Hungry Hill (21 page)

It was, John thought, the usual story. He had failed in his duties as his father’s son. To make his apologies now, to offer to accompany his father every morning, and to sit like a dummy while he and Captain Nicholson discussed technical details of what should or should not be done to the offending pump was a matter of obligation, no doubt, but he could not bring himself to do it. He felt a wave of irritation sweep over him for the whole business.

Baird and his bills, the cowman and the rakes, Nicholson and his ridiculous pump. Why did his father have to take all these things so seriously? John left the library, in an ill-temper with his father and everyone else which was not improved by hearing that Fanny-Rosa and Jane had departed in the small pony carriage for Andriff, intending to spend the day there and return before dark. Fanny-Rosa had said nothing to him of the visit, and the reason was, of course, that he would have forbidden her to go. She was appallingly careless about herself, and because she felt so well was inclined to drive about the country with no thought of her condition. No one but Fanny-Rosa and himself knew how near she was to the time of her confinement, and even they were a little hazy about the actual date. His sisters believed, or pretended to believe, that it would be the early part of July; he himself suspected that it must be somewhere near the middle of May, and already they had reached the last days of April. If Fanny-Rosa was going to have her baby in three weeks’ time it was an act of madness to go driving the fifteen odd miles or so to Andriff, in a jolting pony-cart, and return the same day, making thirty miles in all, with only Jane for company.

“You must have been mad to let her go,” he said to Barbara. “I cannot understand what you were about.”

“But, John dear, they went without my knowledge.

Fanny-Rosa told Eliza she was certain you had decided to go with father to the mine this afternoon, and she felt restless, she said, and a drive would do her good, but I had no idea they proposed to go farther than a few miles or so. It was Tim who overheard them making plans for Andriff.”

“Jane should have shown more sense. She lets Fanny-Rosa do as she likes with her, just as I do, and every other damned fool.”

“John!” said Barbara in reproof.

“I’ve a good mind to go down and see Willie Armstrong and have a talk with him. He has promised to attend Fanny-Rosa when the time comes, and would know whether it is folly or not. I know that I have never let any of my bitches travel a jolting road when they are so near to the business, and here I am, having apparently allowed my wife to do something that I would have spared my dogs.”

“You forget, John,” said Barbara, hoping to soothe her brother, “that Fanny-Rosa’s health is excellent, and nothing seems to tire her.

Besides, the event is not for some little time yet, after all.”

“Nonsense!” said John. “You know very well that it is within a few weeks. Why we all have to pretend to one another, I do not know. At any rate, I shall go down now and see if Willie Armstrong is at home, and if necessary I shall ride over to Andriff and insist upon Fanny-Rosa remaining there for the night.”

He went round to the stables and had Tim saddle his horse, “You are quite sure, Tim, that Mrs. Brodrick and Miss Jane proposed to drive as far as Castle Andriff?” he enquired.

“I am, Master John,” replied the man.

“It was Mrs. Brodrick herself who said that they would be there soon after one o’clock, and would have time to offer some refreshment to the lieutenant before he went to catch the steamer from Mundy.”

“What are you talking about, Tim?”

“Why, doesn’t Lieutenant Fox leave this day for the East, Master John, and the young ladies arranging to say goodbye to him, him likely enough to be murdered by the savages out there, and Miss Jane crying her eyes out because of it?”

“I see…” said John. “No, Tim, I did not know.”

So that was the reason Fanny-Rosa and Jane had gone off for the day. Poor Jane wished to bid farewell to Dick Fox, out of sight of the family, and Fanny-Rosa had offered to go with her.

John rode into Doonhaven, and found the doctor in his house, preparing to sit down to cold meat and potatoes, which he suggested John should share.

“You had better come with me afterwards,” said the prospective father, falling upon the cold luncheon with a hearty appetite, “and bring back those two madcaps from Andriff. Or you can bring home Jane. I shall stay at the castle with my wife.”

“I think Jane will not be in much of a state to return with me,” said Doctor Armstrong quietly. “This departure of Dick Fox must have been a great shock to her.”

“I would have given a good deal for it not to have happened,” said John. “To have a broken heart at eighteen is not much of a start in life. Confound that fellow for trifling with her at all.”

“He is only twenty-one himself; they are both no more than children,” said the doctor. “I often think what an elderly dullard I must seem to Jane at thirty-five.”

“To tell you the truth,” John said, “I am more concerned about my wife than about Jane.

Fanny-Rosa’s baby is due within a few weeks, as you have probably guessed, and a drive of thirty miles is surely an act of madness?”

“Mrs. Brodrick’s constitution is not likely to suffer,” said Doctor Armstrong shortly, and he rose from the table to answer the summons at the front-door, for the house bell was ringing loudly.

He was always a little gruff where Fanny-Rosa was concerned. Anyway, he had promised to bring the child into the world, and be godfather into the bargain. He returned now with a note in his hand for John.

“Your servant is outside,” he said. “I gather there is some trouble or other at the mine, and your father has sent for you.”

John frowned, and tore open the letter.

“Please come up to the new mine without delay,” ran the message. “The flooding has become serious, and we need every man available to save the mine from total ruin.”

John threw the note across to the doctor.

“There’s an end to my ride to Andriff,” he said.

“You had better come with me, Willie. I’m afraid the business is serious. My father was telling me about the trouble only this morning. I rather gather they have gone too deep, and the engine they have has broken down and is useless. We shall find no end of a mess, I have no doubt.”

The two men, with the servant, were up at the new mine within twenty minutes. As they came up the track they had to dismount and leave their horses with the servant, and push their way through the great crowd of miners, two hundred or more, who were gathered about the entrance to the shaft.

“The water’s rising all the time,” said a man, touching his hat on recognising John and the doctor.

“There’s one poor chap down there drowned. They’ve just brought the body to the surface, and two others are missing. Mr. Brodrick has been down to the first level himself, but Captain Nicholson persuaded him to return. There he is, sir, at the head of the shaft there.”

John saw his father, his head bare, his coat stripped and his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, throw aside the great bucket he had been helping to handle, and shake his head.

“We shall never do any good like this,” he said. “The water comes up a foot or more all the time. ‘

Every few minutes the buckets came to the surface, on the groaning, creaking chains, and the water was splashed to the ground, making a wide stream beside the track, becoming deeper and flowing faster down the side of the hill. The great buckets, usually employed for bringing the copper above ground, were now bringing away the water; and a chain of men, from the flooded level to the surface, were handing smaller buckets from one to the other, each man standing upon a rung of the long ladder that descended to the shaft and passing his bucket to his fellow immediately above. As one or other of the men became exhausted, so a fresh man took his place, and in a moment John himself had thrown aside his coat, even as his father had done, and was taking his turn in the long line. He descended almost as far as the first level, which by this time the flood had reached, and the men who were working there, up to their waists in water, peered up at him through the darkness, their eyes hollow with exhaustion, their faces and bodies pouring with sweat.

“Tell the captain and Mr. Brodrick ‘tis no mortal use,” said one of them, a great burly Cornishman, who had stripped entirely. “The water is gaining on us all the time, faster than we can bring it away. There’s another poor chap must have been caught by it, along the galley, before we came down. I saw his hand just now, floating yonder, but he’s washed out of sight… . It’s the finish of this mine; we can’t do any more.”

John peered into the great black gulf. There was no sound, apart from the creaking of the chains and the laboured breathing of the exhausted men, except the steady lap-lap of the water as it splashed against the rock-face. The galley path was covered, and was now no more than a dark, narrow channel, disappearing into the gloom. Somewhere down this channel washed the body of a man. The flood-water smelt brackish, sour.

John turned, and climbed his way back up the long ladder to the surface, pressing against the miners as they lifted their useless buckets. Copper John was waiting by the entrance to the shaft, his face set in the expression of grim determination that his son knew so well.

“The water is gaining every few minutes,” said John, “the men cannot possibly work there longer than another quarter-of-an-hour. You will have to order them to the surface.”

“I was afraid of it,” said Captain Nicholson. “Mr. John is right, sir, we had better get the men above ground before more lives are lost.”

“I refuse to be conquered by flood-water,” said Copper John. “If we can get it away from the galleys that level will be workable again. There is one way by which we might save the mine, and I propose to do it. By blasting away the rock-face on the level, we can force a passage for the water out on to the hill, and the flood will escape. If there’s a chance of saving the mine, I am going to do it.”

“Very well then, sir,” said the mining captain.

“If we are successful, the explosion will break the rock above the level of the road, and the banks will go with the force of the water.”

“Damn the road,” said Copper John.

“Roads can be built again, with the Government’s money into the bargain. The Government will not advance me the money for a new mine.”

John turned aside, shrugging his shoulders. If his father cared to risk death playing about with gunpowder on that doomed level, it was his affair. Somewhere a woman was crying-the widow, he supposed, of the drowned man who had been brought to the surface. There was a little crowd gathered about the body. Willie Armstrong was with them. The faces of the miners were white and strained, and all the while there was the ceaseless clanking of the chains as the windlass brought the buckets above ground, splashing the water into the ever-widening stream. Why could not his father close down the mine, order the men to return home, and put a finish upon the business? There was something appalling in this grim fight to save a few hundred tons of copper, for which already two or three men had lost their lives. Captain Nicholson was shouting out orders now, and the barrel of gunpowder was being brought along in one of the trolleys. The miners were pressing forward in excitement, Copper John was calling for volunteers. “If Henry had been alive,” thought John, “he would have descended the mine with my father and the others,” and vividly the memory of three or four years back returned to him. Once again he saw Henry, tense, excited, shivering with the rain, watching his father set fire to the train of gunpowder. Five men had been killed that fatal night because of the copper. Six, if he counted Henry, who had caught the chill that led eventually to his death eighteen months later. How many would have lost their lives today? John moved away from the group of miners, sickened, hating the scene about him. Once again he was oppressed with his own uselessness. He could not even help the widow of the drowned man, as Willie Armstrong was doing. He could only stand on the fringe of the crowd and wait… . This time there was no fighting, no shouting and yelling, and the explosions when they came were low and muffled, a series of low rumbles underground that sounded like distant thunder. The men gathered about the opening of the shaft talked in low voices, and now and again word would be passed amongst the crowd, from one to the other, that a channel was being blasted successfully through the rock-face to carry away the flood, and that for the first time in four hours the water had not risen. John found himself drawn once more to the ladder beside the shaft.

The men moved aside, making way for him. He began to climb down the ladder, and this time a new smell filled the shaft, forwiththe sour flood-water came the bitter, pungent tang of powder and smoke. As he drew near to the level there came to his ears a confused murmur of voices, echoing strange and hollow against the bare, empty rock-face, and beside the voices was a new sound, the full, pressing flow of rushing water, as the flood was sucked down into the new channel blasted in the hillside. Even as John descended now, with Doctor Armstrong close behind him on the ladder, there came the deafening roar of a further explosion, and the crumbling of rock and stones along the galley.

Faces loomed up at him from the darkness, eyes, and teeth, and hands, and there was his father himself, his own face blackened by the powder, a great scratch at the corner of his eye from which the blood was running.

“We have done it,” he shouted: “the water has dropped three feet already; look at the mark there on the wall beside you ‘

The water gurgled and hissed like a live thing, and as it poured in a great black stream into the passage blasted for it the men on the level hacked and tore at the crumbling rock with iron crowbars and picks, making a passage larger yet, so that the tumbling waters should escape. Copper John seized a bar from the man nearest to him.

“Harder than that, young fellow,” he cried, and lifting the crowbar, he drove it fast into the rock, bringing down a shower of stones and rubble.