Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“How, then, Robert?” Slogger called out as Robert came up. He looked intently at Robert.

“How, again, Slogger?” Robert paused, making everything he said sound ordinary and perfectly all right. He wrung the water out of his jacket. “They’re holed down there and let a drop water in the Swelly. But we’re high enough here not to bother about that. We must find another road outbye.”

Silence. They all knew enough to make them silent. But Tom Reedy asked:

“Can we not get through the Swelly, then?”

Slogger let out at him savagely.

“Shut up yer gob, you silly runt, until yer asked to open it.”

Robert went on as though nothing had happened.

“So what we’ll do is this, lads. We’ll travel the return airways into Globe and win outbye through the Globe.”

Keeping Pat Reedy next and very close to him Robert led the way into the return airways. All the party followed but Tom Reedy. Tom was a splendid swimmer. He knew he was a splendid swimmer both under water and above and he knew that he could swim the Swelly. Once through the Swelly it would be easy to get outbye, then he would bring help and show the Slogger whether he was a silly runt or not. Tom lagged behind till the others had gone. He ran down the slant, slipped off his boots, took a deep breath and slid into the Swelly. He swam the Swelly in one deep breath. But what Tom didn’t bargain for was the mile and a half of water beyond the Swelly. On the other side the main inrush caught him. Tom got outbye right enough. Five minutes later his body swirled gently into the sump at the bottom of the flooded shaft.

Robert crawled on, leading his party through the airway. He knew they must be near the Globe by now. Suddenly his lamp went out as if extinguished by a soft breath and at the same moment Pat Reedy choked and lay quietly down beside him. Not water this time. Black damp.

“Get back,” Robert said. “Get back, everybody.”

The party went back, forty yards back, where they revived Pat Reedy. Robert, watching Pat Reedy come round, thought very hard. There must be men, he thought, in the dead end of the Globe. At length he said:

“Who is coming to try into the Globe with me again?”

Nobody answered; they all knew black damp, and this whiff of it had made them know it better. It was not so easy to think of penetrating Globe in these circumstances. Hughie said:

“Don’t go, dad, there’s styfe in there.”

Jesus Wept had said nothing up till now. But now Jesus Wept said:

“I’ll go.” He understood that Robert wanted to bring out any men in the Globe who might be overcome with black damp and still alive. He was not brave, but it was his religion to go with Robert.

Robert and Wept crawled back along the airway into the Globe. They took off their jackets and wrapped them round their heads, though this was simply a tradition against black damp and did little good. They also went flat on their stomachs. Wept was very frightened, from time to time gave little nervous convulsive jerks, but he kept on, praying into himself.

The black damp or styfe was gas full of carbon monoxide driven from the old waste workings by the water and it seemed to lift and die. It had lifted slightly when Robert and Wept got into the Globe. Although they felt sick and sleepy they were able to go on. But it had been heavy before: they found four men overcome by the gas. The men were sitting in a little group as though gazing at each other, perfectly natural and at ease. They looked extremely well: the gas had given a nice pink colour to their faces and hands which were hardly dirty, since the shift had just come in. They looked healthy. They looked cheerful. They were all dead.

Robert and Wept dragged out the men; that was why they had come into the Globe; they dragged them out, but nothing the party could do revived the four dead men. At the sight of these four dead men Pat Reedy, who had never looked upon death before, burst into tears.

“Oh, help,” he blubbered. “Oh, help. What in the name ov wonder am I doin’ here? And where’s my brother Tom?”

Wept said:

“Don’t cry, lad, the Lord will look after us all.” There was something terribly impressive in the way Jesus Wept said those words.

Silence. Robert stood thinking. His face was worried. If there’s gas in the Globe, he thought, there’s water too. The waste black damp could only have reached that upper seam with a full head of water behind it. The men were trapped by the water first, then overcome by the gas. Yes, he concluded, the Globe is sealed too, there’s no escape that way. Then Robert remembered the telephone in the far end of Scupper Flats.

“We can’t get into the Globe, lads,” he said. “There’s gas and water there both. We’ll win back to the Scupper and telephone the surface.”

At the mention of the telephone every face brightened.

“By Christ, Robert,” said the Slogger admiringly.

The very thought of telephoning took all the sting out of the return journey through the airway, they did not think of it as going back nor remember that they were trapped. They thought of the telephone.

But when Robert came into Scupper Flats again he looked more worried than ever, he looked really worried. He saw that the water level in the Flats was up and rising fast. This meant only one thing: the inrush had washed away the timbering; the unsupported roof beyond the Swelly had fallen, thereby blocking the outlet of the water down the main roadway; and now the water was turning back upon them. With every escape road blocked they had perhaps fifteen minutes in which to get out of the dead end of Scupper Flats.

“Wait here,” Robert said. He went on to the telephone himself, spun the little handle violently, then lifted the receiver. He was very pale. Now… he thought.

“Hello, hello.” His voice, the voice of a man not yet dead rose out of the dark tomb, fled in despairing hope over waterlogged wires to the surface two miles away.

The answer came instantly.

“Hello, hello!”

Robert nearly fainted. It was Barras, from his office, insistently repeating:

“Hello, hello, hello, hello…”

Robert answered, speaking feverishly:

“Fenwick on Scupper Flats telephone. The water has holed beyond the Swelly and roofed. There’s been a fall beyond. A party of nine cut off here beside me. What are we to do?”

The answer came immediately, very hard and clear.

“Travel the airways to Globe Coal.”

“We’ve tried the airways.”

“What!”

“The Globe’s chock full of black damp and water.”

Silence. Thirty seconds of agonised silence which seemed like thirty years. Then Robert heard the slam of a door as though, still sitting at his desk, Barras had kicked the door shut. It really was very odd hearing the slam of that office door from far away up there upon the surface.

“Listen to me, Fenwick!” Barras spoke rapidly now, yet every word struck incisively and hard. “You must make for Old Scupperhole shaft. You can’t come this way, both shafts are water sealed. You must travel the old workings to Old Scupperhole shaft!”

“Old Scupperhole shaft!” What in the name of God was he talking about…

“Go right up the slant,” Barras went on with that same inflexible precision. “Break through the frame dam at the top east side, above the dyke. That takes you into the upper level of the Old Neptune waste. Don’t be afraid of water, that’s all in the bottom levels. Go along the road, it’s all main road, don’t take the branches nor the right dip, keep bearing due east for fifteen hundred yards until you strike the old Scupperhole shaft…”

Christ! thought Robert, he knows these old workings, he knows them, he knows them. The sweat broke upon Robert’s brow. Oh, sweet Christ, he’s known them all along…