Israel Mort, etc. (New and popular edition.)

Front matter

ISRAEL MORT— OVERMAN ISRAEL MOET OVERMAN A STORY OF THE MINE BY < JOHN SAUNDERS AUTHOR OP "ABEL DRAKE'S WIFE " " HIEEIX " ETC. LONDON : HUTCHINSON & CO., 34, PATERNOSTER ROW. NEW AND POPULAR EDITION. (The rights of translation and reproduction are reserved J CONTENTS. FAOB Introduction . ix I. Spring-time and storm 1 II. Showing how an angex appeared to David . . 9 ITT. In "which the Reverend Horace Jones discovhbs he IS AN ORATOR 18 IV. Pekin 38 V. Coming to the point 45 VI. The last holiday 65 VII. The battle of the plans 62 VIII. David's first day in the mine 74 IX. The fugitive 95 X. 'Twixt cup and lip 102 XI. Griffith Williams and Israel take counsel together IN THE MINE 107 XII. Showing how Israel helped Mb. Griffith to a decision 123 XIII. Dividing the spoil 130 XJV. First day of power 140 XV.

Israel in the arena; Grtffith looking on . . 144 XVI. David seeks roses, and finds thorns . . .148 XVII. Mrs. Jehoshaphat's cordial 158 XVUL A failure confessed 161 XIX. A FALL, AND ITS CONSBQTJHNCBB . . . . . 166 XX. Death or victory ....... 177 XXI. A base banquet 186 XXII. Casting bread into the wim . . . .193 XXIII. New hopes and fears ...... 195 XXIV. IsRAJST.'s EVENING REDE 200 XXV. Summons v. summons 206 XXVI. By the sea marge ....... 218 XXVII. Doks Margaret know? ■fiii CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGP XXVIII. Mrs. Jehoshaphat's visit to the mlwb . . . . 226 XXLX. The day of salb 237 XXX. Taking possession . . . . .... 243 XXXI. Revelling in law • 250 XXXII. Pinned to the pillow . 254 XXXIII. Mother and son 259 XXXIV. The wanderer's return ...... 267 XXXV. Father and son ....... 280 XXXVI. In suspense 286 XXXVII.

Evil omens 290 XXXVIII. At last 295 XXXIX. A character in revolution 302 XL. An incident of the explosion . . . . . 312 XLI. At the Craig Level . . . . . . .316 XLII. Another explosion . 323 XLLJI. Israel's life theory tested ..... 325 XLIV. Thick-coming fanctes 331 XLV. The call of the forlorn hope 334 XLVI. The fate of the explorers ...... 344 XL VII. The fountains of the deep break ot . . 349 XLVUI. An unheroic hero 355 XLIX. The miner's psalm ....... 361 L. Thb boll-call 868 LI. Thb struggle fob existence ..... 375 III. David's vow 382 LUI. Why the signals stofpbd ...... 387 LIV. Israel's choice ..,,,... INTBODUCTIOl*. 3orbowq*g, for a few brief moments, the wand of the sorcerur Science, who can do what other sorcerers only promise — raise up the dead — what does Science show in connection with that particular spot of ground where lies the scene of the en suing story ?

Introduction

. X human eye has never gazed upon them, or their progeny of true lineal descent (some few fossilised forms only excepted) ; that they came into being — lived innumerable ages — and then died, innumerable ages before the earth knew man. But our guide fails us. Before such a scene of enchant ment, Science itself cannot reveal worthily the traits of that primeval time, except by taking to its aid a still more potent auxiliary — Imagination. Thus only can it restore something of the infinite variety and of the wondrous structure of the vegetation. The scaly, and embossed, and medallioned, and interval ringed giant stems ; the branches with their endless varieties of expression and f oliage ; the gorgeous flowers ; the rich fruit-clusters ; all more or less unknown to us now, but sug gestively indicated by the petrified remains of the few forms that survive in that shape for our instruction and delight.

And so with the forms of animal, and insect, and bird, and fish, and reptile life, seen perched in the forest canopy, or winding about the tree trunks, or roaming with vast bulk, crashing as they go, through the dense jungle, or basking in the fierce heat of the direct sun-rays, or cooling themselves in the depth of the waters of the lagoon, with preposterous snouts just emerging from the surface. It is the place and time for reptile and amphibious life, strange, grotesque, monstrous ! And with these, as with the plants, only the few, and these the least important in the scale of organisation, will survive, fossilised, for man to know. Such is the picture indicated by Science and its ally. Our own eyes will help us to the contrast. The broad lagoon has shrunk to a mere stream descending from the mountain heights to the sea.

The luxuriant, graceful, beauteous, and magnificent vegetable forms — above all, the palms and the tree-ferns, most exquisite perhaps of vegetable structures — where are they ? All shrunk to the one unchanging garment of valley, hill-side, and mountain-top — the humble British fern. But the dazzling light and glory around that lagoon, what have we in its place to distinguish the existing dell ?

INTRODUCTION.

. XI Here is the actual picture of the place as it is — unexagge rated. Where the centre of the lagoon was, is now a black, grimy, dismal hollow — a resting-place between the winding incline of the still beautiful valley above, and the rapid descent to the marshy plain and sea below. Man is there ; but hardly to give new dignity to the scene of to-day, or to claim due honour for his labours in having changed what was even a century ago one of the loveliest of pastoral scenes into that we now gaze upon. Men and boys are passing to their work in that blackened, grimy, bare-surfaced dell. Their hands are black, their faces are black, and ghastly through the unnatural glare thus given to the white of the eye. They look haggard, and for the most part are undersized. Their flannel garb is fast as suming the hue of all around.

Black sheds, with more important black buildings of brick, of all sizes and shapes and forms, always excepting any form in the least approximating to picturesqueness or beauty, are grouped in the centre. Black pieces of new and old machinery, a chaos of iron engines and parts of engines, and beams and parts of beams, and wheels and parts of wheels, and boilers and parts of boilers, and a hundred other unintelligible things, he round the buildings, leaving here and there little oases of vegetation — that is to say, of grass — which, unable to turn black, has done the next most appropriate thing, and faded to a lurid yellow. Black flying ridges high in the air unite building with building. Roads, with black mud, run beneath and between. Flights of black steps descend to the roads. A tall black chimney stands towering near.

Through the indescribable ugliness and pervading at mosphere of sordid squalor that at first glance characterises the place, three objects only stand out in pleasant relief — the row of bright red fires beneath the engine-shed, the light pure colour of the stone quarry in the background, and the wheels that surmount the hideous scaffold-like structure,

INTRODUCTION.

. XII built of great beams of timber with uprights, and a projecting angular arm, from which hangs a massive rope of wire to sup port the heavy cage that is continually descending and as cending between the black world above and the still blacker one below. These wheels are a study. They revolve in opposite ways, they go at great speed, and are so close, side by side, that the resulting motion is to the eye something unique — charming in its suggestiveness and beauty. They literally twinkle : no other word can express their lovely and silent motion. There is one other trait, for the moment forgotten. On the black sludgy bridge that leads to the deeper blackness of the pit mouth, a group of birds, some of them of rare beauty and song, are fearlessly hopping about between the very feet of the tram drivers.

They are picking up grains of corn and chattering, and quarrelling, and chirruping, as merrily as if they saw not the actual scene of to-day such as man has made it, but the pastoral one of a former century ; or even — if birds, like men, dream of a golden age — of the splendours of the still earlier primeval time, when Nature, as apart from man, was all in all. See then the two aspects of the same locality ; the black mine of Cwm Aber, and the dazzling glory of the tropical forest and lagoon ! What is the meaning of so violent a con trast and change ? Would it not be remarkable if it were the very splendour and ashes of the dead beauty of the one era, that gives all its ugliness and discomfort to the other ? Would it not be stranger still if out of this ugliness and discomfort should again come the very essences of the light, and warmth, and glory of that morning of the worla ; colours which even that time could not outvie ; means of enhancing indefinitely human health, wealth, and happiness, in all sorts of ways ?

And as man is the author of all the degradation cne sees here, so is he the hero who creates from it so much that is truly precious. Man wants coal. He has accidentally discovered long ages

INTRODUCTION.

. XIII ago how valuable a fuel it makes. He has eagerly sought for the storehouses of so precious a commodity. He has perti naciously solicited Nature to give to him the keys. She, ou the contrary, appears to wish him to understand she has intentionally hidden away the coveted thing where he may never hope to get at it : far down in the very bowels of the earth, where human foot has never trod, where no form of 'life, however humble, can possibly exist. Man heeds her not, except in so far as he may leam how to circumvent her. Having dug out whatever he can reach from the surface, he prepares boldly to follow the coal, whithersoever it may lead him, through any difficulties, any dangers, to any depth. Learned men come to his help ; and by the study of the earth-rocks, where these happen to be broken through by some primeval convulsion, and exposed, as in great ravines, show him how to track the unseen mineral, step by step, till at a given point they say, ' Strike down boldly there, and you will find it.' He does so.

He bores into the ground, sometimes through long, weary, and most anxious months of unremitting and unremunerative labour, perhaps to find there has been a de plorable miscalculation and waste ; but, if so, he only changes the arena where he means to fight out this great battle. He again ventures ; and at last succeeds. Who but those who have continually experienced the alternations of hope and despair can tell the deliciousness of the moment which brings the first tokens of such success — the httle handful of coal that emerges from the boring-rod — not once, but continuously, through the space say of a couple of yards ? Tes ; the promised seam is there, is found at last ; and no star-gazer ever looked on a new world discovered, with greater exultation, than the mining engineer looks upon the fragments of his earthly one ; which now ensure reputation to him, wealth to the enterprising speculators, employment to hundreds of the needy, and a something of the glow and glory of the sun, from which all its virtue is derived, to innumerable heartu3.

INTRODUCTION.

. Tet Nature, with her sweet, impassive, sphinx-like counte nance, still hostilely confronts him, and says, ' " Thus far and no farther." Thou knowest. Be content with that, and with the fact thy knowledge has taught thee, that the treasure thou. seekest lies hundreds of fathoms deep. Go. Leave me to the solitudes thou hast already too much disturbed.' And how does man answer her ? ' Where my boring-rods have gone, I too can go, and will.' So he digs a great shaft down from the surface of the fern clad soil, making its rounded sides into safe and strong walls at every step of the descent, until he can plant his foot at bottom firmly on the coal-bed : and thence look up as through an interminable chimney to where, diminished to a mere point of light, is the opening indicating the spot where he quitted the safeguards of mother earth.

Now then, surely, he has only to strip, and dig away with a will, and be content ! The strife is over. Nature owns defeat, and gives up the contest. Ah no ! The strife is now only beginning in its real in tensity. Water floods the bottom of the shaft, and threatens at once ruin to the works, and death to the workmen. But this had been foreseen and provided for. Man has already erected his powerful engines, and stretched down his pumps, ever lengthening with the depth of the shaft, and now laughs at the idea of inundation. With sublime audacity he mocks at Nature's law that makes water ever tend to go down ; he takes it, as it were, into his hands, even to the volume of a small river, and at once sends it flowing perpendicularly upwards to the surface, straighter than arrow could be made to fly ; and having got it there, is only too glad to let Nature reassert herself, and help him by carrying it away in her own manner, and like Wordsworth's stream, 'at its own sweet will.' Even in this, however, he is often beaten, prostrated, rendered helpless ; but only uses the experience to make himself progressively ever stronger, and still more strong, till he sees a dry bottom, and has ample means to keep it so. Nature must now retreat before her assailant ; it is, how-

INTRODUCTION.

. XV ever, only to lie in wait for him in the deeper recesses of the mine; to make his every act of locomotion, of labour, even of breathing, a source of deadly danger, a cause of constant unrest. How many of us sitting at ease in our light and pleasant chambers, so carefully ventilated that not even the slightest taint may be feared of sufficient potency to shorten the natural term of life even by the most infinitesimal amount, would have the individual courage, the fortitude to continue such a con test, no matter how brilliant the temptations, seeing that it is not for a day, for a special effort or occasion, bringing with it its own sufficing motive and reward, but for the whole hfe through, of the actual working collier ? Ah, yes ! the world has yet to know, to feel with, and to act justly by this humble, patient, undemonstrative, but truly heroic example of manhood.

A model in some respects surely for the whole of his kind. Watch him as he goes daily to his labour, asking no inconvenient questions, parading none of his unhappiness through the press unto the world, fainting before no obstacles, losing heart at the contemplation of no perils. He simply says, or, better still, feels it without saying, ' This is the work I have got to do, and which, please God, I mean to do ; ' and this work he goes to do. Not certainly rejoicingly, rather perhaps sadly, but he goes. And still the strife proceeds, to even more tragical issues, but varied by incidents that lend a certain piquant, almost a humorous, interest to it. Meeting artifice by artifice, Nature one day plays the miner an odd trick. His pick strikes into something that is clearly not coal, and the unwelcome discovery is made that the treasure-house is suddenly empty.

Incredulous miner ! He is not thus to be cheated out of his lawful prey. He guesses what has happened — ' a fault ' — geologically speaking, but which he no doubt might hke to express by a stronger term. He guesses rightly. As if ex pressly to circumvent him whose whole life is spent in circum venting her, Nature has here broken the seam asunder ; and

INTRODUCTION.

. cunningly dropped the yet untouched end some distance be low the other, and covered it with intervening rocks as use less as they are baffling to the miner. Well, the boring-rod is again set to work ; the lost treasure re-discovered that had been so cunningly hidden, and down go sloping roadways into it. Man is again victorious. But at what a cost ! Some day or other — however dis tant, it will surely come, at least so fears every thoughtful miner — an unlucky accident to a lamp, or a vengeful swinging of it in a moment of passionate anger against the head of a comrade, or a criminal yet scarcely thought-of negligence or disobedience in exposing the naked flame to kindle a pipe of tobacco, causes an explosion. Nature during one moment of terrible vengeance seems to make herself visible in all-de stroying flame, but those who see her — die.

In the space of a breath — a spasm, without even time for a single cry or prayer, the whole of the busy workers in that black hive may be plunged into eternity, leaving not even one solitary survivor to narrate how the ghastly tragedy happened. Then new efforts — perhaps a new shaft made, interminable inquests, legislative enquiries, sudden spasmodic efforts to im prove — then the old relapse into inaction once more — and so the conflict goes on. And will continue to do so, till the hour of truer know ledge, of more Christian-like faith in the ultimate good attain able through brotherly sympathy and help, shall reconcile the combatants. But when that blessed hour comes, man will find how true and noble has been the friend he has so long struggled with as his worst enemy — how she has disciplined and elevated him — and how necessary and vital it is to him to sit at her feet in reverence, and learn from her what he so much needs to know. ISBAEL MOET.

Chapter I. Spring-time And Storm

Though on the fifteenth of March school was still over at the early winter hour, it was not till past five in the after noon that David Mort came into the little path that led through Brynnant Wood up to the village. An unusually companionable fit had made him loiter with some of his schoolfellows, who were bird-nesting in the copse below. He had not assisted them ; but, sitting astride on the topmost stone of the stile, had watched their proceedings with a low, reflective whistle ; occasionally offering lazily a word of advice, which he bore to have scoffed or laughed at with unruffled good temper. He was going through the wood alone now ; making every little movement in the brambles below, or in the boughs above, an excuse for loitering or standing still; enjoying the warm sun on his closed eyes ; and swinging his satchel in a circle that kept an unseen nest of fledg lings open-mouthed with affright, so long as he remained in their view.

It was his twelfth birthday. For six years he had passed through this wood four times almost every day, yet it had attractions for him this afternoon such as it never had before. The truth was that never before had David been strong enough to feel himself a part of the bright strong life of the wood as he did now. It had been on account of his physical weakness that B his father Israel Mort, Overman at the Cwm Aber Colliery, had, on finding him unfit for pit work, apparently lost all recollection of his very existence ; scarcely seeming to see him when he crossed his path or when he sat opposite to him at meal-times. Thus David had out-stayed nearly all school-fellows of his own age, had learnt almost as much as his master was able to teach him, and had arrived at his twelfth year aud at a sound state of health with so little notice on the part of Israel, that David and his mother began to flatter themselves this pleasant state of things might last another five or six years.

David had dreams of slipping one day into the school master's place ; and he cherished a wild hope that nothing might occur to bring the recollection of his useless existence to his father's absorbed mind till some such end should have been obtained. On one after another of his schoolfellows — boys who had learned perhaps from the same book as himself — the dread fiat had come. Almost every week David's eye marked some ruddy face grow prematurely old, and thought ful, reckless, and defiant — or pale, and full of vague, un earthly fears. Then the face would be missing from the familiar row against the white schoolroom wall — and met no more — except hurrying with the black swarm that passed between the mine and Brynnant — all haste — blackness — whites of eyes, and white teeth. When David prayed ' deliver us from evil,' he thought of the mine only.

When he heard of heaven being above the stars, nothing seemed to him so natural and certain as that the mine — with all its horrors, destructive fires, and treacherous waters — should be the very mouth of the world of darkness, confusion, and misery beneath. When one of his companions passed into it, he had his quiet way of mourning for him as if he had been removed from the world by death. He haunted such spots as the young miner had liked best — made gifts to his little brother or sister, remembered him at church and on his knees at night, often woke disturbed by the imaginary sound throbbing through his soft pillow ot' the ' chip-chip ' of the pickaxe wielded by the black hand of his playmate SPRING-TIME AND STORM. 3 in some grim hole too small for any bulkier form than his own to work in.

A keen sense of gratitude for the safety and peaceful sunshine of his own life in the midst of such changes and dangers had had its effect on David's character ; for it seemed to him that no amount of patience, conscientious industry of mind, self-sacrifice in little things, and pro found humility of soul, could ever repay God or men for the peace vouchsafed to him in permitting him to remain upon the open sunny face of the earth, instead of forcing him down into its dark and terrible mysteries. He began to feel that he led a charmed life, the spell of which a breath might break. His enjoyment of it was usually quiet ; almost bidden, as a thing to which he doubted his own right ; but in the wood that afternoon everything seemed to help to deepen and strengthen it. The sky which — each time the white clouds rolled over it — was left clearer and fresher of hue, like a beautiful eye after resting under its white lid — the sky itself seemed tempting David to hope anything, everything.

As this was the time his father would be home, David on any other day would have waited till he saw the little parlour window obscured by steam, so that he might slip in unnoticed, while the Overman, stripped to the waist, was bending — blind with hot water and soap — over a smoking tub, and while David's mother applied the scrub bing-brush or the flannels to his shoulders. To-day, however, with an utter freedom from his usual timidity, David strode in, and looked hungrily at the tea table. The Overman was taking a rest after his own peculiar fashion, standing with his hands clasped at the back of his neck, and bis figure drawn up and thrown a little forward on the toes. As David on entering had thrown the door wide open, the room was flooded with the light of the March sun, that was just then sinking behind the almost perpendicular wall of fir-trees, shaking their ethereal new-born tassels B down the hill-side, across the valley, and making all around look dark or dull by their vividness.

David went at once to examine the tea-table without having: noticed his father. Pleased with what he saw there, o ** he looked up with a bright, appreciative smile at his mother, who was touching the cups on the tray. With a most unusual obliviousness she turned, and began to seek for something on a high shelf with one hand, while she held the other against her side. A sad, patient, stricken-looking creature she was. Calamity did not so much seem to have smitten her by heavy but occasional blows, as to have kept on her one con tinual cruel unrelaxing pressure, squeezing her very heart's blood out of her, and leaving reaction impossible. You could see as she looked on her husband's and son's faces, and as she moved away to put the tea before them, that there was no spring or vital impulse of any kind left in her.

She could not even complain. She could only bear in a kind of dull way her life of suffering. Still a sharp observer might have noticed a difference in the looks she gave to Israel and to the boy. To the one it was a glance of perfectly drilled obedience — that ever waited but to know what was desired from it — without the faintest suggestion of hope or desire that she might give him or herself pleasure from the fulfilment of his wishes. To the other it was at once a glance of tender love and earnest fear, but both shadowed and weakened by the sense of utter helplessness. Noticing her peculiar behaviour, and seeing that his father was making no preparations for his bath, and must therefore be going back to the pit with the night-shift of miners, David began to think something had happened there — an accident, a death, perhaps.

The blood rushed to his cheeks, which still tingled from the cutting March wind ; and he turned to his father in silent, humble inquiry. Israel Mort stood just in the stream of light the open door admitted. He was still clasping his hands behind his neck and standing raised on his toes, as if the luxury of SPRING-TIME AND STORM. stretching was the most complete rest he could have. The whole of him, from the top of a sort of skull-cap to his boots, was black, with the exception of his eyes with their pupils of dull brown and large yellowish whites ; with the exception, also, of a slight redness at his finger-nails, and the redness of half his lips where his breath had moistened them. These were well formed, as indeed were all his features ; but there was on them a repose almost startling. It was not the repose of a face denoting inward peace, it was the repose of stone.

It was a face that reminded one of the front of a house that, from some whim of its inmates, has ceased to be used as a front. If Israel's thoughts might be called the inmates of his face, they certainly seldom indeed (if ever) appeared there. They led a hidden life. Their results might be known in the outer world sometimes, but they themselves were invisible ; none saw their coming or their going. The very dulness of his opaque brown eyes was the dulness of eyes that chose to be dull ; to wear a blind of impassiveness, almost stupor, through which their owner might, unsuspected, study any face he liked as closely as he liked. The Overman's figure was, perhaps, even more remarkable than his face. It was rather above the middle height ; and though scant of flesh, had no visible angle anywhere about it, but a kind of hard roundness from head to foot.

Perhaps his clothes, made to suit his own notions of utility and comfort, helped to this effect. Certainly Israel Mort had less the appearance of a man of flesh, bone, and blood than he had of an iron worm ; round, lithe, and living ; and made to work, and eat, and writhe its way through the stony and carboniferous fastnesses of the earth. He looked, in fact, a diver-born, ready armed and breathed, to dive again and yet again into that underground, wave less sea of death. As David looked at his father, questioning with his wide, timorous blue eyes, Israel let the clasp of his hands at the back of his neck snap ; and stretching one towards David, laid it on his head, and looked at him steadily with those dull, impassive orbs of his. David's breath quickened, so did the beating of his heart.

His mother looked on. It was several years since the Overman had taken so much notice of his useless son. ' Why, we shall be getting too strong, next,' said he, in the loud deep tone of one accustomed to hear his voice muffled and dulled by narrow walls and low roof. ' He is flushed,' said Mrs. Mort. ' Come to your tea, David.' ' Flushed ! ' echoed Israel, drawing his hand over both cheeks. ' Cool as a cucumber ! ' he added, with a slight smile, as he turned from the boy, and went to wash his face and hands. He had no sooner left the room than David's eyes sought his mother's. He found them fixed upon him sor rowfully, passionately ; but no sooner did they encounter his than they turned away again. David crossed to where his mother stood busying her sel f with some things on the top of an old bureau.