Authors: Wilbur Smith
Suddenly the only sound in the open diggings was the rustle of the falling rain and the shrieks of the dangling mule. On the cart Ralph stood poised like a Greek statue of an athlete, the whip
stock thrown back, the cords in his throat relaxing, the insane rage in his green eyes clearing to leave a bemused expression of disbelief; for beneath his feet the earth was moving.
‘Ralph!’ This time Zouga’s voice reached him clearly, and he looked down into the pit, saw their faces, the shock, the terror upon them.
‘Run!’ shouted Zouga, and the urgency galvanized Ralph. ‘Get off the roadway.’
Ralph threw the whip aside and jumped down off the cart. The sheath knife in his hand again.
The rein that held Bishop, the big grey mule, was stretched tight as an iron bar. It parted cleanly to the touch of the blade and the mule dropped free, twisting in the air so that the men below
scattered away, and the heavy body smacked into the mud. Then the beast scrambled to its feet and stood trembling miserably, belly deep in the yellow mud that had saved it.
The earth trembled like jelly under Ralph’s feet as he hacked at the traces that held the other three mules and the moment they were free of the trapped cart he drove them ahead of him
along the causeway, yelling them into a gallop. The yellow mud shook and tilted as the cracks yawned open, and the entire causeway began to sag.
‘Run, you bloody fool,’ Ralph panted at the man he had been fighting, as he stood in the rain and looked about him, the tattered oilskins dangling about his legs, his expression
bewildered.
‘Come on, run,’ and Ralph grabbed his arm and dragged him after the galloping mule team.
One after another the gantries that lined the roadway, some of them with the huge buckets still hanging from the sheaves, began to topple over into the pit, the timber crackling and twisting,
the ropes tangling and snapping like strands of cotton.
Ahead of Ralph the three yoked mules reached firm ground and galloped away, whisking their tails and kicking out skittishly at relief from their burden.
The causeway tilted and sagged, so that suddenly Ralph seemed to be running up a steep hill. The driver beside him missed his footing and went down on his knees, and then as he started to slide
backwards he threw himself face down and spread his arm as though to hug the earth.
‘Get up.’ Ralph checked his own run, and stood over him.
Behind them the earth growled like a voracious animal, moving gravel grinding upon itself; and there were still fourteen carts out on the collapsing causeway. Half a dozen of the drivers had
abandoned their teams and were running back along the trembling, sagging roadway, but they had left it too late. They stopped in a little group. Some of them fell flat and clung to the earth. One
turned and leapt boldly from the edge into the gaping pit.
He plunged into the mud, and three black workers seized him and dragged him to safety, a broken leg twisting and slithering over the mud behind him.
One of the laden carts, with four mules in the traces, toppled over and, as it hit the bottom of the diggings, the weight of gravel shattered it to ragged splinters of raw white wood, and a
shaggy black mule impaled on the disselboom screamed with shockingly human agony and kicked wildly, tearing out its own entrails from the gaping wound in its flank.
Ralph stooped and dragged the driver to his feet, pulling him up the steepening incline, but the man was semi-paralysed by terror and hampered by the flapping tails of his heavy oilskins.
The centre of the roadway cracked through abruptly and a hundred feet of it collapsed sideways with a swift rumbling rush, hurling carts and animals into the pit as though from some gigantic
catapult.
Ralph glanced once over his shoulder at the terrifying carnage and saw that the whole roadway was going, starting from that centre point and running swiftly towards him, a breaking wave of soft
yellow earth seeming to be of some thick and viscid fluid, breaking with that grinding whisper.
‘Come on,’ Ralph grunted at the man on his arm, and suddenly the earth beneath their feet lunged the other way, throwing them forward towards the rim of the pit – and
safety.
They went forward with a rush, the driver clutching at Ralph’s shoulder for support. A dozen paces to go to firm ground, and Ralph did not look back again. The hideous sounds from the pit
were unnerving, and he sensed that another glimpse of that onrushing wave of collapsing earth might paralyse his own legs.
‘Come on,’ he gasped. ‘We’ll make it – almost there. Come on!’ And as he said it the earth opened in front of their feet as though from a giant’s axe
stroke. It opened with a smacking sound, as of kissing lips, and the mouth of it was sheer, eighty feet deep and three feet across, but in the brief seconds that they tottered on the edge it gaped
wider, six feet, eight feet, and the causeway tilted sideways – the final convulsion.
‘Jump!’ said Ralph. ‘Jump for it, man.’ And he shoved the driver at it, forcing him at that frightful crack that seemed to split the earth to its very core.
The man stumbled off balance, his arms waving wildly for control, and then he made a clumsy scrambling leap out over the drop. The torn oilskins tangled with his limbs and fluttered about his
head. He hit the far lip of the crack with his chest, his legs hanging into the drop and kicking hopelessly, and clawed at the muddy lip. But there was no purchase and inexorably he began to slide
backwards.
Ralph knew there was no chance of making a run-up to the jump. He had to take it from a standstill, and it was gaping wider with every second, ten feet or more now – and the quivering bank
of collapsing earth was an unstable platform.
He sank on one knee, steadied himself with a clenched fist against the earth, and then straightened his legs and body in a sudden burst of energy like a released coilspring, jumping high because
the causeway had already sagged below the level of the rim.
The power of that leap surprised even Ralph; he cleared the driver’s wriggling body and landed deep, on firm and rock-steady ground, stumbled with his own forward impetus and then ran on
half a dozen paces.
Behind him the driver wailed and slid back a few inches, and around his spread fingers opened a mesh of smaller cracks, running parallel to the gaping sheer line. Ralph spun and ran back. He
threw himself flat and reached for the driver’s wrist. It was greasy with mud, slippery as a freshly netted trout, and he knew he could not hold him for long.
Over the driver’s head Ralph stared down into the diggings. He watched the final collapse of the causeway, a massive rush of earth, some of it liquid mud, mixed with huge chunks of
compacted gravel that ground together like the jaws of some mindless monster, crushing and smothering men and animals between them.
The entire No. 6 Roadway was gone, and across the floor of the pit, deep dark cracks spread out like a grotesque spider’s web.
In the bottom of the diggings the figures of men seemed frail and insectlike, their cries feeble and without consequence, their pathetic scurrying without purpose.
Ralph suddenly recognized his father. He alone was standing firm, his head thrown back, and even across that dizzy space Ralph could feel the strength of his gaze.
‘Hold on, boy!’ Zouga’s voice carried faintly above the pandemonium. ‘They’re coming. Hold on!’
But under Ralph’s belly the earth whispered and shrugged impatiently and the driver’s weight pulled him another inch towards the drop.
‘Hold on, Ralph!’
Across that aching breathless space Zouga was reaching out with both hands, a gesture that was more eloquent than any words – a gesture of suffering and helpless love.
Then suddenly Ralph felt rough hands seize the ankles of his muddy boots, the shouts of many men behind him, the rasp of a hairy manila rope against his cheek, the noose dangling in front of his
face – and with a huge surge of relief he saw the dangling driver thrust his free arm through the noose and saw it drawn tight.
Ralph could let the muddy wrist slip from his grip, and he crawled back from the edge.
He looked down at his father. It was too far for either of them to see the expression on each other’s face.
For a moment longer Zouga stared up at him. Then he turned away abruptly, his stride businesslike, his gestures imperative as he ordered his Matabele forward to the rescue work.
T
he rescue went on all that day. For once every digger on New Rush was united by a common purpose.
The Diggers’ Committee closed the workings and ordered every man out of the unaffected areas. The five other roadways that had not collapsed were declared out of bounds to all traffic and
they stood high and menacing in the silver clouds of drifting rain.
On the churned and collapsed remnants of No. 6 Roadway the rescuers swarmed. These were the men who had been trapped on the floor by the severed ladderworks and the fallen system of
gantries.
There were no members of the Committee in the No. 6 area, and Zouga Ballantyne with his natural air of authority was quickly accepted as the leader. He had marked the position of the gravel
carts and drivers on the roadway at the moment of the cave-in, and he split the available men into gangs and set them to digging where he guessed men and vehicles were buried. They attacked the
treacherous shapeless mass of earth with a passion which was a mixture of hatred and stale fear, an expression of their own relief at having escaped that smothering, entombing yellow cascade.
For the first hour they dug men out alive, some miraculously protected by an overturned cart or the body of a dead mule. One of these survivors rose shakily to his feet unaided when the earth
was shovelled away, and the rescuers cheered him with a kind of wild hysteria.
Three mules had survived the drop (one of these was Zouga’s old grey Bishop) but others were fearfully mutilated by the wrecked carts. Someone lowered a pistol and a packet of cartridges
from the ground level and Zouga slipped and slid from one team to the other and shot the unfortunate beasts as they lay screaming and kicking in the mud.
While this was going on there were teams of men busy above them at ground level. Under the direction of the Diggers’ Committee they were rigging rope ladders and a makeshift gantry to
bring up the dead and the injured. By noon that day they could begin taking the injured out, strapped to six-by-three timber boards and hoisted on the new gantry, swaying up the high wall of the
pit.
Then they began to find the dead men.
The last of the missing men was locked like a foetus into the cold muddy womb of the earth. Zouga and Bazo stooped shoulder to shoulder into the mouth of the excavation, seized the limp wrist
that protruded from the bank and, straining together, freed the corpse. It came out in a rush of slippery mud, like the moment of birth, but the man’s limbs were convulsed in rigor mortis and
his eye sockets packed with mud. Other hands lifted the corpse and carried it away, and Zouga flexed his back and groaned. Cold and weariness had tied knots in his muscles.
‘We are not finished yet,’ he said, and the young Matabele nodded.
‘What is there still to do?’ he asked simply, and Zouga felt a rush of gratitude and affection towards him. He placed his hand on Bazo’s shoulder and for a moment they
considered each other gravely, then Bazo asked again, ‘What must be done?’
‘The roadway is gone. There will be no work on these claims – not for a long time,’ Zouga explained, his voice dulled and his hand dropping wearily from Bazo’s shoulder.
‘If we leave any tools or equipment down here, they will be stolen.’
They had lost the gravel cart, the hoist with its iron sheave wheels and valuable rope, and the gravel buckets.
Zouga sighed, and the fatigue swept over him like a cold dark wave. There was no money to replace those essentials. ‘We must save what we can from the vultures.’
Bazo called to his men in their own language and led them along the shapeless bank of broken earth from which protruded shattered pieces of equipment and tangles of sodden rope, to the deserted
Devil’s Own claims.
The fallen roadway had buried the eastern corner of No. 142, but the rest of the claims were clear. However, a pressure crack had opened in a deep zigzag across the floor and some of
Zouga’s equipment had fallen into it and lay half submerged in muddy water.
Bazo clambered down into the fissure and groped for the mess of rope and tools, passing it up to the Matabele on the bank above his head. Here Zouga supervised them as they tied the tools into
bundles and then staggered away with them to the high eastern bank, there to wait their turn for the single functioning gantry to hoist the bundles out to ground level.
As they worked the last pale rays of the sun pierced the mass of low cloud and struck down into the huge manmade pit.
In the bottom of the fissure Bazo found the last missing pick, passed it up, and then leaned against the bank to rest for a few moments. He felt that he no longer had the strength to climb out
of the deep crack. The cold had numbed his legs and softened his skin until it was wrinkled and water-logged like that of a drowned man. He shivered and laid his forehead on his arm, bracing
himself against the bank of yellow earth. He felt that if he closed his eyes he would fall asleep on his feet.
He kept them open with an effort, and stared at the earth in front of his face. A trickle of rainwater was still running down from the level above his head; it had cut a narrow runnel a few
inches wide and deep. Most of the mud had settled out of this little streamlet, and it was almost clear, only slightly milked with colour.
At one point in its trickle down the mud wall it had encountered an obstacle, and was pouring over it, forming a little plume of running water.
Suddenly Bazo was thirsty. His throat was rough and dry. He leaned forward, and let the trickle flow over his lips and tongue, and then slurped a mouthful.
The watery sun touched the bank, and a strange brilliant light flared inches from Bazo’s face. It came pouring up, powerful and pure and dancing white, from the tiny freshet from which he
was drinking.