by Dick Francis
‘Not recently?’ I said, surprised.
‘Oh, no. Long ago. The Rand gold fields are shallower and mining began there first.’
People were carrying tungsten rods up the tunnel and others were passing us down it.
‘We are getting ready to blast,’ Yates said without being asked. ‘All the drilling is finished and the engineers are setting the charges.’
‘We haven’t very long, then,’ I said.
‘Probably not.’
‘I’d like to see how they actually work the reef.’
‘Oh… yes. Just down here a bit further, then. I will take you to the nearest part. There are others further down.’
We came to a larger than usual hole in the wall. It stretched from the floor to about five feet up, but one could not walk straight through it, as it sloped sharply upwards inside.
He said, ‘You will have to mind your head. It is very shallow in here.’
‘O.K.,’ I said.
He gestured to me to crawl in ahead of him, which I did. The space was about three feet high but extended out of sight in two directions. A good deal of ham had already gone from this part of the sandwich.
Instead of a firm rock floor, we were now scrambling over a bed of sharp-edged chips of rock, which rattled away as one tried to climb up over them. I went some way into the flat cavern and then waited for Yates. He was close behind, looking across to our right where several men lower down were working along a curving thirty-foot stretch of the far wall.
‘They are making final checks on the explosive charges,’ he said. ‘Soon everyone will begin to leave.’
‘This loose stuff we are lying on,’ I said. ‘Is this the reef?’
‘Oh… no, not exactly. These are just chips of rock. See, the reef used to lie about midway up the stope.’
‘What is the stope?’
‘Sorry… the stope is what we are now in. The place we take the reef from.’
‘Well… down there, in the part which is not blasted yet, how do you tell which is the reef?’
The whole thing looked the same to me. Dark grey from top to bottom. Dark grey uneven roof curving down in dark grey uneven walls, merging into dark grey shingle floor.
‘I’ll get you a piece,’ he said obligingly, and crawled crabwise on his stomach over to where his colleagues were working. It was barely possible to sit up in the stope. Just about possible to rise to hands and knees, if one kept one’s head down. I supported myself on one elbow and watched him borrow a small hand pick and lever a sliver of rock out of the far wall.
He scrambled back.
‘There you are… This is a piece of reef.’
We focused both our lights on it. A two-inch-long grey sharp-edged lump with darker grey slightly light-reflecting spots and streaks on its surface.
‘What are those dark spots?’ I said.
‘That’s the ore,’ he said. ‘The paler part is just ordinary tock. The more of those dark bits there are in the reef, the better the yield of gold per ton of rock.’
‘Then is this dark stuff… gold?’ I asked dubiously.
‘It has gold in it,’ he nodded. ‘Actually it is made up of four elements: gold, silver, uranium and chrome. When the reef is milled and treated, they are separated out. There is more gold than silver or uranium.’
‘Can I keep this piece?’ I asked.
‘Certainly.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I am sorry, but they have a job for me to do down there. Could you possibly find your own way back up the tunnel? You cannot get lost.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘You go on, I don’t want to interfere with your job.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, and scrambled away in haste to please the people who really mattered to him.
I stayed where I was, for a while, watching the engineers and peering into the interminable dug-out space uphill. The light of my helmet couldn’t reach its limits: it stretched away into impenetrable blackness.
The workers below me were thinning out, returning to the tunnel to make their way back towards the shaft. I put the tiny piece of reef in my pocket, took a last look round, and began to inch my way back to the hole where I had come in. I turned round to go into the tunnel feet first, but as I started to shuffle backwards I heard someone begin to climb into the stope behind me, the light from his helmet flashing on my overalls. I stopped, to let him go by. He made a little forward progress and I glanced briefly over my shoulder to see who it was. I could see only the peak of his helmet, and shadow beneath.
Then my own helmet tipped off forward and a large chunk of old Africa clobbered me forcefully on the back of the head.
Stunned, it seemed to me that consciousness ebbed away slowly: I fell dizzily down endless mine shafts with flashing dots before my eyes.
I had blacked out completely long before I had hit the bottom.
Chapter Ten
Blackness.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes. Couldn’t see. Put my hand to my face to feel if my eyelids were open.
They were.
Thought was entirely disconnected. I didn’t know where I was, or why I was there, or why I couldn’t see. Time seemed suspended. I couldn’t decide whether I was asleep or not, and for a while I couldn’t remember my own name.
Drifted away again. Came back. Snapped suddenly into consciousness. Knew I was awake. Knew I was me.
Still couldn’t see.
I moved; tried to sit up. Discovered I was lying on my side. When I moved, I heard the crunching noise and felt the sharp rock chips shifting against my pressure.
In the stope.
Cautiously I put up a hand. The rock ceiling was a couple of feet above my head.
No helmet on my head. A tender lump on the back of it and a thumping pain inside it.
Bloody hell, I thought. I must have bashed my head. I’m in the stope. I can’t see because there isn’t any light. Everyone has left the mine. And the blasting charges will go off at any minute.
For a paralysing age I couldn’t think beyond the fact that I was going to be blown to bits before I had even finished realising it. After that I thought it might have been better if I’d been blown to bits before I woke up. At least I wouldn’t now be awake worrying. After that, and not before time, I began wondering what to do.
Light, first.
I felt around to my back, found the lead from the power pack, and gently pulled it. The other end scraped towards me over the choppy shingle, but when I picked up the torch I knew I wasn’t going to get any light. The glass and the bulb were both smashed.
The light unit had come off the bracket on the helmet. I felt around with an outstretched hand, but couldn’t find the helmet.
Must get out, I thought urgently, and in the same split second wondered… which way was out.
I made myself stay still. The last thing I remembered was agreeing with Yates that I could find my own way back. I must have been stupid enough to try to raise my head too high. Must literally have hit the roof. I couldn’t remember doing it. The only thing that seemed clear was that I had smashed my helmet light when I fell, and that no one had seen me lying there in the dark.
Bloody fool, I cursed myself. Clumsy bloody fool, getting into this mess.
Gingerly, with one arm outstretched, I shifted myself a foot forward. My fingers found nothing to touch except stone chips.
I had to know which way I was going. Otherwise, I thought, I may be crawling away from safety, not towards it. I had to find the hole into the tunnel.
I picked up a handful of the flinty pebbles and began throwing them methodically round in a circle, starting on my right. It was an erratic process, as some hit the roof and some the ground, but enough went far enough before they fell to assure me that there was a space all around me in front.
I rolled over on to my back and the power pack dug into me. I unfastened the webbing and pulled it off. Then I threw another lot of stones in an arc round my legs.
The wall of th
e tunnel was there. A lot of the stones hit it.
My heart by then was thudding so much it was deafening me. Shut up, shut up, I said to myself. Don’t be so bloody scared, it isn’t of any practical use.
I threw more stones, this time not to find the wall, but the hole in it. I found it almost at once. Threw more stones to make sure: but there it had to be, just to the left of where my feet were pointing, because all the stones that went over there were falling further away, and clattering after they landed. They weren’t round enough to roll, but heavy enough to continue downhill when they fell. Downhill… on the steep little slope from the stope into the tunnel.
More stones. I moved my feet, then my whole body, until the hole was straight in front over my toes. Then on my elbows and my bottom, keeping my head well back, I shuffled forwards.
More stones. Hole still there.
More shuffling. Another check.
It couldn’t have been more than ten feet. Felt like ten miles.
I tentatively swept my arms around in the air. Could feel the roof, nothing else.
Went forward another two or three feet. Felt around with my arms. Touched solid rock. Ahead, to the tight.
Another foot forward. Felt my feet turn abruptly downwards, bending my knees. Put both my hands out sideways and forwards and felt rock on both sides. Halfway out of the hole… and gingerly, lying flat, I inched forward until my feet scrunched on the tunnel floor. Even then I bent my knees and continued slithering without raising my head, all too aware of the hard sharpness of the rock above and the vulnerability of my unhelmeted skull.
I ended on my knees in the tunnel, gasping and feeling as frightened as ever.
Think.
The holes had been in the left-hand wall, as we came down. Once in the tunnel, Yates had said, I couldn’t get lost.
O.K. Turn right. Straight forward. Dead simple.
I stood up carefully, and with the hole at my back, turned left. Put my hand on the rough rock wall. Took a step forward.
The scrunch of my boot on the rock floor made me realise for the first time how quiet it was. Before, I had had both the stones and my own heart to fill my ears. Now, there was nothing. The silence was as absolute as the darkness.
I didn’t waste time brooding about it. Scrunched ahead as fast as I dared, step by careful step. No sound… that meant that the air-conditioning had been switched off… which hardly mattered, there was a mineful still to breathe… even if it were hot.
My hand lost the wall suddenly, and my heart set up a fresh chorus. Taking a grip on my breath I took a step backwards. Right hand back on wall. O.K. Breathe out. Now, kneel down, grope along floor, keep in contact with wall on right… navigate past another of the holes which led through to the stope.
Holes which would let the blast out of the stope, when the charges exploded.
Blast travelled far when confined in a long narrow space. Blast was a killing force, as deadly as flying rocks.
Oh God, I thought. Oh hell’s bloody bells. What did one think about if one were probably going to die at any minute.
I thought about getting as far back up the mine as quickly as I could. I thought about not losing contact with the right-hand wall when I passed the holes in it, because if I did I might turn round in the darkness and find the other wall instead, and go straight back towards the explosion. I didn’t think about anything else at all. Not even about Charlie.
I went on. The air became hotter and hotter. The stretch that had been hot coming down was now an assault on the nerve endings.
Struggling on, I couldn’t tell how fast I was going. Very slowly, I imagined. Like in a nightmare, trying to flee from a terror at one’s heels, and not being able to run.
I got back in the end to the wider space, and the explosion still hadn’t happened. Another explosion was due to take place down the branch tunnel also… but the bend in the tunnel should disperse some of the blast.
Beginning at last to let hope creep in, and keeping my hand on the right-hand wall literally for dear life, I trudged slowly on. Two miles to go, maybe, to the bottom of the shaft… but every step taking me nearer to safety.
Those lethal pockets of dynagel never did explode; or not while I was down the mine.
One minute I was taking another step into darkness. The next, I was blinded by light.
I shut my eyes, wincing against the brightness, and I stopped walking and leaned against the wall instead. When I opened my eyes again, the electric lights were blazing in all their glory, and the tunnel looked as solid, safe, and reassuringly painted, as it had done on the way in.
Weakened by relief, I shifted off the wall and went on again, with knees that were suddenly trembling, and a head that was back to aching like a hang-over.
There was a background hum now again in the mine, and from far away up the tunnel a separate noise detached itself and grew louder: the rattle of the wire cage trucks making the outward journey. Eventually it stopped and then there was the sound of several boots, and then finally, round a shallow curve, came four men in white overalls.
Hurrying.
They spotted me. and began to run. Slowed and stopped just before they reached me, with relief that I was mobile showing on their faces. Losenwoldt was one of them: I didn’t know the others.
‘Mr Lincoln… are you all right?’ one of them asked anxiously.
‘Sure,’ I said. It didn’t sound right. I said it again. ‘Sure.’ Much better.
‘How did you get left behind?’ Losenwoldt said reprovingly, shifting all possible blame from himself. Not that I would have allotted him any: he was just forestalling it.
I said, ‘I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance… I think I must have hit my head and knocked myself out, but I can’t actually remember how…’ I wrinkled my forehead. ‘So damned stupid of me.’
One of them said, ‘Where were you, exactly?’
‘In the stope,’ I said.
‘Good grief… You probably lifted your head too sharply… or maybe a piece of rock fell from the roof and caught you.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Another of them said, ‘If you were unconscious in the stope, however did you get back here?’
I told them about the stones. They didn’t say anything. Just looked at each other.
One of them walked round my back and after a moment said, ‘There’s some blood on your hair and down your neck, but it looks dry… I don’t think you’re still bleeding.’ He came round to my side. ‘Do you feel all right to walk to the trucks? We brought a stretcher… just in case.’
I smiled. ‘Guess I can walk.’
We walked. I asked, ‘How did you discover I was down here?’
One of them said ruefully, ‘Our system of checking everyone is out of the mine before blasting is supposed to be infallible. And so it is, as far as the miners are concerned. But visitors… you see, we don’t often have small groups of unofficial visitors, like today. Mr van Huren seldom invites anyone, and no one else is allowed to. Nearly all the visitors we have here are official tourist groups, of about twenty people, and the mine more or less stops while we show them round, but we only do that every six weeks or so. We don’t usually blast at all, on those days. Today, though, one of your party felt ill and went back before the others, and I think everyone took it for granted that you had gone with him. Tim Yates said when he last saw you, you were just about to return up the tunnel.’
‘Yes…’ I agreed. ‘I remember that.’
‘The other three visitors went up together, and the checkers accounted for every miner, so we assumed everyone was out, and were all set to detonate…’
A tall thin man took up the story. ‘Then one of the men who counts the numbers going up and down in the lift said that one more had gone down than had come up. The shift checkers said it was impossible, each group had been checked out by name. The lift man said he was sure. Well… that only left the visitors. So we checked them. The three in the changing room said you had
n’t changed yet, your clothes were still there, so you must be in the first-aid room with one called Conrad, who had not felt well.’
‘Conrad,’ I exclaimed. I had though they meant Evan. ‘What was wrong with him?’
‘I think they said he had an attack of asthma. Anyway, we went and asked him, and he said you hadn’t come up with him.’
‘Oh,’ I said blankly. Certainly, if I had been with him I would have gone up, but I hadn’t seen him at all after we had separated at the beginning of the reef.
We came to the trucks and climbed in. A lot of space with only five people instead of twelve.
‘The one who was ill,’ Losenwoldt stated virtuously, ‘the stout one with the droopy moustache, he was not with me. If he had been, of course I would have escorted him back to the trucks, and of course I would have known you were not with him.’
‘Of course,’ I said dryly.
We clattered back along the tunnel to the bottom of the shaft, and from there, after the exchange of signal buzzes, rose in the cage through three-quarters of a mile of rock up to the sunlight. Its brilliance was momentarily painful, and it was also cold enough to start me shivering.
‘Jacket,’ exclaimed one of my escorts. ‘We took down a blanket… should have put it round you.’ He hurried off into a small building by the shaft and came back with a much used tweed sports coat, which he held for me to put on.
There was an anxious looking reception committee hovering around: Evan, Roderick, Danilo, and van Huren himself.
‘My dear fellow,’ he said, peering at me as if to reassure himself that I was real. ‘What can I say?’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said, ‘it was my own fault and I’m terribly sorry to have caused all this fuss…’ Van Huren looked relieved and smiled, and so did Evan, Roderick and Danilo. I turned back to the three strangers who had come down for me: Losenwoldt had already gone. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’