pellets that blew into Lizzie’s eyes. As the last of the miners and bearers came out of the shaft, Lizzie noticed the young woman whose child had been christened on Sunday—Jen, her name was. Although her child was only a week or so old, the poor woman was carrying a full corf. Surely she should have taken a rest after giving birth? She emptied the basket on the dump and handed the tallyman a wooden marker: Lizzie guessed the markers were used to calculate the wages at the end of the week. Perhaps Jen was too much in need of money to have time off.
Lizzie continued to watch because Jen looked distressed. With her candle raised above her head she darted among the crowd of seventy or eighty mine workers, peering through the falling snow, calling: “Wullie! Wullie!” It seemed she was searching for a child. She found her husband and had a rapid, frightened conversation with him. Then she screamed “No!” She ran to the pithead and started back down the stairs.
The husband went to the edge of the shaft then came back and looked around the crowd again, visibly distressed and bewildered. Lizzie said to him: “What’s the matter?”
He replied in a shaky voice. “We can’t find our laddie, and she thinks he’s still down the pit.”
“Oh, no!” Lizzie looked over the edge. She could see some kind of torch blazing at the bottom of the shaft. But as she looked it moved and disappeared into the tunnel.
Mack had done this on three previous occasions, but this time it was much more frightening. Formerly the concentration of firedamp had been much lower, a slow seep rather than a sudden buildup. His father had dealt with major gas leaks, of course—and his father’s body, as he washed himself in front of the fire on Saturday nights, had been covered with the marks of old burns.
Mack shivered in his blanket sodden with icy water. As he steadily wound in the string, pulling the blazing torch closer to himself and to the gas, he tried to calm his fear by thinking about Annie. They had grown up together and had always been fond of one another. Annie had a wild soul and a muscular body. She had never kissed him in public before, but she had often done it secretly. They had explored one another’s bodies and taught each other how to give pleasure. They had tried all sorts of things together, only stopping short of what Annie called “making bairns.” And they had almost done that.…
It was no use: he still felt terrified. To calm himself he tried to think in a detached way about how the gas moved and gathered. His trench was at a low point in the tunnel, so the concentration here should be less; but there was no accurate way of estimating it until it ignited. He was afraid of pain, and he knew that burns were torment. He was not really afraid to die. He did not think about religion much but he believed God must be merciful. However, he did not want to die now: he had done nothing, seen nothing, been nowhere. He had spent all his life so far as a slave, If I survive this night, he vowed, I will leave the glen today. I’ll kiss Annie, and say good-bye to Esther, and defy the Jamissons, and walk away from here, so help me God.
The amount of string that had gathered in his hands told him the torch was now about halfway to him. It could light the firedamp at any moment. However, it might not catch fire at all: sometimes, his father had told him, the gas seemed to vanish, no one knew where.
He felt a slight resistance to his pull and knew that the torch was rubbing against the wall where the tunnel curved. If he looked out he would be able to see it. Surely the gas must blow now, he thought.
Then he heard a voice.
He was so shocked that at first he thought he was having a supernatural experience, an encounter with a ghost or a demon.
Then he realized that it was neither: he was hearing the voice of a terrified small child, crying and saying: “Where is everyone?”
Mack’s heart stopped.
He knew instantly what had happened. As a small boy working in the mine he had often fallen asleep during his fifteen-hour day. This child had done the same, and had slept through the alarm. Then it had woken up, found the pit deserted, and panicked.
It took Mack only a split second to realize what he had to do.
He pushed aside the board and sprang out of his trench. The scene was illuminated by the burning torch and he could see the boy coming out of a side tunnel, rubbing his eyes and wailing. It was Wullie, the son of Mack’s cousin Jen. “Uncle Mack!” he said joyfully.
Mack ran for the boy, unwrapping the sodden blanket from around him as he went. There was no room for two in the shallow trench: they would have to try to reach the shaft before the gas blew. Mack wrapped the boy in the wet blanket, saying: “There’s firedamp, Wullie, we’ve got to get out!” He picked him up, tucked him under one arm, and ran on.
As he approached the burning torch he willed it not to ignite the gas, and heard himself shouting: “Not yet! Not yet!” Then they were past it.
The boy was light, but it was hard to run stooping, and the floor underfoot made it more difficult: muddy in places, thick with dust in others, and uneven everywhere, with outcroppings of rock to trip the hasty. Mack charged ahead regardless, stumbling sometimes but managing to keep his feet, listening for the bang that might be the last sound he ever heard.
As he rounded the curve in the tunnel, the light from the torch dimmed to nothing. He ran on into the darkness, but within seconds he crashed into the wall and fell headlong, dropping Wullie. He cursed and scrambled to his feet.
The boy began to cry. Mack located him by sound and picked him up again. He was forced to go on more slowly, feeling the tunnel wall with his free hand, cursing the dark. Then, mercifully, a candle flame appeared ahead, at the entrance to the tunnel, and Mack heard Jen’s voice calling: “Wullie! Wullie!”
“I’ve got him here, Jen!” Mack shouted, breaking into a run. “Get yourself up the stair!”
She ignored his instruction and came toward him.
He was only a few yards from the end of the tunnel and safety.
“Go back!” he yelled, but she kept coming.
He crashed into her and swept her up in his free arm.
Then the gas blew.
For a split second there was an ear-piercing hiss, then there was a huge, deafening thump that shook the earth. A force that felt like a massive fist struck Mack’s back and he was lifted off his feet, losing his grip on Wullie and Jen. He flew through the air. He felt a wave of scorching heat, and he was sure he was going to die; then he splashed headfirst into icy water, and realized he had been thrown into the drainage pool at the bottom of the mine shaft.
And he was still alive.
He broke the surface and dashed water from his eyes.
The wooden decking and staircase were burning in places, and the flames illuminated the scene fitfully. Mack located Jen, splashing about and choking. He grabbed her and heaved her out of the water.
Choking, she screamed: “Where’s Wullie?”
He might have been knocked unconscious, Mack thought. He pushed himself from one side of the small pool to the other, bumping into the bucket chain, which had ceased to operate. At last he found a floating object that turned out to be Wullie. He shoved the boy onto the deck beside his mother and clambered out himself.
Wullie sat up and spewed water. “Thank God,” Jen sobbed. “He’s alive.”
Mack looked into the tunnel. Stray wisps of gas burned sporadically like fiery spirits. “Away up the stairs with us,” he said. “There might be a secondary blast.” He pulled Jen and Wullie to their feet and pushed them up ahead of him. Jen lifted Wullie and slung him over her shoulder: his weight was nothing to a woman who could carry a full corf of coal up these stairs twenty times in a fifteen-hour shift.
Mack hesitated, looking at the small fires burning at the foot of the stairs. If the entire staircase burned, the pit might be out of commission for weeks while it was rebuilt. He took a few extra seconds to splash water from the pool over the flames and put them out. Then he followed Jen up.
When he reached the top he felt exhausted, bruised and dizzy. He was immediately surrounded by a crowd who shook his hand, slapped his back and congratulated him. The crowd parted for Jay Jamisson and his companion, whom Mack had recognized to be Lizzie Hallim dressed as a man. “Well done, McAsh,” said Jay. “My family appreciates your courage.”
You smug bastard, Mack thought.
Lizzie said: “Is there really no other way to deal with firedamp?”
