“Take some sleep… please… father…”
But Barras snatched only an odd half-hour in his office chair; he did not go home again until the evening of the fourth day. Once more he walked home. It was still bitter cold and the snow still lay upon the ground, freshly fallen snow. How white was the snow! He walked thoughtfully up Cowpen Street… yet he did not think. Since the accident he had refused to think, subconsciously his mind had detached itself, developed this powerful attack upon the pit, fixed itself inflexibly upon the work of rescue. His icy detachment persisted and sustained him. Strong currents were working deep beneath the crust of outer coldness. He did not feel these currents. But the currents were working there.
About him the streets were deserted, every door closed, not a single child at play. Many of the shops were shuttered. A still agony lay upon the Terraces, the stillness of despair. From opposite ends of Alma Terrace two women approached. They were friends. They passed each other with averted faces. Not a word. Silence: even their footsteps silenced by the snow. Within the houses the same silence. In the houses of the entombed men the breakfast things were laid out upon the table in preparation for their return. It was the tradition. Even at night the blinds remained undrawn. In No. 23 Inkerman Martha was making a fresh pot pie: Robert and Hughie both liked a fresh pot pie. Sammy and David sat in silence, not watching her. They had both come back from Scupperhole shaft; they had both been helping there; David had not been near the school for four full days. He had forgotten about school, forgotten about his examination, forgotten about Jenny. He sat in silence, his head buried in his hands thinking of his father, thinking his own bitter thoughts.
After the heat and clamour of the Scupperhole this cold seemed to strike at Barras. As he went on, a great sigh broke from his chest. He was not conscious of that sigh. He was conscious of nothing. He entered the Law. An enormous correspondence awaited him, letters of praise, sympathy, condolence, a telegram from Stapleton, the member for Sleescale, another from Lord Kell, owner of the Neptune royalties, another from the Lord Mayor, Tynecastle—Your heroic endeavours on behalf of the entombed men evokes our highest admiration we pray God success attend your further efforts. And yet another, a Royal Message, pregnant with gracious condolence. He studied them carefully. Curious! He studied a letter from the wife of a rubber-tubing manufacturer in Leeds offering to supply free—underlined — five hundred yards or more—underlined — of her husband’s quarter-inch tubing so that hot soup might be conveyed to the buried miners. Curious! He did not smile.
He returned to the pit early next morning. They had lowered the water level in the main shaft sufficient to allow divers to descend. The divers had to contend with a maximum head of eighteen feet of water in the levels. In spite of this they fought their way along Globe and Paradise levels as far as the fall. They made an arduous, exhaustive search. No one knew better than Barras how useless this search would be. All that the divers found was seventy-two drowned bodies.
The divers came back. They reported the absence of any living soul. They reported that at least another month would be required to dewater the levels completely. Then they started to bring out the bodies: the drowned men, roped together, dangling out of the mine into the brightness of the day they did not see.
Everything now concentrated on the approach by Scupperhole: it was fully realised that men unaccounted for might be imprisoned in the waste. Though it was now ten days since the date of the disaster these men might still be alive. In a fresh frenzy of endeavour, efforts above the trough were redoubled. The men spurted, strained every nerve. Six days after blasting was begun the last charge was fired, they broke through and regained the old main roadway beyond the trough. Exhausted but jubilant the rescuers pressed forward. They were met, sixty paces due west, by a complete fall of whinstone roof. They drew up hopelessly.
“Oh, my God,” Jennings moaned. “There might be a half mile of this. We’ll never reach them, never. This is the end at last.” Utterly spent, he leaned against the whinstone rock and buried his face in his arm.
“We must go on,” Barras said with sudden loudness, “we must go on.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Harry Brace was the first to die. Harry’s heart was weak; he was not a young man, and his immersion in the Flats had been severe, he died from sheer exhaustion. No one knew how or when he died until Ned Softley knocked his hand against Harry’s death-cold face and cried out that Harry was gone. Actually that was towards the end of the third night, though, of course, it was always night with them now, for the lamps had burned out and all the pit candles were used except one that Robert had kept and was saving for emergency. The darkness was not so bad, it clothed them, linked them in comradeship, hid them and was kind.
There were nine of them altogether: Robert, Hughie, Slogger, Pat Reedy, Jesus Wept, Swee Messer, Ned Softley, Harry Brace and two other men named Bennett and Seth Calder. The first day they had spent jowling, chiefly in jowling… ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… on and on… ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… like a hard tattoo beat out upon a tribal drum. Jowling was good; it signified their position in this unfathomable darkness; dozens of men had been rescued by jowling their rescuers towards them. Ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… they took turns upon the stone. But towards the second day Slogger shouted suddenly:
“Stop! For Christ’s sake, stop, I can’t stand that bloody hammering any longer.”
Ned Softley, whose turn it was, stopped at once. In fact everybody seemed glad when the jowling stopped. It stopped for about an hour, then they all agreed, and Slogger did too, that the jowling must go on. They must be very near them now, the men coming in through the Scupperhole. Oh, they must be hellofa near now, Swee Messer said. So Ned resumed: …ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap.
It was shortly after this that Wept held his first service. Jesus Wept had been upon his knees a great deal, praying by himself, away from the others, praying with a passionate intensity like Jesus Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. Wept was a silent earnest little man, he did not impose himself upon others except through the silent medium of his tracts and sandwich boards. At Whitley Bay or the Sleescale football matches Wept would be silent amongst the noisy crowds, just standing silent, or walking slow and silent, advertising the tears of Jesus, back and front. He was the quietest publicity man Jesus ever had and not by any means the worst. So it wasn’t Wept’s nature to force others to a service. But oddly enough, Robert, who never went to chapel, suggested they ought to have a service.
Though Wept had not mentioned the service he had wanted the service. He had wanted it badly and he took it gladly, gladly. He began with a prayer. It was a very good prayer with nothing about rending of garments or the scarlet woman in it. It was full of good faith and bad grammar and it ended quietly—”… so get us out of here, dear God, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.” Then Wept gave a short address. He took the text simply: John viii. 12, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
He simply talked to them, he spoke quite ordinarily.
Then they sang the hymn: Come, Great Deliverer, Come.