segments.
Johnny pushed the goggles onto his forehead and wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.
'Get it the hell out of here,' he grinned, then he turned to Big King.
'Come.' He jerked his head towards the end of the tunnel. 'Help me charge the holes.' The two of them worked quickly, sliding the sticks of Dynagel into the shot holes and tamping them home with the charging sticks.
For anyone who was not in possession of a blasting licence, to charge up was an offence punishable by a fine of hundred rand or two months' imprisonment, or both.
Big King had no licence, but his assistance saved fifteen minutes on the operation.
Johnny and his gang blew the face five times that day, but as they rode up in the cage into the cool evening air he was not satisfied.
'Tomorrow we'll shoot her six times,' he told Big King.
'Maybe seven, 'said Big King.
Hettie was waiting for him in the lounge when he got home. She flew to him and threw her arms about his neck.
'Did you bring me a present?' she asked with her lips against his ear, and Johnny laughed tantalizingly. It was very seldom that he did not have a gift for her.
'You did!' she exclaimed, and began to run her hands over his pockets.
'There!' She thrust her hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, and brought out the little white jeweller's box.
'Oh!' She opened it, and then her expression changed slightly.
'You don't like them? 'Johnny asked anxiously.
'How much did they cost?' she enquired as she examined the porcelain and lacquer earrings, representing two vividly coloured. parrots.
'Well,' Johnny looked shamefaced, 'you see, Hettie, it's the end of the month, you see, and well, like I'm a bit short till pay day, you see, so I couldn't-'
'How much?'
'Well, you see,' he took a breath, 'two rand fifty.' 'Oh,' said Hettie, 'they're nice.' And she promptly lost interest in them. She tossed the box carelessly onto the crowded mantelpiece and set off for the kitchen.
'Hey, Hettie,' Johnny called after her. 'How about we go across to Fochvill? There's a dance there tonight. We go and twist, hey?'
Hettie turned back, her expression alive again.
'Gee, yes, man!' she enthused. 'Let's do that. I'll go and change, hey!' And she ran up the passage.
Davy came out of his bedroom, on his way to work.
'Hey, Davy.' Johnny stopped him. 'You got any money on you?'
'Are you broke again?'
'Just till pay day.'
'Hell, man, Johnny, you got a cheque for eleven hundred the beginning of the month. You spent it all?'
'Next month,' Johnny winked, 'I'm going to get a cheque for two or three thousand. Then watch me go! Come, Davy, lend me fifty. I'm taking Hettie dancing.'
or Rod the days flicked past like telegraph poles viewed from a speeding automobile. Each day he gained confidence in his own ability.
He had never doubted that he could handle the underground operation and now he found that he had a firm grasp on the surface as well. He knew that his campaign to reduce working costs was having effect, but its full harvest would only be apparent when the quarterly reports were drafted.
Yet he lay awake in the big Manager's residence on the ridge in which he and his few sticks of furniture seemed lost and lonely, and he worried. There were always myriad nagging little problems, but there were others more serious.
This morning Lily Jordan had come through into his office.
'Mr. Innes is coming up to see you at nine.'
'What's he want?' Herbert Innes was the Manager of the Sander Ditch Reduction works.
'He wouldn't tell me,' Lily answered. The end of the month had come and gone and Lily was still with him. Rod presumed that he had been approved.
Herby Innes, burly and red-faced, sat down and drank a cup of tea that Lily provided, while he regaled Rod with the stroke by stroke account of his Sunday afternoon golf round. Rod interrupted him after he had hit a nine-iron short at the third and sanked his chip.
'Okay, Herby. What's the problem?'
'We've got a leak, Rod.' 'Bad?'
'Bad enough,' Herby grunted. To him the loss of a single ounce of gold during the process of recovery and refinement was catastrophic.
'What do you reckon?'
'Between the wash and the pour we are losing a couple hundred ounces a week.'
'Yes,' Rod agreed. 'That is bad enough.' 20,000 rand a month, 120,000 a year.
'Have you any ideas?'
'It's been going on for some time, even in Frank Lemmer's day. We have tried everything.' Rod was a little hazy about the workings of the reduction plant, not that he would admit that, but he was. He knew that the ore was weighed and sampled when it reached the surface, from this a fairly accurate estimate of gold content was made and compared with actual recovery. Any discrepancy had to be investigated and traced.
'What is your recovery rate for the last quarter?'
'Ninety-six point seven-three.'
'That's pretty good,' Rod admitted. It was impossible to recover all the gold in the ore that was surfaced but Herby was getting most of it out. 96.73 percent of it, to be precise.
Which meant that very little of the missing 200 ounces was being lost into the dump and the slimes dam.
'I tell you what, Herby,' Rod decided. 'I'll come down to the plant this afternoon. We'll go over it together, perhaps a fresh eye may be able to spot the trouble.'
'May do.' Herby was sceptical. 'We've tried everything else. We are pouring this afternoon. What time shall I expect you?'
'Two o'clock.' They started at the shaft head, where the ore cage, the co pie arrived at the surface every four minutes with its cargo Of rock which it dumped into a concrete shute. Each load was classified as either' reef' or 'waste'.
The reef was dropped into the massive storage bins, while the waste was carried off on a conveyor to the wash house to be sluiced down before going to the dump. Tiny particles of gold sticking to the waste rock were gathered in this way.
Herby put his lips close to Rod's ear to make himself heard above the rumbling roar of rock rolling down the chute.
'I'm not worried about this end. it's all bulk here and very little shine.' Herby used the reduction plant slang for gold. 'The closer we get to the end, the more dangerous it IS.
Rod nodded and followed Herby down the steel ladder until they reached a door below the storage bins. They went through into a long underground tunnel very similar to the ore tunnel on 100 level. Again there was a massive conveyor belt moving steadily along the tunnel while ore from the bins above was fed onto it. Rod and Herby walked along beside the belt until it passed under a massive electromagnet.
Here they paused for a while. The magnet was extracting from the ore all those pieces of metal which had found their way into the ore passes and bins.
'How much you picking up? 'Rod asked.
'Last week fourteen tons,' Herby answered, and taking Rod's arm led him through the door beside them. They were in an open yard that looked like a scrap-metal merchant's premises. A mountain of pinch bars jumper bits, shovels, steel wire rope, snatch blocks, chains, spanners, fourteen-pound hammers, and other twisted and unrecognizable pieces of metal filled the yard. All of it was rusted, much of it unusable. It had been separated from the ore by the magnet.
Rod's mouth tightened. Here he was presented with indisputable evidence of the carelessness and it belongs to the company attitude of his men. This pile of scrap represented a waste that would total hundreds of thousands of rand annually.
'We will see about that he muttered.
'If one of those hammers got into my jaw mills it would smash it to pieces,' Herby told him dolefully and led him back into the conveyor tunnel.
The belt angled upwards sharply and they followed the catwalk beside it. They climbed steadily for five minutes and Herby was puffing like a steam engine. Through the holes in the honeycomb steel plate under his feet, Rod could see that they were now a few hundred feet above ground level.
The conveyor reached the head of a tall tower and dumped its load of ore into the gaping mouths of the screeners. As the rock fell down the tower to ground level again it was sorted for size, and the larger pieces diverted to the jaw crushers' which chewed it into fistsize bites.
'See anything?'Herby asked, barely concealing the sarcasm.
Rod grinned at him.
They climbed down the steel ladders that seemed endless. The screeners rattling and the crushers hammering, until Rod's eardrums pleaded for mercy.
At last they reached ground level and went through into the mill room.
