George Allan England

“ It caught Antan, too, but that did not matter, for Antan had been dead an hour.
But Juozas the Litvak, husband of the flat-faced Katré, father of the little Domukas, had to die as a rat dies when its trap is soused be neath the water in a tub, with stones laid on to keep the creature down. You have seen that, eh? The rat swimming, swimming under water, with a fine silvery line of bubbles pouring from its nose and mouth as the bursting lungs refuse to hold? Then, kicking, writhing, palpitating, growing still, with glazed eyes and upturned lip that shows the fangs? Only a rat! A beast! ”

“ It was a dream, then, to Juozas; just a wild nightmare, mercifully short, from which the miner knew there never would be any more awakening; a nightmare, monstrous, unreal, yet flashed through here and there by some coherent thought, some perception—as of Katre and the little Domukas standing in the rain and the sticky mud outside the colliery gate, waiting, watching with the others in that big crowd as things were carried out under blankets, things that had been men, husbands, fathers. ”

“ Time there seems none where there is neither light nor sound. The drowsiness that grappled him he fought off with a dogged patience. To yield—well, Juozas knew what that would mean!
After a time a slow thought was born in the Litvak's mind. He took off his crimson sash, tore it into strips, and clumsily bound up Antan's head. ”

“ No matter. He would fight the dark just as he would fight the choke-damp, and the rock-falls, and the whole of Cumberland Mine, if that were necessary. He got a hand-grip on the buddy's coarse woolen shirt. Stumbling forward along the tramway ties, he half dragged, half carried Antan down along the gallery.
Once he fell, the lad with him, inert as a bag of slack. But again he found his hold, and sweated on. The footing was uncertain. His mine-boots slipped on the wet rubbish of the road-bed, slid on rucks of greasy slate and small loose coal. ”

“ With painful mental gropings he got a vision of the pit-mouth: the huddle of dust-grimed buildings; the huge, lop-sided, roaring breakers; the reeking, ever-smoking culm-banks, and the high board fence topped by its trocha of barb-wire; and outside that fence—the women! The women and the children, wailing in long, shrill, minor cries, or mayhap stricken into dumbness. The women, with their broad, flat, pale faces underneath their shawls. ”

“ Words won't pay dividends! Words won't——"
"By the living Lord!" cried Connover, and his clenched fist rose in air. "By the living Lord, so long's I'm superintendent of Cumberland there'll be no men drowned for dividends! Once the men are all out, all right, start the pumps. ”

“ Rescue, he believed, was only a matter of time. Men could live long, he knew, without eating. And as for drinking, was there not ditch-water, if it came to that? There might be much suffering, yes—but—— Juozas shrugged his massive naked shoulders in the dark.
"I go, myself, pretty soon," said he. "I go, ven I been sure de damp been clear out, an' see where de gallery she been block op. But if I go, if I stay, no metter. Dey safe us, annyho!"
That thought never left him: Authority, up yonder at the pit-mouth, would save!—Authority, stern to repress, yet strong to rescue. ”

“ MacTavish bellowed with hoarse rage. "New East's all blazin'—Old Sump's like t' go next, an' then——! Arrrh, these eejit Hunkies, ramstam sooties out o' hell, t' burrn old Cumberland on me so! To go an'——"
"There, now, Mack, that's enough!" Connover snapped him short. Connover, the superintendent, was used to obedience or else fist-play; a lover of few words. This brawling fire-boss, mouthy, irate, alcoholic, was a red rag to him at any time, now trebly red.
"That's enough!" the "super" shouted. "Shut that there door, you! Want t' smoke us all out, here?"
MacTavish obeyed, chopfallen. ”

“ He crouched there by the tramway, still hammering on the rail by sheer brutal, bulldog stubbornness. The time of rescue, he thought vaguely, was very long—much longer than he had expected.
"I must mak' dem to know!" he still repeated to himself, swaying at his task like a man blind-drunk. "Mak' dem know. Dey coom. Dey safe us, teip, me an' mine buddy!"
Tunk! . . Tunk! . . Tunk-tunk-tunk!
III
MacTavish, the fire-boss, his square face grimed with sweat and coal-dust, burst open the door of Cumberland Pit office and stumbled in. ”

“ From what MacTavish here says, we've got to act quick or the whole of Cumberland's likely to go up in smoke. If we take this thing in hand at once, if we flood the lower levels now——"
"But, my God! There's men down in Old Sump—living men!" ”

“ His fists were swinging now; the eyes were rolling in his head.
"Likes o' them as burrns up coal by million dollars' worth—ties up th' pits—throws white men oot frae warkin', by th' thousan'! Alive, them twa? Aye, damn their Rooshian bones, alive—which they'd nae been, by God, no, not one, if I'd my way wi' 'em! Alive, doon in Old Sump, an' rap-rap-rappin' on th' rail, though I misdoot if any leevin' soul has heerd 'em but juist mysel', an' me th' lunatic t' tell it! Rap-rap-rappin'—for why? For men like us, white men, t' risk guid lives——"
"MacTavish!" ”

“ Antan would not rouse. Juozas in the drowning blackness passed his hands over the lad's head.
It was wet—wet with a horrible warm wetness.
"Blood!" groaned the Litvak with stifling lungs. "Blood. Ach! I makes me 'fraid from such a beesness!"
He struggled to think. Thinking was harder labor for Juozas than cutting coal, at any time. Now it was doubly hard, with the resistless stupor of the after-damp numbing his brain. Still, he managed to get some connected idea of what had happened.
The New East workings, he knew, had "let go." And why? The incautious striking of a match, maybe ”

“ He put the still unconscious boy down from off his knees and stumbled out once more to the gallery. Fear he had none. A fire? They would put it out! Smoke? They would draw it up with fails! "They" would do everything, even unto saving Antan the Polander and Juozas the Litvak. ”