Fall of Giants

“Well, if I was a sissy I wouldn’t be a collier, now, would I?” His words were brave, but all the same he was scared. The shaft ladder was seldom used, and it might not have been well-maintained. One slip, or a broken rung, could cause him to fall to his death.

Dai opened the gate with a clang. The shaft was lined with brick, damp and moldy. A narrow shelf ran horizontally around the lining, outside the wooden cage housing. An iron ladder was fixed by brackets cemented into the brickwork. There was nothing reassuring about its thin side rails and narrow treads. Billy hesitated, regretting his impulsive bravado. But to back out now would be too humiliating. He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer, then stepped onto the shelf.

He edged around until he reached the ladder. He wiped his hands on his trousers, grasped the side rails, and put his feet on the treads.

He went down. The iron was rough to his touch, and rust flaked off on his hands. In places the brackets were loose, and the ladder shifted unnervingly under his feet. The lamp hooked to his belt was bright enough to illuminate the treads below him, but not to show the bottom of the shaft. He did not know whether that was better or worse.

Unfortunately, the descent gave him time to think. He remembered all the ways miners could die. To be killed by the explosion itself was a mercifully quick end for the luckiest. The burning of the methane produced suffocating carbon dioxide, which the miners called afterdamp. Many were trapped by falls of rock, and might bleed to death before rescue came. Some died of thirst, with their workmates just a few yards away trying desperately to tunnel through the debris.

Suddenly he wanted to go back, to climb upward to safety instead of down into destruction and chaos-but he could not, with Tommy immediately above him, following him down.

“Are you with me, Tommy?” he called.

Tommy’s voice came from just above his head. “Aye!”

That strengthened Billy’s nerve. He went down faster, his confidence returning. Soon he saw light, and a moment later he heard voices. As he approached the Main Level he smelled smoke.

Now he heard an eerie racket, screaming and banging, which he struggled to identify. It threatened to undermine his courage. He got a grip on himself: there had to be a rational explanation. A moment later he realized he was hearing the terrified whinnying of the ponies, and the sound of them kicking the wooden sides of their stalls, desperate to escape. Comprehension did not make the noise less disturbing: he felt the same way they did.

He reached the Main Level, sidled around the brick ledge, opened the gate from inside, and stepped gratefully onto muddy ground. The dim underground light was further reduced by traces of smoke, but he could see the main tunnels.

The pit bottom onsetter was Patrick O’Connor, a middle-aged man who had lost a hand in a roof collapse. A Catholic, he was inevitably known as Pat Pope. He stared with incredulity. “Billy-with-Jesus!” he said. “Where the bloody hell have you come from?”

“From the Four-Foot Coal,” Billy answered. “We heard the bang.”

Tommy followed Billy out of the shaft and said: “What’s happened, Pat?”

“Far as I can make out, the explosion must have been at the other end of this level, near Thisbe,” said Pat. “The deputy and everyone else have gone to see.” He spoke calmly, but there was desperation in his look.

Billy went to the phone and turned the handle. A moment later he heard his father’s voice. “Williams here, who’s that?”

Billy did not pause to wonder why a union official was answering the colliery manager’s phone-anything could happen in an emergency. “Da, it’s me, Billy.”

“God in his mercy be thanked, you’re all right,” said his father, with a break in his voice; then he became his usual brisk self. “Tell me what you know, boy.”

“Me and Tommy were in the Four-Foot Coal. We’ve climbed down Pyramus to the Main Level. The explosion was over towards Thisbe, we think. There’s a bit of smoke, not much. But the cage isn’t working.”

“The winding mechanism have been damaged by the upward blast,” Pa said in a calm voice. “But we’re working on it and we’ll have it fixed in a few minutes. Get as many men as you can to the pit bottom so we can start bringing them up as soon as the cage is fixed.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“The Thisbe shaft is completely out of action, so make sure no one tries to escape that way-they could get trapped by the fire.”

“Right.”

“There’s breathing apparatus outside the deputies’ office.”

Billy knew that. It was a recent innovation, demanded by the union and made compulsory by the Coal Mines Act of 1911. “The air’s not bad at the moment,” he said.

“Where you are, perhaps, but it may be worse farther in.”

“Right.” Billy put the earpiece back on the hook.

He repeated to Tommy and Pat what his father had said. Pat pointed to a row of new lockers. “The key should be in the office.”