Power Of The Sword Part 31

You are beautiful now, kaffir. The black maids will love to kiss that mouth. He turned and addressed the silent ranks of black men. 'If any of you want to be beautiful also, just let me know. I will do it for free. just before dark the boss-boys came back to collect the empty dishes.

Tomorrow night you will be at Goldi, one of them told Hendrick. 'There is a white doctor there who will treat your wounds. There was a hint of sympathy in his impa.s.sive black face. It was not wise of you to anger Tshayela, the striker. You have learned a hard lesson, friend. Remember it well, all of you. He locked the door as he left the coach.

Hendrick gazed out of the window at the sunset. In four days of travel the landscape had changed entirely as they had climbed up onto the plateau of the highveld. The gra.s.slands were pale brown, seared by the black frosts of winter, the red earth gouged open with dongas of erosion and divided into geometrical camps with barbed-wire. The isolated homesteads seemed forlorn upon the open veld with the steel-framed windmills standing like gaunt sentinels over them, and the lean cattle were long horned and parti-coloured, red and black and white.

Hendrick, who had lived his life in the unpeopled wilderness, found the fences cramping and restrictive. In this place you could never be out of sight of other men or their works, and the villages they pa.s.sed were as sprawling and populous as Windhoek, the biggest town he had ever conceived of.

Wait until you see Goldi,Moses told him, as the darkness fell outside and the men around them settled down for the night, wrapping their blankets over their heads for the chill of the highveld blew in through the open windows.

Hendrick waited until the white overseer made his first round of the coaches, and when he shone the beam of his lantern into Hendrick's face made no attempt to feign sleep but blinked up at him blindly. The overseer pa.s.sed on, locking the door as he left the coach.

Hendrick rose quietly in the seat. Opposite him Moses stirred in the darkness but did not speak, and Hendrick went down the aisle and locked himself in the latrine. Quickly he loosened the screws and worked the frame off its seating.

He set it against the bulkhead and leaned out of the window.

The cold night air buffeted his head, and he slitted his eyes against the hot s.m.u.ts that blew back from the coal-burning locomotive and stung his cheeks and forehead as he reached up and found his handholds on the ridge of the coaming.

He drew himself upwards smoothly, and then with a kick and a heave, flung the top half of his body over the edge of the roof and shot out one arm. He found a grip on the ventilator in the middle of the curved roof and pulled himself the rest of the way on his belly.

He lay for a while panting and with his eyes tightly closed until he got control of the pounding ache in his head. Then he raised himself to his knees and began crawling forward towards the leading edge of the roof.

The night sky was clear; the land was silver with starlight and blue with shadow, and the wind roared about his head.

He rose to his feet and balanced against the lurch and sway of the coach. With his feet wide apart and his knees bent he moved forward. A premonition of danger made him look up and he saw the dark shape rush at him out of the darkness and he threw himself flat just as the steel arm of one of the railway water towers flashed over his head. A second later it would have decapitated him, and he s.h.i.+vered with the cold and the shock of near death. After a minute he gathered himself and crawled forward again, not raising his head more than a few inches until he reached the front edge of the roof.

He lay spreadeagled on his belly and cautiously peered over the edge. The balconies of the joining coaches were below him, the gap between the roof about the span of one of his arms. Directly under him the footplates articulated against each other as the train clattered through the curves of the line. Anybody moving from one coach to the next must pa.s.s below where Hendrick lay and he grunted with satisfaction and looked behind him.

One of the ventilator pots was just level with his feet as he lay outstretched. He crawled back, drawing the heavy leather belt from the top of his breeches, and buckled it around the ventilator, forming a loop into which he thrust one of his feet as far as the ankle.

Once again he stretched out on the roof, one foot securely anch.o.r.ed by the loop, and he reached down into the s.p.a.ce between the coaches. He could just touch the banisters of the guard fence around the balcony. Electric bulbs in wire cages were fixed to the overhang of the balconies so the area below him was well lit.

He drew back and lay flat on the roof, only the top of his head and his eyes showing from below. But he knew that the lights would dazzle anybody who looked upwards into the gap between the roofs and he settled down to wait like a leopard in the tree over the water hole.

An hour pa.s.sed and then another, but he judged the pa.s.sage of time only by the slow rotation of the stars across the night sky. He was stiff and freezing cold as the wind thrashed his unprotected body, but he bore it stoically, never allowing himself to doze or lose concentration. Waiting was always a major part of the hunt, of the game of death, and he had played this game a hundred times before.

Suddenly, even over the rush of the train's pa.s.sage and the rhythm of the cross ties, he heard the click of steel on steel and the rattle of keys in the lock of the door below him, and he gathered himself.

The man would step over the footplates as quickly as he could, not wanting to be in that vulnerable and exposed position for a moment longer than was necessary to make the crossing, and Hendrick would have to be quicker still.

He heard the sliding door slam back against the jamb and the lock turn again, then an instant later the crown of the white overseer's hat appeared below him.

Instantly Hendrick shot his body forward and dropped as far as his waist into the gap between the coaches. Only the leather belt around his ankle anch.o.r.ed him. Lothar had taught him the double lock, and he whipped one arm around the white man's neck, and braced his other hand in the crook of his own elbow, catching the man's head in the vice of his arms, and jerked him off his feet.

The white man made a strangled cawing sound and droplets of spittle flew from his lips, sparkling in the electric light as Hendrick drew him upwards as though he were hoisted on the gallows tree.

The white man's hat fell from his head and flitted away into the night like a black bat, and he was kicking and twisting his body violently, clawing at the thick muscled arms that were locked around his neck, his long blond hair fluttering and tumbling in the night wind. Hendrick lifted him until their eyes were inches apart, and he smiled into his face, exposing the mangled black pit of his own mouth, his shattered front teeth still stained with clotted blood, and in the reflection of the balcony lights the white man recognized him. Hendrick saw the recognition flare in his pale dilated eyes.

Yes, my friend, he whispered. It is me, the kaffir. He drew the man up another inch and wedged the back of his neck against the edge of the roof. Then very deliberately he put pressure on his spine at the base of his skull. The white man writhed and struggled like a fish on the barbs of the harpoon, but Hendrick held him easily, staring deep into his eyes, and bent his neck backwards, lifting with his forearm under the chin.

Hendrick felt the spine loading and locking at the pressure.

it could give no more, and for a second longer he held him at the breaking point. Then with a jerk he pushed the man's chin up another inch and the spine snapped like a dry branch. The white man danced in the air, twitching and shuddering, and Hendrick watched the pale blue eyes glaze over, becoming opaque and lifeless, and over the rush of the wind he heard the soft spluttering release as his sphincter muscle relaxed and his bowels involuntarily voided.

Hendrick swung his dangling corpse like a pendulum and as it cleared the balcony rail he let it drop into the gap between the coaches, directly into the track of the racing wheels. It was sucked away by the spinning steel like a sc.r.a.p of meat into the blades of a mincing machine.

He lay for a moment recovering his breath. He knew that the overseer's mutilated corpse would be smeared over half a mile of the railway tracks.

He untied his belt from the ventilator and buckled it around his waist, then he crawled back along the roof of the coach until he was directly above the latrine window. He lowered his feet over the sill and with a twist dropped into the cubicle. He replaced the mesh frame over the window and tightened the screws. He went back down the coach to his seat, and Moses Gama was watching him as he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. He nodded at his brother and pulled the corner of the blanket over his head. Within minutes he was asleep.

He was awakened by the shouts of the boss-boys and the jolting of the coach as it was shunted off the main line. He saw the name of the small village where they had stopped painted on a white board on the platform: Vryburg', but it meant nothing to him.

Soon the platform and the coaches were invaded by blue uniformed railway police, and all the recruits were ordered out onto the platform. They lined up, s.h.i.+vering and sleepy under the floodlights, answered to the roll-call. Everyone was present.

Hendrick nudged his brother and with his chin pointed at the wheels and bogey below their coach. The hubs and axles were splattered with blood and tiny slivers and particles of raw red flesh and tissue.

All the following day the coaches stood in the siding while the police individually subjected each of the recruits to a hectoring interrogation in the station master's office. By mid-afternoon it was obvious that they were coming to accept that the overseer's death was accidental and were losing interest in the investigation. The evidence of the locked doors and barred windows was convincing and the testimony of the boss-boys and every one of the recruits was unanimous and unshakable.

in the late afternoon they were loaded back into the coaches and they rumbled on into the night, towards the fabulous Ridge of White Waters.

Hendrick woke to the excited chatter of the men around him, and when he shouldered his way to the crowded window the first thing he saw was a high mountain, so big that it blocked the sky to the north, a strange and wonderful mountain, glowing with a pearly yellow light in the early sun, a mountain with a perfectly flat top and symmetrical sloping sides.

What kind of mountain is this? Hendrick marvelled.

A mountain taken from the belly of the earth, Moses told him. 'That is a mine dump, my brother, a mountain built by men from the rocks they dig up from below. Wherever Hendrick looked there were these flat-topped s.h.i.+ning dumps scattered across the undulating gra.s.sland or standing along the skyline and near each of them stood tall giraffes of steel, long-necked and skeletal with giant wheels for heads, that spun endlessly against the pale highveld sky.

Headgears, Moses told him. Below each of those is a hole that reaches down into the guts of the world, into the rock bowels that hold the yellow Gold! for which the white men sweat and lie and cheat, and often kill. As the train ran on they saw wonder followed by wonder, taller buildings than they had ever believed possible, roads that ran like rivers of steel with growling vehicles, tall chimneys that filled the sky with black thunderclouds, and mult.i.tudes upon mult.i.tudes, human beings more numerous than the springbok migrations of the Kalahari, black men in silver helmets and knee-high rubber boots, regiments of them, marching towards the tall headgears or, as the s.h.i.+fts changed, wearily swarming back from the shafts splashed from head to foot with yellow mud. There were white men on the streets and platforms, white women in gaily coloured dresses with remote disdainful expressions, human beings in the windows of the buildings which crowded wall to red brick wall right to the verge of the railway tracks. It was too much, too huge and diffuse for them to a.s.similate at one time and they gaped and exclaimed and pressed to the windows of the coach.

Where are the women? Hendrick asked suddenly, and Moses smiled.

Which women, brother? The black women, the women of our tribe? 'There are no women here, not the type of women you know. There are only the Isifebi, and they do it for gold.

Everything here is for gold. Once again they were shunted off the main line into a fenced enclosure in which the long white barrack buildings stood in endless rows and the signboard above the gates read: WIt.w.a.tERSRAND NATIVE LABOUR a.s.sOCIATION CENTRAL RAND INDUCTION CENTRE From the coaches they were led to a long shed by a couple of grinning boss-boys and instructed to strip to the buff.

The lines of naked black men shuffled forward under the paternal eyes of the boss-boys, who treated them in a friendly jocular fas.h.i.+on.

Some of you have brought your livestock with you, they joked. 'Goats on your scalp, and cattle in your pubic hairs, and dipping the paint brushes they wielded into buckets of blueb.u.t.ter ointment, they plastered the heads and crotches of the recruits.

Rub it in, they ordered. We don't want your lice and crabs and itchy crawlies. And the recruits entered into the spirit of the occasion and roared with laughter as they smeared each other with the sticky b.u.t.ter.

At the end of the shed they were each handed a small square of blue mottled carbolic soap.

Your mothers may think you smell like the mimosa in flower, but even the goats shudder when you pa.s.s upwind. The boss-boys laughed and shoved them under the hot showers.

The doctors were waiting for them when they emerged, scrubbed and still naked, and this time the medical examinations were exhaustive. Their chests were sounded and all their bodily apertures probed and scrutinized.

"What happened to your mouth, and your head? one doctor demanded of Hendrick. No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. He had seen injuries like these before. Those b.l.o.o.d.y animals in charge of the trains. All, right, we will send you to the dentist to have those stumps pulled, too late to st.i.tch the head, you'll have a couple of lovely scars!

Apart from that, you are a beauty. He slapped Hendrick's hard s.h.i.+ny black muscles. We'll put you down for underground work, and you'll get the underground bonus., They were issued grey overalls and hobnailed boots, and then given a gargantuan meal, as much as they could eat.

It is not like I thought it would be. Hendrick spooned stew into his mouth. Good food, white men who smile, no beatings, not like the train. Brother, only a fool starves and beats his oxen, and these white men are not fools. One of the other Ovambo men took Moses empty dish to the kitchen and returned with it refilled. It was no longer necessary for him to give orders for such menial services.

His wants were taken care of by the men around him as if by birthright. Already the death of the white overseer, Tshayela, the striker, had been embroidered and built into a legend by many repet.i.tions, reinforcing the stature and authority of Moses Gama and his lieutenant; men walked softly around them and inclined their heads respectfully when either Moses or Hendrick spoke directly to them.

At dawn the next morning they were roused from their bunks in the barrack rooms and after a huge breakfast of maize cake and maas, the thick clotted sour milk, they were led to the long iron-roofed cla.s.sroom.

Then of forty different tribes come from every corner of the land to Goldi, men speaking forty different languages, from Zulu to Tswana, from Herero to Basuto, and only one in a thousand of them understands a word of English or of Afrikaans, Moses explained softly to his brother as the other men respectfully made room for them on one of the cla.s.sroom benches. Now they will teach us the special language of Goldi, the tongue by which all men, whether black or white, and of whatever tribe, speak to each other here. A venerable old Zulu boss-boy, his pate covered with a cap of s.h.i.+ning silver wool, was their instructor in the lingua franca of the gold mines, Fanakalo. The name was taken from its own vocabulary and meant literally like this, like that', the phrase that the recruits would have urged upon them frequently over the weeks ahead: Do it like this! Work like that! Sebenza fanakalo! The Zulu instructor on the raised dais was surrounded by all the accoutrements of the miner's trade, set out on display so that he could touch each item with his pointer and the recruits would chant the name of it in unison. Helmets and lanterns, hammers and picks, jumper bars and sc.r.a.pers, safety rails and rigs, they would know them all intimately before they stood their first s.h.i.+ft.

But now the old Zulu touched his own chest and said: AUna! Then pointed at his cla.s.s and said: Wena! And Moses led them in the chant: The! You! Head! said the instructor and Arm! and Leg! He touched his own body and his pupils imitated him enthusiastically.

They worked at the language all that morning and then after lunch they were divided into groups of twenty and the group that included Moses and Hendrick was taken to another iron-roofed building similar to the language cla.s.sroom. It differed only in its furnis.h.i.+ngs. Long trestle tables ran from wall to wall, and the person that welcomed them was a white man with peculiar bright ginger-coloured hair and mustache and green eyes. He was dressed in a long white coat like those the doctors had worn, and like them he was smiling and friendly, waving them to their places at the tables and speaking in English that only Moses and Hendrick understood, although they were careful not to make their understanding apparent and maintained a pantomime of perplexity and ignorance.

All right you fellows. My name is Dr Marcus Archer and I am a psychologist. What we are going to do now is give you an apt.i.tude test to see just what kind of work you are best suited to. The white man smiled at them and then nodded to the boss-boy beside him, who translated: You do what Bomvu, the red one, tells you. That way we can find out just how stupid you are. The first test was a blockbuilding exercise which Marcus Archer had developed himself to test basic manual dexterity and awareness of mechanical shape. The multicoloured wooden blocks of various shapes had to be fitted into the frame on the table in front of each subject in the manner of an elementary jigsaw puzzle and the time allotted for completion was six minutes. The boss-boy explained the procedure and gave a demonstration and the recruits took their seats at the tables and Marcus Archer called: Enza!

Do it! and started his stop watch.

Moses completed his puzzle in one minute six seconds.

According to Dr Archer's meticulous records, to date 1 1 6,816 had sat this particular test. Not one of them had completed it in under two and a half minutes. He left the dais and went down to Moses table to check his a.s.sembly of the blocks.

It was correct, and he nodded and studied Moses expressionless features thoughtfully.

Of course, he had noticed Moses the moment he entered the room. He had never seen such a beautiful man in his life, either black or white, and Dr Archer's preference was strongly for black skin. That was one of the main reasons he had come out to Africa five years before, for Dr Marcus Archer was a h.o.m.os.e.xual.

He had been in his third year at Magdalene College before he admitted this fact to himself, and the man who had introduced him to the bitter-sweet delights had at the same time stimulated his intellect with the wondrous new doctrines of Karl Marx and the subsequent refinements to that doctrine by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His lover had secretly enrolled him in the Britis Communist Party, and after he had left Cambridge introduced him to the comrades of Bloomsbury. However, the young Marcus had never felt entirely at home in intellectual London. He had lacked the spiked tongue, the ready acid wit and the feline cruelty, and after a short and highly unsatisfactory affair with Lytton Strachey, he had been given Lytton's notorious treatment and ostracized from the group.

He had banished himself into the wilderness of Manchester University, to take up the new science of industrial psychology. In Manchester he had begun a long and lyrically happy liaison with a Jamaican trombone player and allowed his connections with the Party to fall into neglect. However, he was to learn that the Party never forgets its chosen ones and at the age of thirty-one, when he had already made some small reputation for himself in his profession, but when his a.s.sociation with his Jamaican lover had ended acrimoniously and he was dejected and almost suicidal, the Party had reached out one of its tentacles and drawn him gently back into the fold.

They told him that there was an opening in his field with the South African Chamber of Mines working with African Mineworkers. His penchant for black skin was by now an addiction. The infant South African Communist Party was in need of bolstering and the job was his if he wanted. It was implied that he had free choice in the matter, but the outcome was never in doubt and within a month he had sailed for Cape Town.

In the following five years he had done important pioneering work with the Chamber of Mines and had received both recognition and deep satisfaction from it. His connections with the Party had been carefully concealed, but the covert work he had done in this area was even more important, and his commitment to the ideals of Marxism had grown stronger as he grew older and saw at first hand the inhumanities of cla.s.s and racial discrimination, the terrible abyss that separated the Poor and dispossessed black proletariat from the enormous wealth and privilege of the white bourgeoisie. He had found that in this rich and beautiful land all the gross ills of the human condition flourished as though in a hothouse, exaggerated until they were almost a caricature of evil.

Now Marcus Archer looked at this n.o.ble young man with the face of an Egyptian G.o.d and a skin of burnt honey, and he was filled with longing.

You speak English, don't you? he asked, and Moses nodded.

Yes, I do, he said softly, and Marcus Archer had to turn away and go back to his dais. His pa.s.sion was impossible to disguise, and his fingers were trembling as he took up a stick of chalk and wrote upon the blackboard, giving himself a respite to get his emotions under control.

The tests continued for the rest of the afternoon, the subjects gradually being sorted and channelled into their various grades and levels on the results. At the end only one remained in the main stream. Moses Gama had completed the progressively more difficult tests with the same aplomb as he had tackled the first, and Dr Archer realized that he had discovered a prodigy.

At five o'clock the session ended and thankfully the subjects trooped from the cla.s.sroom; the last hour had taxed even the brightest amongst them. Moses alone had remained undaunted and as he filed past the desk Dr Archer said: Gama! He had taken the name from the register. There is one more task I would like you to attempt., He led Moses down the verandah to his office at the end.

You can read and write, Gama? Yes, Doctor. It is a theory of mine that a man's handwriting can be studied to find the key to his personality, Archer explained.

And I would like you to write for me. They sat side by side at the desk, and Dr Archer set writing materials in front of Moses, chatting easily. This is a standard text I use. On the card he handed Moses was printed the nursery rhyme The Cat and the Fiddle'.

Moses dipped the pen and Archer leaned closer to watch.

His writing was large and fluent, the characters formed with sharp peaks, forward sloping and definite. All the indications of mental determination and ruthless energy were present.

Still studying the handwriting Archer casually laid his hand on Moses thigh, intensely aware of the hard rubbery muscle beneath the velvety skin, and the nib spluttered as Moses started. Then his hand steadied and he went on writing. He finished, laid the pen down carefully, and for the first time looked directly into Marcus Archer's green eyes.

Gama. Marcus Archer's voice shook and his fingers tightened. 'You are much too intelligent to waste your time shovelling ore. He paused and moved his hand slowly up Moses leg.

Moses stared steadily into his eyes. His expression did not change, but he let his thighs fall slowly open, and Marcus Archer's heart was thumping wildly against his ribs.

I want you to work as my personal a.s.sistant, Gama, he whispered, and Moses considered the magnitude of this offer.

He would have access to the files of every worker in the gold-mining industry; he would be protected and privileged, free to pa.s.s and enter where other black men were forbidden.

The advantages were so numerous that he knew he could not grasp them all in so brief a moment. For the man who made the offer he felt almost nothing, neither revulsion nor desire, but he would have no compunction in paying the price he demanded. If the white man wished to be treated as a woman, then Moses would readily render him this service.

Yes, Doctor, I would like to work for you, he said.

On the last night in the barrack room of the induction centre, Moses called all his chosen lieutenants to him. They cl.u.s.tered around his bunk.

Very soon you will go from here to the Goldi. Not all of you will go together for there are many mines along the Rand. Some of you will go down into the earth, others will work on the surface in the mills and the reduction plants.

We will be separated for a while, but you will not forget that we are brothers. I, your elder brother, will not forget you. I have important work for you. I will seek you out, wherever you are, and you will be ready for me when I summon you. Eh heP they granted in agreement and obedience. We are your younger brothers. We will listen for your voice. You must know always that you are under my protection, that all trespa.s.ses against you will be revenged. You have seen what happens to those who give offence to our brotherhood. We have seen it, they murmured. We have seen it, and it is death. it is death, Moses confirmed. It is death also for any of the brotherhood who betray us. It is death for all traitors. Death to all traitors. They swayed together, coming once more under the mesmeric spell which Moses Gama wove about them.

I have chosen a totem for our brotherhood, Moses went on. I have chosen the buffalo for our totem for he is black and powerful and all men fear him. We are the Buffaloes. We are the Buffaloes. Already they were proud of the distinction. We are the black Buffaloes and all men will learn to fear us. These are the signs, the secret signs by which we will recognize our own. He made the sign and then individually clasped their right hands in the fas.h.i.+on of the white man, but the grip was different, a double grip and turn of the second finger. Thus you will know your brothers when they come to you. They greeted each other in the darkened barracks, each of them shaking the hand of all the others in the new way, and it was a form of initiation into the brotherhood.

You will hear from me soon. Until I call, you must do as the white man requires of you. You must work hard and learn. You must be ready for the call when it comes. Moses sent them away to their bunks and he and Hendrick sat alone, their heads together, speaking in whispers.

You have lost the little white stones, Moses told him.

By now the birds and the small beasts will have pecked the loaves and devoured the millet bread. The stones will be scattered and lost; the dust will cover them and the gra.s.s will grow over them. They are gone, my brother., Yes. They are gone, Hendrick lamented. After so much blood and striving, after all the hards.h.i.+ps we endured, they have been scattered like seeds to the wind. They were accursed, Moses consoled him. From the moment I saw them I knew that they would bring only disaster and death. They are white man's toys. What could you have done with the white man's wealth? If you tried to spend it, if you tried to buy white man's things with it, you would instantly have been marked by the white police.

They would have come for you immediately and there would have been a rope or a jail cell for you. Hendrick was silent, considering the truth of this. What could he have purchased with the stones? Black men could not own their own land. More than a hundred head of cattle and the local chieftain's envy would have been aroused. He already had all the wives, and more, that he wished for, and black men did not drive in motor cars. Black men did not draw attention to themselves in any way, not if they were wise.

No, my brother, Moses told him softly. They were not for you. Thank the spirits of your ancestors that they were wrested from you and scattered back on the earth where they belong. Hendrick growled softly, Still it would have been good to have that treasure, to hold it in my hands, even secretly. There are other treasures even more important than diamonds or white man's gold, my brother. What are these treasures? Hendrick asked.

Follow me and I will lead you to them. But tell me what they are, Hendrick insisted.

You will discover them in good time. Moses smiled. But now, my brother, we must talk of first things; the treasures will follow later.

Listen to me. Borrivu, the red one, my little doctor who likes to be used as a woman, Bomvu has allocated you to the Goldi called Central Rand Consolidated. it is one of the richest of the Goldi, with many deep shafts.

You will go underground, and it is best if you make a name for yourself there. I have prevailed on Bomvu to send ten of our best men from the Buffaloes to CRC with you. These will be your impi, your chosen warriors. You must start with them, but you will build upon them, gathering around you the quick and strong and the fearless. 'What must I do with these men? Hold them in readiness. You will hear from me soon. Very soon. What of the other Buffaloes? Borrivu has sent them, at my suggestion, in groups of ten to each of the other Goldi along the Rand. Small groups of our men everywhere. They will grow, and soon we will be a great black herd of buffaloes which even the most savage lion will not dare to challenge. Swart Hendrick's initial descent in the earth was the first time in his life that he had been frightened witless, unable to speak or think, so terrified that he could not even scream or struggle against it.

The terror began when he was in the long line of black miners, each of them wearing black rubber gumboots and grey overalls, the unpainted silver helmets on their heads fitted with head lanterns. Hendrick shuffled forward in the press of bodies down the ramp between the poles of the crush, like cattle entering an abattoir, stopping and starting forward again. Suddenly he found himself at the head of the line, standing before the steel mesh gate that guarded the entrance to the shaft.

Beyond the mesh he could see the steel cables hanging into the shaft like pythons with s.h.i.+ning scales, and over him towered the steel skeleton of the headgear. When he looked up he could see the huge wheels silhouetted against the sky a hundred feet above his head, spinning and stopping and reversing.

Suddenly the mesh gates crashed open and he was carried on the surge of black bodies into the cage beyond. They packed shoulder to shoulder, seventy men. The doors closed, the floor dropped under his feet and stopped again immediately. He heard the tramp of feet over his head and looked up, realizing that the skip was a double decker and that another seventy men were being packed into the top compartment.

Again he heard the clash of closing mesh gates and he started as the telegraph shrilled, four long rings, the signal to descend, and the skip fell away under him, but this time accelerating so violently that his body seemed to come free and his feet lay only lightly on the steel floor plates. His belly was sucked up against his ribs and his terror was unleashed.

In darkness the skip rocketed downwards, drumming and rattling and racing like an express train in a tunnel, and the terror went on and on, minute after minute, eternity after eternity. He felt himself suffocating, crushed by the thought of the enormous weight of rock above him, his ears popping and crackling at the pressure, a mile and then another mile straight down into the earth.