'right.' rod turned into the drive. here the foot wall, the floor was rough and the going slower. they came upon a line of steel trolleys filled with gold reef abandoned in the centre of the drive.
'get these the hell out of the way,' ordered rod, and went on.
fifty paces and he stopped abruptly. he felt the hair on his forearms stand on end. he could never accustom himself to the sound, no matter how often he heard it.
in the deliberately callous slang of the miner they called them 'squealers'. it was the sound of a grown man, with his legs crushed under hundreds of tons of rock, perhaps his spine broken, dust suffocating him, his mind unhinged by the mortal horror of the situation in which he was trapped, calling for help, calling to his god, calling for his wife, his children, or his mother.
rod started forward again, with the sound of it becoming louder, a terrifying sound, hardly human, sobbing and babbling into silence, only to start again with a blood chilling scream.
suddenly there were men ahead of rod in the tunnel, dark shapes looming in the dust mist, their head lamps throwing shafts of yellow light, grotesque, distorted.
'who is that?' rod called, and they recognized his voice.
'thank god. thank god you've come, mr. ironsides.'
'who is that?'
'barnard. 'the 43 section shift boss.
'what's the damage?'
'the whole hanging wall of the stope came down.'
'how many men in the stope?'
'forty-two.'
'how many still in?'
'so far we've got out sixteen unhurt, twelve slightly hurt, three stretcher cases and two dead. 'the squealer started again, but his voice was much weaker.
'him?' asked rod.
'he's got twenty ton of rock lying across his pelvis. i've hit him with two shots of morphine, but it won't stop him. 'can you get into the stope?'
'yes, there is a crawling hole.' barnard flashed his lamp over the pile of fractured blue quartzite that jammed the drive like a collapsed garden wall. on it was an aperture big enough for a fox terrier to run through. reflected light showed from the hole, and faintly from within came the grating sounds of movement over loose rock and the muffled voices of men.
'how many men have you got working in there, barnard?'
barnard hesitated, 'i think about ten or twelve.' and rod grabbed a handful of his overall front and jerked him almost off his feet.
'you think!' in the head lamps rod's face was white with fury.
'you've put men in there without recording their numbers? you've put twelve of my boys against the wall to try and save nine?' with a heave rod lifted the shift boss off his feet and swung him against the side wall of the drive, pinning him there.
'you bastard, you know that most of those nine are chopped already. you know that stope is a bloody killing ground, and you send in twelve more to get the chop and you don't record their numbers. how the hell would we ever know who to look for if the hanging fell again?'
he let the shift boss free, and stood back. 'get them out of here, clear that stope.'
'but, mr. ironsides, the general manager is in there, mr. lemmer is in there. he was doing an inspection in the stope.' for a moment rod was taken aback, then he snarled. 'i don't give a good damn if the state president is in there, clear the stope. we'll start again and this time we'll do it properly.' within minutes the rescuers had been recalled, they came squirming out of the aperture, white with dust like maggots wriggling from rotten cheese.
'right,' said rod, 'i'll risk four men at a time.' quickly he picked four of the floury figures, among them an enormous man on whose right shoulder was the brass badge of a boss boy.
'big king you here?' rod spoke in fanikalo, the lingua franca of the mines which enabled men from a dozen ethnic groups to communicate.
'i am here,' answered big king.
'you looking for more awards?' a month before, big king had been lowered on a rope 200 feet down a vertical ore pass to retrieve the body of a white miner. the bravery award by the company had been 100 rand.
'who speaks of awards when the earth has eaten the flesh of men?' big king rebuked rod softly. 'but today is children's play only. is the nkosi coming into the stope?' it was a challenge.
rod's place was not in the stope. he was the organizer, the coordinator. yet, he could not ignore the challenge, no bantu would believe that he had not stood back in fear and sent other men in to die.
'yes,' said rod, 'i'm coming into the stope.' he led them in. the hole was only just big enough to admit the bulk of rod's body. he found himself in a chamber the size of an average room, but the roof was only three and a half feet high. he played his lamp quickly across the hanging wall, and it was wicked. the rock was cracked and ugly, 'a bunch of grapes' was the term.
'very pretty,' he said, and dropped the beam of his lamp.
the squealer was within an arm's length of rod. his body from the waist up protruded from under a piece of rock the size of a cadillac.
someone had wrapped a red blanket around his upper body. he was quiet now, lying still. but as the beam of rod's lamp fell upon him, he lifted his head. his eyes were crazed, unseeing, his face running with the sweat of terror and insanity. his mouth snapped open, wide and pink in the shiny blackness of his face. he began to scream, but suddenly the sound was drowned by a great red-black gout of blood that came gushing up his throat, and spurted from his mouth.
as rod watched in horror, the bantu posed like that, his head thrown back, his mouth gaping as though he were a gargoyle, the life blood pouring from him. then slowly the head sagged forward, and flopped face downwards. rod crawled to him, lifted his head and pillowed it on the red blanket.
there was blood on his hands and he wiped it on the front of his overalls.
'three,' he said, 'so far.' and leaving the dying man he crawled on towards the broken face of the fall.
big king crawled up beside him with two pinch bars. he handed one to rod.
within an hour it had become a contest, a trial of strength between two men. behind them the other three men were shoring up and passing back the rock that rod and big king loosened from the face. rod knew he was being childish, he should have been back in the main haulage, not only directing the rescue, but also making all the other decisions and alternative arrangements that were needed now. the company paid him for his brains and his experience, not for his muscle.
'the hell with it,' he thought. 'even if we miss the blast this evening, i'm staying here.' he glanced at big king, and reached forward to get his hands onto a bigger piece of rock in the jam. he strained, using his arms first, then bringing the power of his whole body into it the rock was solid.
big king placed huge black hands on the rock, and they pulled together.
in a rush of smaller rock it came away, and they shoved it back between them, grinning at each other.
at seven o'clock rod and big king withdrew from the stope to rest and eat sandwiches, and drink thermos coffee while rod spoke to dimitri over the field telephone that had been laid up to the face.
'we've pulled shift on both shafts, rod, the workings are clear to blast. except for your lot, there are fifty-eight men in your 43 section.' dimitri's voice was reedy over the field telephone.
'hold on.' rod revolved the situation in his mind. he is worked it out slower than usual, for he was tired, emotionally and physically drained. if he stopped the blast on both shafts for fear of bringing down more rock in 43
section, it would cost the company a day's production, 10,000 tons of gold reef worth sixteen rand a ton, the formidable sum of 160,000 rand or 80,000 pounds or $200,000 whichever way you looked at it.
it was highly probable that every man in the stope was already dead, and the original pressure burst had de-stressed the rock above and around the 95 level, so there was little danger of further bumps.
and yet there might be someone alive in there, someone lying pinned in the womb-warm darkness of the stope with a bunch of loose grapes hanging over his unprotected body.
when they hit all the blast buttons on the sander ditch mine, they fired eighteen tons of dynagel. the kick was considerable, it would bring down those grapes.
'dimitri,' rod made his decision, 'burn all long-walls on no. 2 shaft at seven-thirty exactly.' no. 2 shaft was three miles away.
that would save the company 80,000 rand. 'then at precisely five-minute intervals burn south, north and west long walls here on no. 1 shaft.'
spreading the blast would reduce the disturbance, and that put another 60,000 rand in the shareholders' pockets. the total monetary loss inflicted by the disaster was around 20,000 rand. not too bad really, rod thought sardonically, blood was cheap. you could buy it at three rand a pint from the central blood transfusion service.
'all right,' he stood up, and flexed his aching shoulders.
'i'm pulling everybody back into the safety of the shaft pillar while
