Black Diamonds: A Novel

by Mór Jókai

The heavy, damp fog which lies upon each man's chest, and which fills the mine with its unwholesome smell, needs only a spark, and those who now live and move are dead men, buried underground, while overhead a hundred widows and orphans weep and clamor for their lost ones.

And yet, knowing this, the miners continue calmly to work, as if quite unconscious that the dread Angel of Death is hovering about them.

The man who has just entered is Ivan Behrend, the owner of the mine. He unites in himself the office of overseer, director, surveyor, and bookkeeper. He has enough to do; but we all know the proverb, and, if we have lived long enough, have tested its truth, "If you want a thing well done, do it yourself." Moreover, it is an encouragement to the worker if he sees his employer go shoulder to shoulder with him in the work. Therefore, as we have just seen, the master greets all his workmen with the words, "Bad Weather is coming," and they all know that the master does not consider his life of more value than theirs; he does not fly and leave them all the danger, because he is the owner and gets all the profit. Quietly, with the most perfect composure, he gives his orders—the ventilators are to be opened—a charge of cool air at once to the heated coal; and the workers are to go off work after three instead of six hours. He gets into the pail, covered with buffalo-skin, and lets himself down to the bottom of the shaft, to see if the new openings are dangerous. He turns over carefully with an iron bar the coal-dust, to try if any of it is heated, or if gas is there concealed which might cause an explosion. Then, as the ventilators below and the air-pump above begin to work, he takes his place at the anometer. This is a tender little machine, something like the humming-top of children. Its axle turns upon a ruby, and the spring sets a wheel with a hundred teeth in motion; the velocity of this wheel shows the strength of the current of air in the shaft. It should neither be stronger nor weaker than the motion of the "bad weather."

He has now seen to everything; he has taken every precaution, he has left nothing to chance, and, when all the miners have quitted the pit, he is the last to ascend in the basket to the fresh air and the daylight.

Fresh air—daylight!

In Bondavara the sun never shines, the shadow of the smoke hangs like a thick cloud over the land; it is a black country, painted in chalk. The roads are black with coal-tracks; the houses are black from the coal-dust, which the wind carries here and there from the large coal warehouses; the men and the women are black. It is a wonder the birds over there in the woods are not black also.

The mouth of the Bondavara pit is on the slope of a hill, which, when you ascend it, gives you a fine view over the whole country. On the other side, in the valley, are the tall chimneys of the distilling-ovens. These chimneys are busy night and day, vomiting forth smoke, sometimes white, but generally coal-black; for here is distilled the sulphur which forms a component of the coal.

The metal can only be melted when in this condition. One of the principal customers of the coal-mine is the iron-foundry on the neighboring mountain, which has five chimneys from which the smoke issues. If the hammer throws up white smoke, then the oven distils black smoke, and so contrariwise. Both factories working together cast over the valley a continuous veil of cloud and smoke, through which even the beams of the sun look brown and dingy.

From the foundry flows a rusty-red stream, and out of the coal-mine another, which is as black as ink. In the valley both these streams unite and continue their course together. For a little the rusty-red tries to get the better of the inky-black, but it has to give up, and the black rivulet flows on triumphantly through the black meadow lands.

It is a most depressing landscape, and it is saddening to reflect that in such a place men have grown from childhood to middle age, from middle age to old age, and have never seen the green fields or the blue sky of God's heaven.