He collected a lot of truly astonished glances, but only Danilo had a question.
‘I suppose it must be worth it,’ he said doubtfully. ‘All this work and equipment, just to get so little gold.’
‘It must be worth it or we would not be here,’ said Losenwoldt squelchingly, which I at least interpreted as ignorance of the profit and loss figures of the business. But it must be worth it, I reflected, or van Huren would not live in a sub-palace.
No one else said anything. Seldom had cheerful casual conversation been more actively discouraged. Even Evan’s natural inclination to put himself in charge of everything was being severely inhibited; and in fact, after looking apprehensive in the lift he now seemed the most oppressed of us all at the thought of millions of tons of rock pressing down directly above our heads.
‘Right,’ said Losenwoldt with heavy satisfaction at having reduced the ranks to pulped silence. ‘Now, switch on your helmet lights. There are no electric lights further along there.’ He pointed up the branch tunnel. ‘We will go to see the tunnelling in progress.’
He strode off without checking to see that we all followed, but we did, though Evan gave a backward glance in the direction of the shaft which would have warned a more careful guide not to take too much for granted.
The tunnel ran straight for a while and then curved to the right. As we approached the corner we could hear a constantly increasing roaring noise, and round on the new tack it noticeably increased.
‘What’s that noise?’ Evan asked in a voice still the safe side of active anxiety.
Losenwoldt said over his shoulder, ‘Partly the air-conditioning, partly the drilling,’ and kept on going. The spaced electric light bulbs came to an end. The lights on our helmets picked the way.
Suddenly, far ahead, we could discern a separate glimmer of light beyond the beams we were ourselves throwing. Closer contact divided the glimmer into three individual helmet lights pointing in the same direction as ours: but these lit only solid rock. We were coming to the end of the tunnel.
The walls at this point were no longer painted a comforting white with a red line, but became the uniform dark grey of the basic rock, which somehow emphasised the fanaticism of burrowing so deep in the earth’s undisturbed crust, in search of invisible yellow dust.
The air pipe stopped abruptly, the compressed air roaring out from its open mouth. Beyond that the noise of the drilling took over, as aggressive to the eardrums as six fortissimo discotheques.
There were three miners standing on a wooden platform, drilling a hole into the rock up near the eight-foot-high roof. Our lights shone on the sweat on their dark skins and reflected on the vests and thin trousers they wore in place of everyone else’s thick white overalls.
The racket came from a compressor standing on the ground, as much as from the drill itself. We watched for a while. Evan tried to ask something, but it would have taken a lip reader to get anywhere.
Finally Losenwoldt with a tight mouth and tired eyelids, jerked his head for us to go back. We followed him, glad about the lessening load on our ears. Walking last, I turned round where the air pipe ended, switched off my helmet light for a moment, and looked back. Three men on their scaffolding, intent on their task, enveloped in noise, and lit only by the glow-worms on their heads. When I had turned and gone, they would be alone with the primaeval darkness closing in behind them. I was left with a fanciful impression of a busy team of devils moleing along towards Inferno.
Once back in the wider section Losenwoldt continued our instruction.
‘They were drilling holes about six feet deep, with tungsten drills. That,’ he pointed, ‘is a pile of drills.’
We looked where he pointed. The horizontal stack of six-foot rods by the tunnel wall had looked more like a heap of unused piping before: but they were solid metal rods about two inches in diameter with a blade of tungsten shining at the end of each.
‘The rods have to be taken to the surface every day, to be sharpened.’
We nodded like wise owls.
‘Those three men have nearly finished drilling for today. They have drilled many holes in the face of the tunnel. Each hole will receive its charge of explosive, and after the blasting the broken rock will be removed. Then the drillers return and start the process again.’
‘How much tunnel can you make in one day?’ Roderick asked.
‘Eight feet a shift.’
Evan leant against the rock wall and passed a hand over a forehead that Clifford Wenkins could not have bettered.
‘Don’t you ever use pit-props?’ he said.
Losenwoldt answered the face of the question and didn’t see the fear behind it.
‘Of course not. We are tunnelling not through earth, but though bedrock. There is no danger of the tunnel collapsing inwards. Occasionally, loosened slabs of rock fall from the roof or the wall. This usually happens in areas recently blasted. Where we see such loosened rocks, we pull them down, if we can, so that there is no danger of them falling on anyone later.’
Evan failed to look comforted. He dug out his handkerchief and mopped up.
‘What sort of explosive do you use,’ Danilo asked, ‘for blasting?’
Losenwoldt still didn’t like him, and didn’t answer. Roderick, who was also interested, repeated the same question.
Losenwoldt ostentatiously stifled a sigh and replied in more staccato sentences than ever.
‘It is dynagel. It is a black powder. It is kept in locked red boxes fastened to the tunnel wall.’
He pointed to one of them a little further on. I had walked past two or three of them, padlocks and all, without wondering what they were for.
Danilo, with sarcasm, said to Roderick, ‘Ask him what happens when they blast,’ and Roderick did.
Losenwoldt shrugged. ‘What would you expect? But no one sees the blasting. Everyone is out of the mine before the charges are detonated. No one returns down the mine for four hours after blasting.’
‘Why not, dear boy?’ drawled Conrad.
‘Dust,’ Losenwoldt said succinctly.
‘When do we get to see this gold rock... this reef?’ asked Danilo.
‘Now.’ Losenwoldt pointed along the continuation of the main tunnel. ‘Further down there it will be very hot. There is a stretch with no air-conditioning. Beyond that there is air again. Leave your helmet lights on, you will need them. Take care where you walk. The floor of the tunnel is rough in places.’
He finished with a snap and as before set off with his back to us.
Again we followed.
I said to Evan, ‘Are you O.K?’ which irritated him into straightening his spine and flashing the eyes and saying of course he damn well was, did I think he was a fool.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Right then.’ He strode purposefully past me to get nearer to the pearls spat from Losenwoldt’s lips and I again brought up the rear.
The heat further on was intense but dry, so that although one felt it, it produced no feeling of sweat. The tunnel at this point grew rough, with uneven walls, no painted lines, no lights, and a broken-up floor: it also sloped gradually downhill. We trudged on, boots crunching on the gritty surface.
The further we went, the more activity we came across. Men in white overalls were everywhere, busy, carrying equipment, with their helmet lights shining on other people’s concentrated faces. The peak of each helmet tended to throw a dark hand of shadow across every man’s eyes, and once or twice I had to touch Roderick, who was in front of me, so that he would turn and reassure me that I was still following the right man.
At the end of the hot stretch it felt like stepping straight into the Arctic. Losenwoldt stopped there and consulted briefly with two other young miners he found talking to each other.
‘We will split up here,’ he said finally. ‘You two with me.’ He pointed to Roderick and Evan. ‘You two with Mr Anders.’ He assigned Conrad and Danilo to a larger version of himself. ‘You,’ he pointed at me, ‘with Mr Yates.’