The workers made him no answer. First, because they could not take up their time talking, and, secondly, because every man's mouth was covered. The clearing of a mine is very silent work.
But in the midst of his curses Rauné encountered one workman, who placed himself in front of him and confronted him with a steady look. This man was covered with mud and coal like the other laborers, his face was tied up with a cloth, and only the eyes were visible; they, too, were blackened with coal-dust, but Rauné knew by their expression that it was Ivan. No one who had ever looked into his eyes could forget him.
Rauné turned away without another word, and, in company with his engineer, left the pit. He interfered no further with Ivan's work.
Four days and four nights the men never ceased working. They triumphed over every obstacle and cut a pathway through every difficulty. During those four days Ivan never for one hour left the mine. He ate his meals sitting on a stone, and snatched an hour's sleep in some corner.
On the fourth day the workmen came upon one of the missing men. A man—no, but a mass, flattened against the wall, of flesh and bones, which had once been a man.
Some feet farther on there lay another body on the ground, but the head was nowhere to be seen. They tried to get him on one of the wheelbarrows which were for drawing coal, but he was all in fragments; splinters and shreds of that human body were sticking to everything.
Then they came upon the charred, blackened corpses of the men who had been burned. They were not recognizable.
Farther on there was a group of fifteen men crushed by a huge weight of slate stratum. This could not be moved, so they were left. It was more necessary to look after the living than the dead. Everywhere they found corpses; still the number of the missing was not complete.
The miners employed by the company told Ivan that if any of the men were still living they would be found at the resting-stage, where they left their coats before they began to work and fetched them again as they went up. In the passages, however, there had been such a total upset that the oldest hand could not find his way. In many places the explosion had torn down the partition wall, in other places the entrance was stopped up with rubbish, or the roof taken off some of the passages which led into the inner vaults. It was all in such utter confusion that no one could find out where the large vault lay.
At last it struck Ivan that underneath a mass of coal and slack he heard a faint, whimpering sound. He said to the men, "Dig this spot."