The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  “These men want to know something?”

  “Well?”

  “They want to know that everything will be done to rescue the men underground.”

  “It is being done.” A pause. Barras raised his eyes. “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” David said slowly. “For the meantime.”

  It was here that old Tom Ogle thrust himself violently forward.

  “What’s all this talking?” he shouted at Barras. He was a little out his mind. He had already tried spectacularly to jump down the Scupperhole shaft. “Why don’t ye save them? All this rigging does nothing. My son’s down there, my son Bob Ogle. Why don’t you send inbye and fetch him out?”

  “We’re doing what we can, my man,” Barras said, very dignified and calm.

  “I’m not yer man,” Tom Ogle snarled and raising his fist he hit Barras full in the face.

  Arthur shivered. Charley Gowlan and some others pulled Tom Ogle away, struggling, shouting. Barras stood upright. He had not defended himself, he had received the blow in a kind of spiritual exaltation as though, deep down in the centre of his being, the blow satisfied him. He proceeded calmly to the shaft, ordered another fire to be lit, remained supervising the work of erection.

  He remained at the pit all that day. He remained until Old Scupperhole shaft had been fitted with headgear, steam winding engine and fan, until the shaft was cleared of black damp. He remained until relays of men were started in to remove the stowing which marked the road into the waste. He remained until both main shafts of No. 17 had been fitted with new pumps, the one sending out two hundred and fifty gallons per minute from the main winding, the other, a turbine, four hundred and fifty gallons per minute in the upcast. Then, alone, he walked back to the Law.

  He did not feel tired nor particularly hungry, he swung between the torpor of his body and that curious exaltation of his mind. He was impersonal; what he was doing was illusory. He was like a man sentenced to death who receives the verdict calmly. He did not quite understand. His belief in his own innocence remained unassailable.

  Aunt Carrie had seen to it that oxtail soup was ready for him—Aunt Carrie knew that when Richard had a “hard day,” he liked oxtail soup better than anything. He ate the soup, a wing of chicken, and a slice of his favourite blue cheddar cheese. But he ate very sparingly and he drank only water. Of Aunt Carrie, who hung in a fluttering servitude in the background, he took no notice whatever; he did not see Aunt Carrie.

  At the table Hilda sat opposite, she kept her eyes fixed upon him with a sort of desperate intensity. At last, as though she could bear it no longer, she said:

  “Let me help, father. Let me do something. I beg of you to let me do something.” In the face of this emergency Hilda’s lack of opportunity maddened her.

  He raised his heavy eyes to hers, observing her for the first time. He answered:

  “What is there to do? Everything is being done. There is nothing for a woman to do.”

  He left her then. He climbed the stairs, went in to his wife. To her, as to Arthur, he said:

  “It is the will of God.” Then, inscrutable and stem, he lay down fully dressed upon his bed.

  But in four hours he was back at the pit and immediately proceeded to Old Scupperhole shaft. He knew that the real chance of penetrating to the Paradise lay through the Scupperhole. He went down the shaft.

  They were working in relays down the Scupperhole, working so fast they were clearing the stowing from the main road at the rate of six feet an hour. There was more stowing than they had thought. But the relays launched themselves in waves, they battered into the stowing, there was something frantic and abandoned in their assault. It was more than human this progress through the stowing, one relay slipped in as another staggered out.

  “This road runs due west,” Jennings said to Barras. “It ought to take us pretty near the mark.”

  “Yes,” said Barras.

  “We ought to be near the end of the stowing,” Jennings said.

  “Yes,” said Barras.

  In twenty-four hours the relays had cleared one hundred and forty-four feet of stowing from the old main road. They broke though into clear road, into an open section of the old waste. A loud cheer rang out, a cheer which ascended the shaft and thrilled into the ears of those who waited on the surface.

  But there was no second cheer. Immediately beyond the stowing the main road ran into a dip or trough which was full of water and impassable.

  Dirty, covered with coal dust, wearing no collar and tie, an old silk muffler round his swollen neck, Jennings stared at Barras.

  “Oh, my good God,” he said hopelessly, “if only we’d had a plan we’d have known this before.”

  Barras remained unmoved.

  “A plan would not have removed the trough. We expect difficulties. We must blast a new road above the trough.” There was something so sternly inflexible in the words that even Jennings was impressed.

  “My God,” he said, exhausted almost to the edge of tears, “that’s the spirit. Come on then and we’ll blast your blasted roof.”

  They began to blast the roof, to blast down the iron-hard whinstone into the water so that the trough might be filled and a road established above water level. A compressor was erected to supply the drills; the finest diamond drill bores were used. The work was killing. It proceeded in darkness, dust, sweat and the fume of high explosive. It proceeded in a sort of insane frenzy. Only Barras remained calm. Calm and impenetrable. He was there. He was the motive, the directing force. For a full eighteen further hours’ he did not leave the Scupperhole.

  Fresh back from six hours’ rest, Jennings pleaded with him:

  “Take some sleep, for God’s sake, Mr. Barras, you’re fair killing yourself.”

  Mr. Probert, Armstrong and several of the senior officials from the Department all pleaded with him: he had done so much, it would take at least five days to blast above the trough, let him spare himself until then. Even Arthur pleaded with him:

  “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.

  “I’ve wandered far away o’er mountains cold,

  I’ve wandered far away from home,

  Oh, take me now and bring me to thy fold.

  Come, Great Deliverer, come!”

  An echoing silence fell. None of them seemed to want to break that silence. They all sat very still, Slogger in particular sat gritting his teeth, but Slogger was the one who gave way.

  “O God,” Slogger groaned, “oh, my God Christ so help me God.” And Slogger began to cry. A hard case was Slogger, but with streaks of softness in him. He sat now with his head in his hands, shaking with dry sobs, and his racking grief was horrible to hear. They were all a little unstrung by this time, each found it difficult to keep his manhood on an empty belly. They had no food and no water but a tiny puddle that bled down slowly from the roof above. It was strange to have come away from that terrific flood of water and to have so little now, just enough for each, a mouthful of brackish coaly fluid.

  Wept went over to Slogger and began to comfort him. A great joy was in Wept that he should have saved the Slogger and for a little while the joy was in Slogger too.

  Then some of them felt hungry. Pat Reedy, being the youngest, felt the want of food the most. Robert had three cough sweets in his pocket. He slipped one to Pat and then another. How long was it between each sweet? …five minutes or five days? God alone knew! After the second Pat whispered:

  “That was good, that was, mester.”

  Robert smiled. He made to give Pat the third sweet, but the curious understanding that it was the last held him back. I’ll keep it for him, he thought.

  This same desire to keep something in reserve made Robert withhold the last pit candle, though at first the darkness was not kind but difficult, terribly difficult to bear after the yellow glow of the candle set like a tiny camp fire in their midst.

  The darkness made time much harder to compute. Only Robert amongst them had a watch and it had stopped when he went into the water of the Swelly. Hughie especially was worrying about time. Hughie was always a silent one, but now more so than ever; since they had come upon the fall of rock Hughie had hardly said one word. He sat beside his father, his brow knitted, brooding. His whole body was tense with this secret brooding. At last he said in a low voice:

  “Dad! How long have we been in?”

  Robert said:

  “I cannot tell ye, Hughie.”

  “But, dad, how long do ye think?”

  “Two days, maybe, or maybe three.”

  “What day is this, then, dad?”

  “I don’t know, man, Hughie… it’s Wednesday likely.”

  “Wednesday…” Hughie sighed, settled back stiffly against the wall. If it was only Wednesday that wasn’t quite so bad, that left three whole days to go, three days until the match. He must get out of this pit by Saturday, he must, he must�
�� in a sudden torment of anxiety Hughie picked up the stone and began to jowl… ta-ta… ta-ta… a-ta-ta-ta-tap!

  When Hughie stopped jowling there was a long silence. It was then that Ned Softley put his hand out to move himself and touched Harry Brace’s face. At first he thought Harry was asleep; he tried again gingerly and his fingers went right into Harry’s cold, dead, open mouth.

  Robert lit the candle. Yes, Harry Brace was gone. Poor Harry, he’d never given his missus the truss for her rupture he’d always promised her. Robert and Slogger lifted Harry. He lifted very heavy. Or were they just weak? They carried him down the roadway about thirty yards. They placed him upon his back. Robert crossed Harry’s hands on his pit singlet and shut Harry’s eyes. Wept was asleep, sleeping for the first time in three days, snoring deeply. Robert did not waken him. He recited the Lord’s Prayer over Harry, then Slogger and he came back.

  “We’ll burn another inch of candle, lads,” Robert said. “Just to keep our spirits up.”

  Pat Reedy was crying quietly again; he had met with death for the second time and still he did not like it much.

  “Hover a bit, man,” Robert said. He put his arm round Pat’s shaking shoulders. “It’s time I was giving you something to do. Will you have a turn jowling?”

  Pat shook his head.

  “I want to write to my mam,” he said, letting himself go altogether.

  “Very well,” Robert said gravely. “You shall write to your mam. I have a pencil. Who has some paper?”

  Ned Softley had a notebook for checking tubs. He passed it to Robert. Robert tore out a narrow double sheet, slapped it on the back of the notebook, passed it over with the pencil to Pat.

  Pat took the paper and the notebook and the pencil with a gulp of gratitude. He cheered up. He began straightway and wrote in big round letters: My dear mam… Then he stopped, head on one side, reading what he had written. My dear mam… he stopped again. My dear mam… he read it again and stopped. Then he began to cry in earnest. He cried bitterly. He was only fifteen.