James B. Henderson

Scottish by birth, James B. Henderson has spent most of his life in Australia and is frequently published in Australian magazines. He has pursued a successful career as a writer, at the same time serving as a clerk, a teacher, a miner. In 1960-1963 he worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam. Henderson is best known for his short stories in which he describes the working people of Australia with true warmth and sympathy.

The story under analysis contains a realistic description of the hard life of Australian miners.

Fear *

The dirty sweat poured from his face and dripped from his nose. It stood out like small black grapes on the bent bare back and along his ribs. There was a squelching in his boots where the coal dust mixed with the perspiration.

The powerful arms and knee drove the shovel deep into the heap and the biceps bulged as he tossed the coal into the skip.

On the opposite side his mate kept pace with him, shovel for shovel, both lights bobbing up and down alternately, up and down, like parts of a machine.

As each head rose with the lift of the shovel the slender beam of light from the lamp shot into the haze of dust hanging over the skip, became diffused and lost.

Outside the narrow shafts of light was the impenetrable darkness.

The light dropped low, the shovel scraped along the floor, the light rose and the coal fell into the skip.

There was a rhythmic beat linking mate to mate.

The sounds of the shovel and the falling of coal were hemmed in by the deep darkness. It stood close up to them, like resilient folds of black velvet. The blackness retreated at each puny advance of the lamp, but flowed back immediately to bandage the thrust mark made by the rapier of light.

It was a thousand times darker than the darkest night; not merely the absence of light but a seeping something that penetrated everywhere and covered everything. Something tangible.

And Eric was afraid. Afraid for the first time in the twelve months he had worked «on the coal» as a contract miner.

The sweat that gushed from every pore was not only the measure of the weight of the shovel and the inadequate air flow, but, more than that, it was the outpouring of the fear that had been gnawing at his brain and knotting in his plexus for a long month past.

Eric and George were pinpoints of light on a blackened stage: performers without an audience.

A thousand feet above, the blazing sun wilted the leaves of the stunned box trees where the peewees lay cooling in the mud at the horse trough. The skip filled, George stood erect.

“She'll do,” and cocked his ear to listen to the roof. Eric straightened slowly, listening as he did so, listening not with ears alone but with his whole body. Listening with his finger tips.

A low sound like a gentle protesting sigh grew to a moan and built up and up and up till it thundered out, the groans of a monster in agony.

The knot in Eric's stomach tightened and his throat contracted as he crouched instinctively. He wanted to run, to run screaming, to get miles away from it, to get into the light of day. Wondrous, beautiful sun.

The awful groaning and the shroud of darkness were pressing in on him, squeezing him, making it hard to breathe.

But the bravery of cowardice held him silent and hobbled his feet as it had done for four fearsome weeks.

George looked intently at the roof.

“While she's talking to us, we know what she's doing,” he said in a loud whisper. “No danger yet awhile. When she's silent you never know, you never know.” His calm broke. “To hell with stripping pillars anyway, to hell with it! Gnawing away support that's protecting you!”

As the groaning died away to a low grinding, a new terror gripped the younger man.

He didn't want it to stop “talking”, talking to George who could understand it.

It didn't talk to him, it terrified him and yet the silence terrified him even more.

He bent his back and pushed the full skip along the rails into the darkness.

Two specks now shone in the darkness, one moving rapidly away from the groan that was turning to silence. A vivid shrieking silence! The near rumble of the skip blotted out all other noise so that he couldn't tell if the roof still talked or not.

He wanted to stop, to stop and listen. But outside lay safety, the horse-driver and rope runner to talk with, and the friendly electric light of the winch in the distance.

George wasn't scared, he knew what the roof said. Roofs had spoken to him many times before but he never liked what they said. And George was careful these days, very, very careful. He saw everything. He noticed the props bent this morning that were straight last night; the props cracked this morning that were bent last night.

As he methodically stripped slices from the pillar he saw small bursts of coal shoot out as the weight of thousands, hundreds of thousands of tons pressed down on the ever narrowing column.

And he listened. Listened as he shovelled; listened as he moved about; listened, listened.

Listened in a calm careful manner that almost drove Eric frantic.

Yet the young man knew that George's ears and eyes were his ears and eyes, and he trusted him and drew comfort from his sweaty nearness.

A terrifying comfort, but comfort.

He wanted to stay outside and talk, to keep his ears from the awful groaning and grinding, to be out of the sound of that awful silence.

But in no time he was back and the lights again bobbed up and down, up and down in unison. And they listened as they worked.

A third light joined them and for a time the matter of fact voice of the deputy seared the ends of his bleeding nerves.

The safety man walked with calm deliberation deep into the danger area, his light disappearing round a bend.

Eric wanted to yell to him, to hold him, to rush after him and pull him back.

But George was working quietly and Eric kept pace with him. And the sweat welled up and out.

Somewhere distant in the pit a shot was fired; its dull muffled reverberations, which one time would have passed unnoticed, were now the ominous voice of destruction.

He could hardly catch his breath as his diaphragm squeezed up on his heart.

The deputy's return startled him.

“There's not a prop standing. I don't know why we don’t get a fall all inside! It's about time we did, to relieve the pressure.”

Yes, that was it. A fall inside to relieve the pressure. That's what was needed. A fall.

But he didn't want a fall. The thought filled him with terror. Not a little fall nor a big fall. The groaning, grinding, moaning wasn't the voice of a child's bucketful of pebbles but the agonising cry of a million tons disturbed in its sleep, disturbed in the bed where it had rested for countless years.

And he and George and other calloused-handed miners were sweating in the darkness directly beneath nibbling, nibbling, nibbling away like white ants, and the monster was speaking its protests. Speaking to George, but not to him. As yet, to him it was a foreign tongue.

To the contract miner the measure of time is the number of skips filled, but for Eric time moved on from morning to afternoon in a welter of dirt, sweat and fear. Especially fear.

The dust-laden brattice cloth parted as he pushed his sixteenth skip through, and as it dropped behind him he felt safer immediately, as if the brattice had shut the danger behind.

Here was safety, plenty of support for the roof and the friendly hissing of the moving haulage rope.

As he turned to look back the floor beneath his feet seemed to shiver and heave; rolling clouds of dust belched out from inside; the brattice disappeared and a roaring, tearing crescendo of destructive noise careered along after the dust, overtook it and rushed ahead.

Silence swept in and took its place. Eric stood enveloped in dust, unhearing and unfeeling; unthinking; as if afraid to break the stillness.

Away inside, a hundred-ton boulder fell with a thud, the sound muted by distance and the blankets of dust.

Once again Eric knew fear. A new, more terrible fear. A fear, far greater than the agony he had suffered over the past weeks. It shot through him like a red hot knife thrust. George!

Fear for himself had made him want to flee from the danger, flee from the awful noise and fearsome silence, flee to the light. But this fear took on a different quality- rising above and blotting out all else. Fear not for himself.

This fear sent him reeling, stumbling into the choking dust, to the jaws of the monster lying ominously silent.

George!

“George!”

“It's all right, Eric. I heard it coming.”

The steady voice from the dust was followed by a ghostly pinpoint of light and the sound of familiar steps.

Eric stepped aside to let George pass, and overflowing with a great contentment, walked out behind his mate.

* Henderson J.B. Fear: Australian Short Stories. Moscow: Progress publishers, 1975, pp. 297-300.