Those who under G.o.d's free heavens drew their breath were bound to go to the rescue of those who lay buried underground, and who perchance still lived. Here it was no case of friend or foe. They were human beings; that was enough.

"We must get the ventilators, the well-buckets to work!" called Ivan.

"Let each man bring a thick cloth to tie over his mouth. Bring crow-bars, cords, ladders, india-rubber tubes, hose-pipes. The women only are to remain behind. Forward, my men!"

He threw on an old coat, seized a strong iron bar, which he carried on his shoulder, placed himself at the head of his men, and led the way to the company's mine.

It was not easy to force an entrance into the works. The proprietors had set up all manner of barricades in order to prevent Ivan's carts from making any use of the new road. On the gates there were boards with "No trespa.s.sing. No one to pa.s.s this way without a written order."

No one now minded these orders. If a door or a gate impeded their progress, Ivan thrust his iron rod through it and soon made a pa.s.sage, through which his men rushed pell-mell. The miners did not pause to harness any horses to the machines. They harnessed themselves, while others shoved behind, and drove them on over sticks and stones down to the mouth of the pit. Like an army of lunatics the party of rescuers rushed on through the night, making their way as best they could by means of the lanterns fastened to their waistbands. Soon, however, the darkness was again illumined. The forge nearest to the pit, and consequently the most exposed to the fiery heat, blew up suddenly, and the flames from the heating-oven filled the air with a red glow. The miners avoided, however, the direction in which it burned, as it would be impossible to predicate the direction which the molten metal would take.

When they reached the pit an awful spectacle presented itself. The ventilation-ovens which were placed over the shaft-mouth were gone.

The bricks and tiles were scattered in a thousand directions all over the fields. The large windla.s.s of cast-iron lay on the ground at a considerable distance from its former position, and of the conical, bell-shaped buildings hardly a stone was left. Only one wall was still standing; the iron fasteners hung from its side. The northern entrance to the pit had fallen in. The handsome stone gates lay in ruins.

Stones, beams, iron bars, coals were all mixed up together in heterogeneous confusion, as if a volcano had vomited them out.

The air was filled with the cries of weeping women. Hundreds upon hundreds of women and children, probably widows and orphans, held up their hands to heaven and wept. Under their feet their husbands, their fathers, brothers, lovers lay buried, and no one could help them.

More from recklessness than from actual courage some men had already attempted to go down into the pit. They had been at once stunned by the pressure of the gas, and now their comrades, at the risk of their own lives, were trying to drag them out by cords and slings. Already one lay on the gra.s.s, while the women stood round him wringing their hands.

Ivan now began to make his plans. "In the first place," he said, "no one is to venture near the pit. Let all wait until I return."

He took his way towards the house of the directors. He forgot that he had sworn never to hold any communication with Raune. In any case, he was not to be found. In the next town there was high festival. The directors of the new railway had given a banquet in honor of the completion of the tunnel. Raune was there. Ivan, however, met the second engineer coming out of his house. He was a cool, phlegmatic man, and consoled himself with the trite reflection that these things happened everywhere. "The gates must be rebuilt," he said. "The pit roads must again be re-made, and probably we shall have to sink another shaft. It will cost a lot of money. _Voila tout!_"

"How many men are below?" asked Ivan.

"Probably about a hundred and fifty."

"Only! And what is to be done for them?"

"It will be a hard job to get them out, for they were at work at the pa.s.sage which we were making between the north pit and the east to improve the ventilation."

"Therefore there is no other entrance to the pit but the one which has fallen in?"

"No; and the eastern shaft is also in ruins. The flames came from there; you must have seen them."

"Yes; and I couldn't understand how it was that the second explosion followed the first after an interval of a few minutes."

"That is easily explained. The communicating wall was already so thin that the explosion in the north pit blew it into fragments; the gas in the east pit undoubtedly was not kindled by the flames, for they had already gone out, but by the strong pressure of the air, which was heated to fever-heat by the acc.u.mulation of coal, and which, therefore, exploded through the shaft. So it is when you put sand into the barrel of a gun; the powder bursts the barrel before it throws out the sand."

It was plain that the engineer took a very cold-blooded view of the whole affair, and that the design for the new stone gate was a matter of more interest to him than the hundred and fifty lives which were in jeopardy. Ivan saw there was little a.s.sistance to be got from him.

"Before we can attempt the rescue of the men who are buried in the pit," he said, "we must pump the gas out of the opening of the cavern.

Where is your air-pump?"

"Up there," returned the engineer, pointing to the sky; "that is to say, if it hasn't fallen down."

"You have no portable ventilator?"

"We never contemplated the necessity of having one."

"I have brought mine, if we can adjust it."

"I would gladly know how that can be done. If the ventilator has a copper tube, it would be impossible to introduce it through all the zigzag of the rubbish and general wreck; if it has an india-rubber pipe it would be too weak, and wouldn't stand being shoved forward."

"Some one must carry it into the pit."

"Some one?" repeated the engineer, with an air of amazement. "Look yonder; they are drawing up the third man who was foolish enough to venture down there; he is dead, like the other two!"

"No, none of them are dead; they will soon recover consciousness; they are stifled by the foul air."

"All the same, I can hardly believe that you will find a man mad enough to be the first to carry a tube fifty steps through all the wreckage."

"I have already found the man. I shall do it."

The engineer shrugged his shoulders, but he made no effort to dissuade him.

Ivan went back to the men, who meantime had been getting ready for work. He called the oldest miner on one side.

"Paul," he said, "some one must carry the india-rubber tube of the ventilator into the mouth of the pit."

"Good. Let us draw lots."

"We shall do nothing of the kind. I shall go. You are all husbands and fathers with families. You have wives and children to provide for. I have no one. How long can a man hold out in that foul air without drawing his breath?"

"A hundred beats of his pulse; no longer."

"Good. Fetch me the pipe. Bind a cord round my body and hold the other end. When you see that I no longer carry the pipe, draw the cord slowly back, but take care to draw slowly, in case that I should have fainted and that a sudden pull might strangle me."

Ivan loosened the woollen band from his waist, steeped it in a vessel of vinegar, and wrung it out and wrapped his face in it, so that his nose and mouth were covered. He then bound the cord firmly round his body, took the foremost end of the india-rubber pipe upon his shoulder, and began to make his way through the rubbish and _debris_ at the pit's mouth.

The old miner called after him, in a broken voice: "Count the seconds.

Fifty for going, fifty for coming back."

Ivan vanished behind the ruins. The miners took off their caps and folded their hands. The old man held the fingers of his right hand on the wrist of his left and counted his pulse. He had already counted over fifty and the other end of the pipe had not moved. It had pa.s.sed sixty and was near seventy when suddenly it was pulled forward. Ivan had penetrated into the deadly atmosphere. The old miner wiped the perspiration from his brow. He counted eighty, ninety, a hundred seconds. They shall never see him again. Then the pipe remained steady.

Now they began to draw the rope. It was slack, and not tightened by any burden. Ivan was, therefore, so far safe; he was still walking, for the rope continued slack. Suddenly it got stiffer. Be careful now.

The cord again slackened; the old miner counted a hundred and sixty seconds. Suddenly Ivan was seen coming out of the pit's mouth, supporting himself upon the fallen stones of the archway; but his strength failed, and as the men rushed to his a.s.sistance he tottered and fell into their arms. His face was like that of a dying man.

They rubbed him with vinegar, and the fresh air soon revived him. He sat up, and told them he was all right, but--

"The air down there is something awful," he said. "What is happening to those poor creatures who are buried below?"

It never occurred to him to remember that those poor creatures were the same ungrateful men who had deserted him, who had taken service with the men who had sworn to ruin him, who had formed a conspiracy against him, who were ready to murder him, who had sent a deputation to the enemies of their native land. Here they lay, buried in the depths of mother-earth, which thus revenged upon them their treachery.

Ivan had forgotten their sin against him and their country, and his only thought was to save them if there was yet time.

Now that the ventilator had been set in motion, the work of rescue might begin; but all the same it was a terribly hard fight.

Ivan divided his band of men into two divisions. Each man was only to stay an hour at the dangerous work of clearing away the rubbish. Every one must have his face covered by a cloth steeped in vinegar. So soon as he began to feel faint he was to be carried away by his comrades.

When the day began to break the wreck of the fallen entrance had been moved to one side, but in the mouth of the pit the sun could not penetrate. The vault of slate-clay had fallen altogether to one side, so that Ivan, when he had carried the pipe into the pit, had found there was scarcely room to allow it to wind through the chasms. In the spot where he had placed the mouth of the pipe the vault was altogether destroyed.