear the man breathing on the other end.
'speak, man, what is it?' 'the whole bloody thing has come down,' said the voice.
it was husky, rough with fear and dust.
'where are you speaking from?' rod asked.
'they're still in there,' said the voice. 'they're screaming in there.
under the rock. they're screaming 'what is your station?' rod made his voice cold, hard, trying to reach the man through his shock.
'the whole stope fell in on them. the whole bloody thing.'
'god damn you! you stupid bastard!' rod bellowed into the phone.
'give me your station!' there was stunned silence for a moment. then the man's voice came back, steadier now, angry from the insult.
'95 level main haulage. section 43. eastern long-wall.'
'we're coming.' rod hung up, picked up his yellow fibreglass hard helmet and lamp from the desk.
'43 section. the hanging wall has come down,' he said to dimitri.
'fatals?' the little greek asked.
'for sure. they've got squealers under the rock.' rod clapped on his hat.
'take over on surface, dimitri.' rod was still buttoning the front of his white overalls as he reached the shaft head. automatically he read the sign above the entrance: stay alert.
stay alive.
with your co- operation this mine has worked 16 fatality-free days.
'we'll have to change the number again,' rod thought with grim humour.
the mary anne was waiting. into its heavily wired confines were crowded the first aid team and emergency squad. the mary anne was the small cage used for lowering and hoisting personnel, there were two much larger cages that could carry 120 men at one trip, while the mary anne could handle only forty. but that was sufficient for now.
'let's go,' said rod as he stepped into the cage, and the on setter slammed the steel roller doors closed. the bell rang once, twice, and the floor dropped away from under him as the mary anne started down.
rod's belly came up to press against his ribs. they went down in one long continuous rush in the darkness. the cage jarring and rocketing, the air changing in smell and taste, becoming chemical and processed, the heat building up rapidly.
rod stood hunch- shouldered, leaning against the metal screen of the cage. the head room was a mere six foot three, and with his helmet on rod stood taller than that.
so today we get another butcher's bill, he thought angrily.
he was always angry when the earth took its payment in mangled flesh and snapping bones. all the ingenuity of man and the experience gained in sixty years of deep mining on the witwatersrand were used in trying to keep the price in blood as low as possible. but when you go down into the ultra-deep levels below 8,000 feet and from those depths you remove a quarter of a million tons of rock each month, mining on an inclined sheet of reef that leaves a vast low-roofed chamber thousands of feet across, then you must pay, for the stress builds up in the rock as the focal points of pressure change until the moment when it reaches breaking point and she bumps. that is when men die.
rod's knees flexed under him as the cage braked and then yo-yoed to a halt at the brightly lit station on 66 level.
here they must trans-ship to the sub-main shaft. the door rattled up and rod left the cage, striding out down the main haulage the size of a railway tunnel; concreted and whitewashed, brightly lit by the bulbs that lined the roof, it curved gently away.
the emergency team followed rod. not running, but walking with the suppressed nervous energy of men going into danger. rod led them towards the sub-main shaft.
there is a limit to the depth which you can sink a shaft into the earth and then equip it to carry men suspended on a steel cable in a tiny wire cage. the limit is about 7,000 feet.
at this depth you must start again, blast out a new headgear chamber from the living rock and below it sink your new shaft, the sub-main.
the sub-main mary anne was waiting for them, and rod led them into it.
they stood shoulder to shoulder, and the door rattled shut and again the stomach-swooping rush down into darkness.
down, down, down.
rod switched on his head lamp. now there were tiny motes in the air that had been sterilely clean before.
dust! one of the deadly enemies of the miner. dust from the burst. as yet the ventilation system had been unable to clear it.
endlessly they fell in darkness and now it was very hot, the humidity building up so the faces about him, both black and white, were shiny with sweat in the light of his head lamp.
the dust was thicka now, someone coughed. the brightly lit stations flashed past them 76, 77, 78 down, down. the dust was a fine mist now. 85, 86, 87. no one had spoken since entering the cage.
93, 94, 95. the deceleration and stop.
the door rattled up. they were 9,500 feet below the surface of the earth.
'come on, said rod.
-there were men cluttering the lobby of 95 station, a hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred of them.
still filthy from their work in the stopes, clothing sodden with sweat, they were laughing and chattering with the abandon of men freshly released from frightful danger.
in a clear space in the centre of the lobby lay five stretchers, on two of them the bright red blankets were pulled up to cover the faces of the men upon them. the faces of the other three men looked as though they had been dusted with flour.
'two' grunted rod'so far.' the station was a shambles, with men milling aimlessly; each minute more of them came back down the haulages as they were pulled out of the undamaged stopes, which were now suspect.
quickly rod looked about him, recognizing the face of one of his mine captains.
mcgee,' he shouted. 'take over here. get them sitting down in lines ready to load. we'll start hauling the shift out immediately.
get onto the hoist room, tell them i want the stretcher cases out first.' he paused long enough to watch mcgee take control. he glanced at his watch. two fifty- six. he realized with astonishment that only twenty-six minutes had passed since he felt the pressure burst in his office.
mcgee had the station under a semblance of control.
he was shouting into the hoist room telephone, on rod's authority demanding priority to clear 95 station.
'right,' said rod. 'come on.' and he led into the haulage.
the dust was thick. he coughed. the hanging wall was lower here.
as he trudged on once more, rod pondered the , unfortunate choice of mining terminology that had named the roof of an excavation 'the hanging wall'. it made one think of a gallows, or at the best it emphasized the fact that there were millions of tons of rock hanging overhead.
the haulage branched, and unerringly rod took the right fork. in his head he carried an accurate three dimensional map of the entire 176 miles of tunnels that comprised the sander ditch's workings. the haulage came to a t-junction and the arms were lower and narrower.
right to 42 section, left to 43 section. the dust was so thick that visibility was down to ten feet. the dust hung in the air, sinking almost imperceptibly.
'ventilations knocked out here,' he called over his shoulder.
'van den bergh!'
'yes, sir.' the leader of the emergency squad came up behind him.
'i want air in this drive. get it on. use canvas piping if you have to.'
'right.'
'then i want pressure on the water hoses to lay this dust.'
