SECTION 22.
Hal told himself with satisfaction that he was now to do the real work
of coal-mining. His imagination had been occupied with it for a long
time; but as so often happens in the life of man, the first contact with
reality killed the results of many years' imagining. It killed all
imagining, in fact; Hal found that his entire stock of energy, both
mental and physical, was consumed in enduring torment. If any one had
told him the horror of attempting to work in a room five feet high, he
would not have believed it. It was like some of the dreadful devices of
torture which one saw in European castles, the "iron maiden" and the
"spiked collar." Hal's back burned as if hot irons were being run up and
down it; every separate joint and muscle cried aloud. It seemed as if he
could never learn the lesson of the jagged ceiling above his head--he
bumped it and continued to bump it, until his scalp was a mass of cuts
and bruises, and his head ached till he was nearly blind, and he would
have to throw himself flat on the ground.
Then old Mike Sikoria would grin. "I know. Like green mule! Some day get
tough!"
Hal recalled the great thick callouses on the flanks of his former
charges, where the harness rubbed against them. "Yes, I'm a 'green
mule,' all right!"
It was amazing how many ways there were to bruise and tear one's
fingers, loading lumps of coal into a car. He put on a pair of gloves,
but these wore through in a day. And then the gas, and the smoke of
powder, stifling one; and the terrible burning of the eyes, from the
dust and the feeble light. There was no way to rub these burning eyes,
because everything about one was equally dusty. Could anybody have
imagined the torment of that--any of those ladies who rode in softly
upholstered parlour-cars, or reclined upon the decks of steam-ships in
gleaming tropic seas?
Old Mike was good to his new "buddy." Mike's spine was bent and his
hands were hardened by forty years of this sort of toil, so he could do
the work of two men, and entertain his friend with comments into the
bargain. The old fellow had the habit of talking all the time, like a
child; he would talk to his helper, to himself, to his tools. He would
call these tools by obscene and terrifying names--but with entire
friendliness and good humour. "Get in there, you son-of-a-gun!" he would
say to his pick. "Come along here, you wop!" he would say to his car.
"In with you, now, you old buster!" he would say to a lump of coal. And
he would lecture Hal on the details of mining. He would tell stories of
successful days, or of terrible mishaps. Above all he would tell about
rascality--cursing the "G. F. C.," its foremen and superintendents, its
officials, directors and stock-holders, and the world which permitted
such a criminal institution to exist.
Noon-time would come, and Hal would lie upon his back, too worn to eat.
Old Mike would sit munching; his abundant whiskers came to a point on
his chin, and as his jaws moved, he looked for all the world like an
aged billy-goat. He was a kind-hearted and anxious old billy-goat, and
sought to tempt his buddy with a bit of cheese or a swig of cold coffee.
He believed in eating--no man could keep up steam if he did not stoke
the furnace. Failing in this, he would try to divert Hal's mind, telling
stories of mining-life in America and Russia. He was most proud to have
an "American feller" for a buddy, and tried to make the work as easy as
possible, for fear lest Hal might quit.
Hal did not quit; but he would drag himself out towards night, so
exhausted that he would fall asleep in the cage. He would fall asleep at
supper, and go in and sink down on his cot and sleep like a log. And oh,
the torture of being routed out before daybreak! Having to shake the
sleep out of his head, and move his creaking joints, and become aware of
the burning in his eyes, and the blisters and sores on his hands!
It was a week before he had a moment that was not pain; and he never got
fully used to the labour. It was impossible for any one to work so hard
and keep his mental alertness, his eagerness and sensitiveness; it was
impossible to work so hard and be an adventurer--to be anything, in
fact, but a machine. Hal had heard that phrase of contempt, "the inertia
of the masses," and had wondered about it. He no longer wondered, he
knew. Could a man be brave enough to protest to a pit-boss when his body
was numb with weariness? Could he think out a definite conclusion as to
his rights and wrongs, and back his conclusion with effective action,
when his mental faculties were paralysed by such weariness of body?
Hal had come here, as one goes upon the deck of a ship in mid-ocean, to
see the storm. In this ocean of social misery, of ignorance and despair,
one saw upturned, tortured faces, writhing limbs and clutching hands; in
one's ears was a storm of lamentation, upon one's cheek a spray of blood
and tears. Hal found himself so deep in this ocean that he could no
longer find consolation in the thought that he could escape whenever he
wanted to: that he could say to himself, It is sad, it is terrible--but
thank God, I can get out of it when I choose! I can go back into the
warm and well-lighted saloon and tell the other passengers how
picturesque it is, what an interesting experience they are missing!
