The Lords of High Decision

by Meredith Nicholson

“I’ll get ’em out!” cried Joe. “Give me that lamp.”

He exchanged caps with a man who had a safety lamp and ran up the gangway. He began to realize that the alarm was not without reason. He paused once and sniffed the air, and held his lamp to the coal wall in various places, without finding traces of gas: but the evidences of squeeze became more and more apparent as he penetrated farther into the workings. He had volunteered to get the men out of the new gangway, and he was now intent upon fulfilling this promise. The conditions were serious, but the overchanging strata might adjust themselves without a general collapse; or even if the catastrophe were inevitable it might not come for days or weeks.

He had reached a region whose lines were strange to him, and the cracking and splintering were more prevalent; but the flow of air was good and he kept on. He saw faint lights ahead, the lamps of the men he sought; they had taken warning of their own senses and were retreating toward the shaft.

“We left a man back there—a fall of slate caught him,” shouted one.

“Don’t leave him in there. There’s plenty of time,” Joe yelled; but they scampered by, huddled together in their fear.

He crowded into the opening of the new gangway and peered about. In a moment he heard the moans of the injured man and crawled to where he lay. His body was half covered by débris, and hearing Joe he cried out in a strange tongue for help. A great slab of slate lay across his back, and this Joe proceeded to lift by the aid of a crowbar. The sounds of the straining of the crust grew less ominous for a time, and as Joe strove to free the prisoner he had no fear of being unable to escape. So long as the gangway was not blocked by falling rock and the air supply continued good, it would be merely a matter of time to reach the shaft and safety.

Perhaps ten minutes passed before he had moved the heavy slate, but when the miner was quite free he could not rise, and when Joe had lifted him to his feet his legs seemed paralyzed. He was an old man—a Pole—who begged Joe in his meagre English not to leave him.

“You can’t walk, partner; I guess you got to ride out,” said Joe. He got down on his knees and drew the crippled miner across his back, supporting him by the legs, and crawled out into the main gangway. It was as dark as pitch, and the oppressive silence continued; there was in it now something unearthly that struck Joe ominously, but he hurried with his burden down the long tunnel. He could stand nearly upright, but the tramway was rough and covered with particles of coal, and his progress was slow. He was aware that the clasp of the injured man’s arms on his shoulders relaxed suddenly, and as, with the loss of his hold his body slipped back, Joe laid him down in the tramway and held the lamp to his face. The man was quite dead.

Satisfied of this, Joe sprang to his feet and on the instant the walls of the earth about him shook with a mighty commotion. Just behind him the tunnel shut with a sharp snap as of a monster’s jaws, and the expelled air swept by him like a hurricane, knocking him down, and he lay very still, with his face to the ground, expecting an inflow of gas or an explosion. He judged from the sound that the collapse had occurred some distance behind him, and as he lay coughing in the dust he heard the thunder and rumble of other convulsions of the earth at more remote points. The driving blast of air had extinguished his lamp but he thrust out his hands and found himself quite free. He had lost his sense of direction, but crawled along the tramway to the body of the dead miner and got his bearings and again started toward the shaft. He had gone about forty yards when he began stumbling upon débris; in ten yards more a wall of rock and slate rose before him.

He missed, now, the current of sweet air that had seemed to continue after the first shock, and he suddenly felt the bite of the dread gas in his nostrils. He threw himself flat and waited, his face pressed against his coat-sleeve. Waves of the foul air poured in upon him from all sides of the black, narrow chamber that imprisoned him. He staggered to his feet and beat with his hands on the grim barricade. His ears rang with a horrible fierce clamour; before his eyes in the dense dark flashed lights in weird, fantastic and unimaginable colours.