Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

A loud yell went up from the mob. Inflamed by Reedy’s words they pressed round him as he ran down the steps, escorted him in a body down the street. Some, terrified, melted back towards the Terraces. But at least a hundred men joined up with Jack. They all began to move to the Neptune pit, exactly as the crowd had moved towards Ramage’s shop over twenty years before. But there were more men in the movement, a great many more. The pit was a greater attraction than Ramage’s shop. The pit was the focus, the centre wherein the sound and the fury of their souls were concentrated. The pit was the arena, the amphitheatre. Life and death and work and wages and sweat and blood were mingled in the black dust of that arena, that dark amphitheatre.

The men poured into the pit yard with Jack Reedy leading them. The pit yard was silent and the offices were closed and the shaft gaped empty like the entrance to a great empty tomb. There was no person underground, no night shift now, not a soul inbye. Even the pit bank seemed deserted, though the safety men were there, the pump-men. The two pump-men were in the engine house behind the locker room; their names were Joe Davis and Hugh Galton. The crowd streamed towards the engine house where Davis and Galton were, and Galton heard them coming first. One of the windows of the engine house was half open to let out the heat and the hot smell of oil, and Galton, an oldish man with a short grey beard, popped his head through the window.

The crowd were around the engine house now, a crowd of one hundred men, their faces all upturned to Galton in the high window of the engine house.

“What is it?” Galton called down.

With his face upturned Jack Reedy said:

“Come out here. We want you out here.”

“What for?” Galton said.

Jack repeated in a deadly tone:

“Come out here. Come out and you’ll not get hurt.”

In answer Galton drew his head back and banged down the window shut. There was a pause of about ten seconds filled by the slow thumping of the pumping engines, then Cha Leeming let out a yell and threw a brick. The window shivered, and the sound of shivering glass came above the thumping and thudding of the pumping engines. That did it. Jack Reedy ran up the steps of the engine house and Leeming and a dozen others ran after him. They burst through the door of the engine house.

The engine house was very hot and bright and full of oily heat and vibrating noise.

“What the hell,” Joe Davis said. He was a man of forty in blue dungarees with his sleeves rolled up and a coil of waste wrapped round his neck. He had been cleaning brasses with bath brick and a tin of paraffin.

Jack Reedy looked at Joe Davis from under the peak of his cap. He said rapidly:

“We don’t mean you no harm, none of the two of you. We only want you out. Out, see.”

“I’ll be damned,” Joe Davis said.

Jack came a step forward. He said, carefully watching Joe Davis:

“You’ll get out, see; the men want you out.”

“What men?” Joe Davis said.

Then Jack rushed at Joe Davis and caught him round the waist. They caught each other round the waist and wrestled like that. They wrestled and struggled for a minute with everybody looking on, and as they wrestled they knocked over the tin of paraffin. It was a big tin of paraffin and it ran out over the grating and poured into the box of cleaning rags; Slattery was the only one who saw the paraffin pour into the waste rags, they were all watching the fight, and with a kind of reflex Slattery took the cigarette end out his mouth and flicked it at the waste rags. The lighted cigarette end fell right in the middle of the box of waste rags. No one but Slattery saw it fall, for at that moment Davis slipped and went down with Jack on the top of him. The crowd rushed forward. They got hold of Davis, then rushed at Galton, and bundled them out of the engine house.

After that it all happened quickly. No one did it. They all did it, throwing loose tools, spanners and common rods, a heavy sledge, even the can of bath brick, into the mesh of slow, gleaming pistons. The sledge actually caused the damage. The sledge hit the crosshead, danced off and fell upon the main cylinder, cracked the main cylinder, then fell smash into the bearings. There was a horrible grinding and a hiss of steam. The smooth machinery twisted and shivered and locked itself abominably. The whole engine house shuddered to its foundation and was still.

Then Slattery shouted as if he had made a great discovery:

“It’s on fire. Jesus Christ! Look! It’s on fire there.”

They looked at the waste box from which flames were leaping and they looked at the still dead engines of the pumps. Then they made for the door. They squeezed through the door in a kind of panic. Jack Reedy stayed behind. Jack always was resourceful. He walked over to the oil drum and turned on the spigot. For a minute he watched the oil flow darkly. His gaze was pale and cold and bitterly triumphant. He had done something, done something. He walked quickly out and slammed the door.

Outside they stood packed in the yard. There were no flames at first, only thick coils of smoke, but soon the flames sprang, great tongues of flame.

They retreated a little before the flames which lit their upturned faces in the dark amphitheatre of the pit bank. Wafts of heat reached towards them through the coldness of the night. Then, as the flames sprang towards the power-house roof the slates began to pop. It was amazing how the slates popped. They popped off the roof like peas bouncing from a drum, one, two, three, a perfect hail of slates came pelting down, each making a lovely blazing curve, then crashing on the concrete yard.

The crowd retreated further, pressing back against the walls of the offices, back through the yard gates, back into Cowpen Street. They released Galton and Joe Davis. It was all right, all right now. Galton ran into the main office, ran to the telephone. They let him go. It was all right, all right now; another fusillade of slates came down and the lamp-room was alight and crackling. Galton began to telephone furiously. He telephoned Arthur, Armstrong and the fire-station. He telephoned the Lodge offices in Tynecastle. He left word at the Exchange to inform everyone in the district who might be of service in the emergency. Then he sprinted out of the office to do what he could do. As he came through the door into the yard a red-hot slate whizzed past his skull and missed splitting it by inches. The slate shattered on the office floor and the fragments scattered joyfully. One sizzled straight into the wastepaper basket. That set the offices on fire.

Everything was happening very fast. More men were entering the pit yard, Forbes the deputy, Harry Ogle, some of the officials and older colliers. Then the police came, Roddam, the sergeant, and a dozen men at the double. Galton joined the police, the deputy and the officials and ran with them to the safety room where Joe Davis had already uncoiled the hoses. They led the hoses out and coupled them to the hydrant, then Davis threw on the pressure. The hoses jerked and kicked and spouted water from a dozen slits. Someone had gashed the hoses. They were useless.

Arthur and Armstrong arrived simultaneously. Arthur had been reading in his room when Galton telephoned, Armstrong on the point of going to bed. They dashed up to the knot of men outside the safety room. While the leaping flames cast light and shadow across them they stood for a moment in rapid consultation, then Arthur rushed over to the offices to telephone. He found the offices on fire.

The Sleescale fire engine arrived at last and Camhow coupled up the hose line. A thin jet of water went hissing into the flames. Another hose was coupled and a second jet went up. But the jets were thin and feeble. And these two hoses were the only hoses that they had.