Now the wheel begins to move again. Doctors hurry to the door of the cage—lint, bandages, stretchers, evil and glittering instruments that kill pain with pain, all the ghastly paraphernalia of Death. They are coming up!... They are coming up!... A silence, so swift and sudden, that it is as if the great multitude had whispered "Hush," the tinkle of the bell marking the stages of the ascent is clearly heard by people waiting on the bank. The cage appears.... The men stagger out, one by one, helmets removed, their faces grimed and sweaty, their eyes white and staring out of the black grotesquery of their faces, their lips taut and silent.
And one of them carries a cage in his hand, a cage with an empty perch, and a smother of wet and draggled feathers huddled into one corner. A world without the song of a bird—no hope! ... no hope.
"I shall have to dash back to Wigan now, and get my stuff on the wires," said Wratten. "Will you wait here and I'll come and relieve you. Pick up any stuff you can. Facts." Humphrey wandered about the dismal pit-mouth—sometimes he was challenged by the police, and ordered to keep within a certain area. He found a cluster of reporters by a lighted lamp. One of them had received an official communication from the mine-manager, and he was giving it to his colleagues. Humphrey took it down in his note-book. Then there was another flutter. A piece of flimsy paper was fixed to a board outside the lamp-house. A message from the King.
Now, the wires were humming with words, thousands upon thousands of words sent by the writers to all the cities of the kingdom. And in all the offices the large square sheets of the press telegraph-forms were being delivered. Humphrey saw the picture of The Day office: Selsey sitting at the top of the table, the boy handing him the pile of news from Wigan, a sub-editor cutting it down, here and there—always cutting down. Perhaps, you see, some great politician was making a speech at the Albert Hall, and space was needed for three columns, with a large introduction.
It was nine o'clock. Another rescue party had gone down. The women still waited, their faces yellow now in the flare of lamps. It seemed to Humphrey that he had left London centuries ago ... that he had never met Lilian at all. It was as if that morning his life had been uprooted, and it would have to be planted again before it could absorb the old interests and influences.... He was hungry and cold. There was no chance of getting food. If he were a miner, or had any real part in this game, the Salvation Army would have given him tea and bread ... but he was a reporter, an onlooker, supposed to be watching everything, and, in a sense, physically invisible.
A car panted up.... It was Wratten. "Here I am, Quain. Anything happened? Official communication. Oh yes, and the King's telegram. Better send them off. Hop into the car and then send it back for me. I'll wait."
"Wait?" Humphrey said. "What about food?"
"I've got some sandwiches. I'll wait here until two. Never know what will happen. Rescuer might get killed. It's happened before. Fellow might be brought up alive."
"But it's going to rain like blazes."