returned the pack and began patting his pockets to locate his lighter.
Davy went from team to team of his machine boys, directing them in the line and spot to be drilled. Every time he spoke, the unlit cigarette waggled between his lips. He gesticulated with the hand that held his cigarette- lighter.
It took twenty minutes for him to set all his drills to work. And he stood and looked back along the tunnel.
Each machine boy and his assistant formed a separate sculpture. Most of them were stripped to the waist. Their bodies appeared to be carved and polished in oiled ebony, as they braced themselves behind the massive rock drills.
Davy lifted his cupped hands, holding the cigarette lighter near his face, and he flicked the cog wheel.
The air in the tunnel turned to flame. In a flash explosion, the flame reached the temperature of a welding torch. It seared the skin from the faces and exposed bodies of the machine boys, it burned the hair from their scalps. It turned their arms to charred stumps. It roasted their eyeballs in their sockets. It scorhed their clothing, so as they fell the cloth smouldered and burned against their flesh.
In that instant, as the skin was licked from his face and hands, Davy Delange opened his mouth in a great gasp of agony. The flame shot down his throat into his gas, drenched lungs. Within the confines of his body the gas exploded and his chest popped like a paper bag, his ribs fanning outward about the massive wound like the petals of a sunflower.
Forty-one men died at the same moment. In the silence after that whooshing, sucking detonation, they lay like scorched insects along the floor of the drive. One or two of them were moving still, an arched spine relaxing, a leg straightening, charred fingers unclenching, but within a minute all was absolutely still.
Half an hour later Doctor Dan Stander and Rodney lronsides were the first men into the drive. The smell of burned flesh was overpowering.
Both of them had to swallow down their nausea as they went forward.
an Stander sat at his desk and looked out over the car park in front of the mine hospital. He appeared to have aged ten years since the previous evening.
Dan envied his colleagues the detachment they could bring to their work. He had never been able to perfect the trick.
He had just completed forty-one examinations for issue of death certificates.
For fifteen years he had been a mine doctor, so he was accustomed to dealing with death in its more hideous forms.
This, however, was the worst he had ever encountered.
Forty-one of them, all victims of severe burning and massive explosion trauma.
He felt washed out, exhausted with ugliness. He massaged his temples as he examined the tray of pathetic possessions that lay on the desk before him. This was the contents of the pockets of the man Delange.
Extracting them from the scorched clothing had been a filthy business in itself. Cloth had burned into the flesh, the man had been wearing a cheap nylon shirt under his overalls. The fabric had melted in the heat and had become part of his blistered skin.
There was a bunch of keys on a brass ring, a Joseph Rogers pen-knife with a bone handle, a Ronson cigarette lighter which had been clutched in the man's clawed and charred right hand, a springbok skin wallet, and a loose envelope with one corner burned away.
Dan had already passed on the effects of the Bantu victims to the agent of the Bantu Recruiting Agency, who would send them on to the men's families. Now he sighed with distaste and picked up the wallet. He opened it.
In one compartment there were half a dozen postage stamps, and five rands in notes. The other flap bulged with paper. Dan glanced through salesmen's cards, dry-cleaning receipts, newspaper cuttings offering farms for sale, a folded page from the Farmer's Weekly on the planning of a dairy herd, a JBS savings book.
Dan opened the savings book and whistled when he saw the total. He fanned the remaining pages.
There was a much-fingered envelope, unsealed and tucked behind the cardboard cover of the savings book.
Dan opened it, and pulled a face. It contained a selection of photographs of the type which one found offered for sale in the dock area of the Mozambique port of Lourenqo Marques. It was for this type of material that Dan was searching.
When the man's possessions were returned to his grieving relatives, Dan wanted to spare them this evidence of human frailty. He burned all the photographs and the envelope in his ashtray and then crushed the blackened sheets to powder before spilling it into his waste-paper bin.
He went across to the window and opened it to let the smell of smoke escape. He stood at the window and searched the car park for joy's Alfa Romeo. She had not arrived as yet and Dan returned to his desk.
The remaining envelope caught his eye and he picked it up. There was a smear of blood upon it, and the corner was burned away. Dan removed the four sheets of paper and spread them on the desk: Dear Johnny, When Pa died you were still little and I always reckoned you were more like my son, you know, than my brother.
Well, Johnny, I reckon now I've got to tell you something... Dan read Slowly, and he did not hear joy come into the room. She stood at the door watching him. Her expression fond, a small smile on her lips, shiny blonde hair hanging straight to her shoulders. Then she moved up quietly behind his chair and kissed his ear. Dan started and turned to face her.
'Darling,' joy said and kissed him on the mouth. 'What is so interesting that you ignore my arrival?' Dan hesitated a moment before telling her.
'There was a man killed last night in a ghastly accident.
This was in his pocket.' He handed her the letter and she read it slowly.
'He was going to send this to his brother?' she asked, and Dan nodded.
'The bitch, Joy whispered, and Dan looked surprised.
'Who?' the girl it's her fault, you know. 'Joy opened her purse and took out a tissue to dab her eyes. 'Damn it, now I'm messing my make-up.' She sniffed, and then went on. 'It would serve her right if you gave that letter to her husband.'
'You mean I shouldn't give it to him?' Dan asked. 'We have no right to play God.' 'Haven't we?' asked joy, and Dan watched quietly as she tore the letter to tiny shreds, screwed them into a ball, then dropped them into the waste bin.
'You are wonderful,' he said. 'Will you marry me?'
'I've already answered that question, Doctor Stander.' And she kissed him again.
Hettie Delange was in a turmoil.
It had started with the phone call that had roused Johnny from their bed. He had said something about trouble at the shaft as he pulled on his clothes, but she had come only briefly awake and then drifted off again as Johnny hurried out into the night.
He had come in hours later and sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped between his knees and his head bowed.
'What's wrong, man,' she had snapped at him. 'Come to bed. Don't just sit there.'
'Davy's dead.' His voice had been listless.
There was a. moment's shock that had convulsed the muscles of her belly, and brought her fully awake. Then, immediately, she had felt a swift cleansing rush of relief.
He was dead. It was as easy as that! All day she had worried. She had been stupid to let it happen. just that moment of weakness, that self-indulgent slip and she had been dreading the consequences all that day. She had imagined Davy trailing after her with puppy eyes, trying to touch her, making it so obvious that even Johnny would see it. She had enjoyed it but just the once was enough.
She wanted no repeat performance and certainly no complications to follow the original deed.
Now it was all taken care of. He was dead.
'Are you sure?' she had asked anxiously, and Johnny heard the tone as concern.
'I saw him!' Johnny had shuddered, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
'Gee, that's terrible.' Hettie had remembered her role, and sat up and put her arms about Johnny. 'That's terrible for you.' She had not slept again that night. Somehow the thought of Davy going directly from her to his violent death was exciting. It was like in the movies, or a book, or something. Like he was an airman and he had been shot down, and she was his girl. Perhaps she was pregnant and all alone in the world, and she would have to go to Buckingham Palace and get his medal for him. And the Queen would say... The fantasies had played out in her mind until the dawn, with Johnny tossing and muttering beside her.
She woke him when it was first light in the room.
'How was he?' she asked softly. 'What did he look like, Johnny?'
Johnny shuddered again, and then he started to tell her.
His voice was husky, and the sentences broken and disconnected. When he stumbled into silence, Hettie found herself trembling with excitement.
'How terrible,' she kept repeating. 'Oh, how awful!' And she pressed against him. After a while Johnny made love to her, and for Hettie it was better than she had ever known it to be.
