Black Diamonds.

by Mor Jokai.

CHAPTER I

A BLACK PLACE

We are in the depths of an underground cavern. It is bad enough to be underground, but here we are all enveloped in black as well: the ceiling is black, so are the walls; they are made of blocks of coal.

The floor is one great black looking-gla.s.s. It is a sort of pond, polished as steel. Over this polished surface glistens the reflection of a solitary light, the light of a safety-lamp shining through a wire net.

A man guides himself over the pond in a narrow boat. By the doubtful light of the lamp he sees high pillars, which rise out of the depths below and reach to the very roof of the cavern--pillars slender, like the columns of a Moorish palace. These pillars are half white and half black; up to a certain point only are they coal black, beyond that they are light in color.

What are these pillars?

They are the stems of pines and palm-trees. These gigantic stems are quite at home in the layers over the coal-mine, but how have they descended here? They belong to another world--the world of light and air. The coal layers overhead sometimes take fire of themselves, and the fire, being intense, has loosened the hold of these giants and sent them below.

Coal-pits kindle of themselves often, as every novice knows, but in this case who extinguished the flames? That is the question.

The solitary occupant of the rudely shaped boat or canoe goes restlessly here and there, up and down. He is a man of about thirty years, with a pale face and a dark beard. His firmly closed lips give him an expression of earnestness, or strong, decided will; while his forehead, which is broad, with large b.u.mps over the eyes, shows that he is a deep thinker. His head is uncovered, for here in this vault the air is heavy, and his curly black hair is in thick ma.s.ses, so that he needs no covering.

What is he doing here?

He drives his boat over the black looking-gla.s.s of the lake; round and round he goes, searching the black walls with anxiety, his lamp raised in his disengaged hand. Does he imagine that a secret is hidden there?

Does he think that by touching a spring, and saying "Open Sesame," the treasure hidden there for hundreds of years will spring forth?

In truth, he does find treasures. Here and there from the black wall--weakly constructed in some places by Nature's hand--a piece of stone loosens itself--upon it the impression of a leaf belonging to a long-ago-extinct species. A wonderful treasure this! In other places he comes upon unknown crystals, to which science has not as yet given a name; or upon a new conglomeration of different quartz, metal, and stone--a silent testimony to a convulsion of Nature before this world was. All these witnesses speak.

The pillars, too; over them the water of the pond has by degrees formed a crustation of crystals, small, but visible even without a gla.s.s. This, too, gives testimony.

The pond is in itself wonderful. It has ebb and flow: twice in the day it empties itself; twice in the day it fills. The water rushes in leaps and bounds, joyously, tumultuously, into this dark, sullen vault; fills it higher, higher, until it reaches the point on the pillars where the color changes. There it remains, sometimes for two hours, stationary, smooth, and placid as a gla.s.s. Then it begins to sink, slowly, surely, until it vanishes away into the secret hiding-places from whence it has come. Curious, mysterious visitor!

The man in the boat knows its ways; he has studied them. He waits patiently, until, with a sullen, gurgling sound, as if lamenting the necessity, the last current of water vanishes behind a projecting ma.s.s of coal. Then he hurriedly casts off his coat, his shoes, his stockings; he has nothing on but his shirt and trousers. He fastens round him a leather pocket, in which is a hammer and chisel; he takes his safety-lamp and fastens it to his belt; and, so equipped, he glides into one of the fissures in the black rock. He is following the vanishing stream. He is a courageous man to undertake such a task, for his way lies through the palace of death. It needs a heart of stone to be there alone in the awful silence. It is a strong motive that brings him. He is seeking the secret which lies under seven seals, the treasure which Nature has concealed for thousands of years. But this man knows not what fear is. He remains three hours seeking. If he had any one--a wife, a sister, even a faithful servant, who knew where he was, what danger he was in, how their souls would have gone out in agony of fear for what might happen!

But he has no one; he is alone--always alone. There is no one to weep for his absence or to be joyful at his coming; his life is solitary, in the clear air of daylight as well as in the depths of the cavern.

The vanished stream is as capricious as a coquettish maiden, as full of tricks and humors. Sometimes it does not show itself for three or four hours; at other moments it comes frolicking back in one, and woe to the unfortunate wight who is caught in its embrace in the narrow windings of the coal-vault! But this man knows the humors of the stream; he has studied them. He and it are old acquaintances; he knows the signs upon which he can depend, and he knows how long the pause will last. He can gauge its duration by the underground wind. When it whistles through the clefts and fissures, then he knows the stream is at hand. Should he wait until the shrill piping ceases, then he is a dead man.

In the darkness a ghostly sound is heard--it is like a long-drawn sigh, the far-away sobbing of an aeolian harp; and immediately the shimmer of the lamp is seen coming nearer and nearer, and in a minute the mysterious searcher of the hidden secret appears.

His countenance is paler than before--deathly; and drops of sweat course down his forehead and cheeks. Down below the air must be heavier in the cavern, or the nightmare of the abyss has caused this cold damp. He throws his well-filled wallet into the boat, and seats himself in it again.

It was time. Scarcely has he taken his place when a gurgling is heard, and out of the fissures of the rock comes a gush of black water, shooting forth with a loud, bubbling noise. Then follows a few minutes' pause, and again another gush of water. The cavern is filling rapidly. In a short time, over the smooth surface of the wall, the watermark shows itself. Clear as a looking-gla.s.s it rises, noiselessly, surely, until it has reached the black line upon the pillars.

The boat, with its silent, watchful occupant, floats upon the water like the ghost of the cavern. The water is not like ordinary water; it is heavy like metal. The boat moves slowly, only now the rower does not care to look into the depths of the black looking-gla.s.s; he pays no attention to the mysterious signs on the walls. He is occupied taking stock of the air about him, which is growing denser every moment, and he looks carefully at his safety-lamp, but it is closely shut. No escape there.

There is a great fog all round the lamp. The air in this underground abyss takes a blue shade. The man in the boat knows well what this means. The flame of the safety-lamp flares high, and the wick turns red--bad signs these! The angel of death is hovering near.

Two spirits dwell in these subterranean regions--two fearfully wicked spirits. The pitmen call one Stormy Weather, the other Bad Weather; and these two evil spirits haunt every coal-mine, under different names. Bad Weather steals upon its victim, lies like a thick vapor upon his chest, follows the miner step by step, takes away his breath and his speech, laughs at his alarm, and vanishes, when it has reached its height, just as suddenly as it came. Stormy Weather is far more cruel--fearful. It comes like a whirlwind; it sets everything in a flame, kindles the lumps of coal, shatters the vaults, destroys the shaft, burns the ground, and dashes human beings to pieces. Those who gain their livelihood by working underground can never tell when they may meet one or other of these evil spirits.

The secret of "stormy weather," whence it comes, when it may come, no man has yet discovered. It is believed that it arises from the contact of the hydrogen gases with the acid gases which are contained in the open air; and "bad weather" needs only a spark to turn into "stormy weather." The thoughtless opening of a safety-lamp, the striking of a match, is sufficient to fuse the two evil spirits into one.

The solitary man whom we have been shadowing sees, with an anxiety that increases every moment, how the air becomes more and more the color of an opal. Already it is enveloping him in a thin cloud. He does not wait for the flood to rise to its highest point, for, when he reaches a place in the wall where a sort of landing-stage has been made, he jumps upon it, draws the boat by its chain, and moors it fast, and then, ascending by some rude steps to a strong iron door, he opens it with a key, and, closing it behind him, finds himself in a pa.s.sage which leads him straight into the pit.

Here he is in a busy world, very different from the solitude he has left. The streets, which are narrow and close, are full of miners hard at work with their hammers. The men are nearly naked, the boys who push the wagons are wholly so. There is no sound heard but that of the never-ceasing hammers. In the mine there are no jolly songs, no hearty laughter. Over the mouth of each miner a thick cloth is tied, through which he breathes.

Some of the pa.s.sages are so narrow that the worker is obliged to lie upon his back, and in this position to reach the coal with his pick.

When he has loosened it he drops it into the little wagon, which the naked boys, crawling upon their stomachs, push before them to the opening.

The man who has come out of the dark cavern does not differ in dress from any of the others. He is clothed, certainly, but his clothes are covered with coal-dust, his hands are just as coa.r.s.e, and he carries a pick and a hammer on his shoulder. Nevertheless, they all know him; there is a rough civility in the tone of each man as he answers the other's greeting, "Good-evening. Bad Weather is coming."

The word is repeated all round.

It was true. Bad Weather _was_ close at hand, and these men and boys, who quietly come and go, hammer, shove the wagons, lie on their backs, all know, as well as the convict who is awaiting the execution of his sentence, that death is near.

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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d's heaven.

But Ivan Behrend, when he ascended from the pit into the open air, found little contrast between the upper and the under ground. Below, there was the stifling smell of gas; above, a suffocating fog: below, the black vault of the mine; above, the murky vault of the heavens: and the same men above and below.

It was then evening; the sun had gone down, and for the moment even the vile smoke could not rob it of its setting glory. The towers of the distant castle of Bondavara were touched with its gleam, and the chimneys of the distilling-houses were aglow with this crimson light.

The miners were standing about idly; the women and the girls, who are employed in shoving the wheelbarrows, sat gossiping together, as is the manner of the s.e.x. One of them, a young girl, began to sing--a simple little song, with simple words. It was a Slav volkslied--a sort of romance. A mother is taking leave of her daughter, a bride of a few hours; she recalls to the girl her childish days and her mother's care in these words:

"Wenn ich das Haar dir strich, Zerr' ich am Haare dich?

Wenn ich dich wusch, mein Kind, War ich je ungelind?"

The melody was touching, with the sad strain that all the Slav music has, as if composed with tears; and the voice of the one who sang was musical and full of feeling. Ivan stopped to listen to the song until the singer and her companions disappeared behind the houses.

At this moment it seemed to him that there was a great difference between life underground and life in the open.