The Earth Lords Page 7

  Again he went through the slow process of waiting to see if the noise had awakened any of his chain-mates, this time holding the broken-off top end of the staple in his fingers.

  But they slept on. At the end of another ten minutes he put the end of the staple into the one pocket of his leather jacket which still had no hole. There should be no evidence left behind that would let his guards guess how he had escaped. He got a grim pleasure from imagining their puzzlement. He would simply, inexplicably, be gone from the chain and the chamber.

  He moved more carefully and silently than he had ever moved in his life before. Now, with escape close, he was determined not to be tripped up by any small clumsiness or mistake. Carefully he checked with his fingers along the lengths of chain to right and left of the leg-iron that had held the staple. There was slack in the linked metal both ways and that slack lay silently on the boards of their common bed-surface.

  His fingers felt their way back to the now topless staple. They closed on the chain that lay between the broken uprights. Slowly and as silently as possible he began to lift up, freeing the chain from what was left of the staple.

  The links of iron chinked against each other as they were lifted—but there was no change in the night sounds around him. No sign of the sleepers waking. His movement of that part of the chain he held necessarily made audible movements in its further links where they lay on the wooden planks at each side of his right leg. Small movements, but to him the noise each made in moving was heart-stopping.

  But the sleepers continued to sleep, the snorers to snore. The moment finally came when the chain was completely free of the staple, and he was able to draw back his leg—carefully, so that the leg iron itself would not scrape on the boards below it—and lay the freed length of chain silently down.

  He waited again for a couple of minutes. Then, slowly and in utter silence, he began to lift his body on his arms to the foot of the bed, then to extend first his right leg, then his left, silently over the edge of the bed onto the floor below. And finally to lever himself forward and stand upright, legs well apart, so that the irons still on his legs should not strike against each other and make more noise.

  At last, he stood upright and free in the utter darkness. He felt behind him with the palm of his hand for ends of the planks that made up the bed. When he found them, he turned, using them as a guide, and began softly, step by step, to move toward the entrance that would let him out into the tunnel beyond.

  He knew the distance to that entrance to the inch. His eyes had measured it at every opportunity. His mind had divided that distance countless times by the length of the foot movements he was used to taking as part of the chained line of men, so that he knew the number of steps he must take to leave the sleeping chamber.

  With his left hand touching the ends of the bed-planks as he went, he moved slowly past the sleepers . . . until at last his outstretched right hand touched the rough rock at the right edge of the entrance.

  His left hand went on to find the left edge of the entrance. He found it; and he turned, following his left hand around the comer of the hewn rock, into the tunnel, facing now in the direction the map in his head had told him would lead him eventually toward the front of the mine and the exit; past whatever guardhouse existed there, to the surface and freedom.

  Rapidly he left the sleeping chamber behind him. His shoes, like those of all the prisoners who had been there more than a few months, had fallen apart quickly in the damp air and on the rocky surfaces; and he moved silently in bare feet protected by the thick callouses on their soles.

  The barriers to escape for the prisoners had always been massive but clumsy, just like the mining itself. One of the prisoners who had come after Bart into their chained working group, but who had lasted only a month or so before dying, had once been a miner; and he had told the rest of them that those in charge here were working the mine both carelessly and amateurishly. They were working only on the richest veins they could find, and driving more tunnel than they needed in proportion to the ore they brought out. They seemed to prefer to use brute strength rather than cleverness in getting gold from the rock.

  The same attitude was apparent in the way they held their prisoners. The prisoners were not worked effectively. The killing conditions under which they lived wasted a large amount of the strength they originally had when they were first brought in, and the work that might have been gotten out of them under more humane conditions. In the same way the barriers to their escape were obvious but simple. The leg-irons and the chains were one; (he lightlessness that the prisoners were kept in at all times except when they were either working or going to and from work, was another.

  But Bart had now defeated both things. True, his mental map did not show all of the tunnels and workings of the mine, but it showed enough of them so that he could deduce the mine’s general pattern.

  That pattern, happily, was excessively simple. For all practical purposes the mine was all on one level. When an ore-bearing vein plunged downward too steeply, the mine managers simply went and found another vein, rather than digging down and creating a lower level of tunnels and workings. Also, even on its single level, the pattern was a simple layout of workings and tunnels branching out on both sides from a single main tunnel, that lit way through which Arthur, Emma and the rest had moved as Bart and his team had stood and watched them pass.

  Those who managed the mine evidently had assumed that even if a prisoner should get loose, he would still be helpless by reason of the utter darkness of the tunnels. They had evidently believed this because they, themselves, would have been helpless, there in the dark. So they had not imagined someone like Bart, who would learn to live by touch, to know by feel the very walls he passed; and who had counted his steps, translating them into actual feet and inches. Essentially, he told himself, now, all he had to do was find his way to the central tunnel and then follow that toward the front of the mine rather than to its rear.

  In the darkness, even the guards like Gregory would never have been able to do this. But Bart went as confidently, once he had left the sleeping chamber, as if the route was brightly lit all the way.

  Ironically, in this case, he was discarding all the other routes he had worked out over the months in his head, and was simply following the route Gregory had taken them on earlier this same laboring period, to the new working. That way had led them directly to the large chamber and the main tunnel. It had to be the main tunnel, or the party containing Arthur and Emma would not have passed through it. To say nothing of the fact that their route had lamps permanently fixed to its wall, which was a sure indication that it could only be the main tunnel.

  He could hear as he went the sound of his regular breathing and the light scrape of his foot callouses on the rocky floor underfoot, even these slight sounds magnified by the echoes of the mine, and by the lack of competing sounds for his ears. Under the light touch of his fingertips—right hand against rocky wall, now—the rough surface of the tunnel side slipped past.

  His legs still automatically moved in the short, regular steps conditioned in them by the length of chain that had measured him from the man who had walked just in front of him. He was content’ that they Should move that way, so that he could be sure of the distance covered with each step and the accuracy of his count of the distance to the entrance in the wall of this tunnel that he sought next.

  Twice his fingertips lost contact with rock and touched air for a brief moment before they made contact with the stone side of the tunnel again. But these were side tunnel entrances he knew and had expected.

  Only forty-two more steps now, according to his mental map, before he came to the tunnel junction he sought; the one at which Gregory had made his first turn yesterday on his way leading them to a new work-place and site of that chamber where he had glimpsed Arthur and Emma.

  Forty-two, forty-one, forty . . . he counted off the steps; and, as he counted the numeral one his fingers slid once more into empty air.<
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  He halted; and turned right.

  His right hand reached out and found the wall of the other tunnel leading away from the one he had been following at an angle of some forty degrees. He began to move along this new route. Roughly an eighth of a mile of underground going; and, five turns later, he stepped into the large chamber.

  There were no lamps illuminating the far wall now. Bart stood for a moment, staring into darkness but seeing, in his mind’s eye, the chamber just as he had seen it that one time previously. So far he had encountered no light in any tunnel, nor heard any sound that might indicate anyone else was moving in the mine near him. But now, as soon as he should cross the chamber to the wall where the lamps had burned, he would be both in unfamiliar territory and in the one tunnel where his chances of encountering someone would be considerably increased.

  He hesitated, searching the darkness before him with his nose sniffing for any scent of burning lamp fuel and his ears strained to pick up any sound, no matter how distant, of movement along the way he planned to go.

  But he smelled and heard nothing.

  Satisfied, he began to move again. Fifteen hours before there would have been no doubt about which way he would have gone. He would have turned and followed the left wall with his hand—a wall he had seen had only one other tunnel opening before the opening of the main tunnel leading to the mine entrance, so that he could not go wrong.

  Now there was still no doubt. But it was not to the left he would turn. It was to the right, in the way the party they had watched had taken Emma.

  chapter

  five

  THERE WERE TWO ways of crossing the lightless space before him. One was to feel his way around the wall to his right until he came to the opening that would be another entrance. Whatever entrance he found that way should stand a very large chance of being the opening to the main tunnel that Emma’s party had taken. He remembered, though, that outward-curving wall he had seen in silhouette against the dim lighting in the chamber, before—he had not been able to see past it, and there remained the chance that between where he stood now and the main tunnel he wanted to follow, there might be other tunnel openings. If there were one or more such intervening entrances and he simply turned into the first opening he came to, thinking it was the main tunnel, he could indeed become lost.

  His other route was to trust to the image of the room in his memory, and walk directly forward across the open middle of the chamber until he came to the far wall. Any wall encountered by going straight forward in a straight line must be the wall he had seen lit up, essentially that part of the main tunnel with the fixed—if now unlit—lamps, which ran through the chamber. He need only turn right then, keeping his fingers touching the wall, and he would be certain to be headed down the main route in the way Emma and the others had gone.

  The second way was the sure one—unless he went astray in the darkness with no wall to touch; and walked in a curve or off at an angle, so that he hit the wall to his left or right before he came up against the wall straight ahead. He knew that in the dark most men tended to walk at a slight angle or a curve when thinking they were traveling in a straight line. If he ended up doing that, he would already be lost. For he would then have no way of knowing which way to turn, right or left, to go where he wanted. He could end up at the mine entrance or in some abandoned tunnel.

  He stood for a second more, thinking it over. Even as he thought, he could see clearly in his mind’s eye how the chamber had looked. It could not be more than fifty feet to the wall he wanted to reach. He must take the bold way.

  He closed his eyes and let go of the wall he presently touched. Touching nothing, hands outstretched, he concentrated on the picture in his mind. Then, step by step, he began to walk across it—not the real, darkness-filled chamber which his body occupied—but that remembered room in his mind.

  He counted his steps as he went. Fifty feet had been his estimate at the time; and he must trust himself. Fifty feet would have been a little over thirty-four of his chain-limited—and now accustomed—steps. If he hit a wall more than half a dozen steps before then, he had most certainly curved off and gone astray. If he went more than a few steps beyond those thirty-four it was possible that he had simply made the distance longer by angling off in coming to the wall he sought—but there would also be a strong possibility that he had taken a large curve into some farther intervening section of the chamber, or toward a side wall. In either case he would then face the question whether to continue to go to his right, hoping that whatever entrance he came to was the right entrance.

  “. . . twenty-four,” he counted in his mind, “twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven . . .”

  —so far, so good.

  “. . . twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Thirty.” He was getting close to the critical number of thirty-four. “Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four—”

  He paused at thirty-four and reached out as far as he could in front of him; but felt only air.

  He began to move again, slowly, one step at a time.

  “Thirty-five . . . thirty-six . . .” He was walking now with his arms at full length before him like a blind man feeling his way in unfamiliar territory—“thirty-seven . . . thirty-eight . . .”

  His fingers still touched nothing but air. He stopped. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest; and, almost savagely, he willed it to slow down. He ordered his mind and body to calmness. Panic would do nothing to help him if he was indeed astray. He took up his careful movement forward with arms outstretched.

  “Thirty-nine—”

  His fingers bumped hardness. He stepped hastily forward in the first long stride he had taken in a year and a half; and the toes of his right foot bumped cruelly against rough, vertical stone. He flung his whole body against it, the right side of his face pressed to it, his arms outstretched and his hands laid flat against its surface in a feeling of relief as strong as love.

  For several moments he merely stood clinging to it as someone lost overboard from a ship might cling to a piece of drifting timber he had been swept against by the waves.

  Gradually, the feeling of relief ebbed.

  He had found a wall. But was it the wall he sought?

  If this was the one he had seen Arthur and Emma pass, there were the lanterns fixed to it, half a foot or so below ceiling level, and at a distance from each other that he had estimated at some thirty feet. He reached with his hands high on the wall and went right.

  He reached up to touch the corner above him where wall met ceiling. He could reach it easily with his upraised arm half bent. Holding it so, he shuffled along, counting his steps to measure the distance.

  “One, two, three—”

  His forearm below his wrist jarred painfully against something hard and thin, projecting at right angles from the wall. Almost in the same moment his elbow touched something underneath it.

  He felt downward with his hand, and his fingers touched the slick glass sides of a mine lantern in its metal case. He felt a second’s longing for one of the matches he always used to carry, but they had been taken from him long ago, with anything else that might have been of use to him. Then common sense reasserted itself, and he remembered he dared not light it, in any case. Not only would its illumination attract the attention and curiosity of anyone looking down the tunnel, but the fact of the matter was that the darkness gave him an advantage over anyone coming toward him. In fact, if anyone should come, his first effort should be to put out any light the other was carrying.

  He dropped his arm. The lantern did not matter, anyway. It was merely proof of what he had needed to know. He was against the wall he had had to find. He needed now only to keep it on his left, to go in the way Emma had gone.

  His sense of relief was a calmer, but a more lasting thing, this time. He made himself stop and think.

  He had been in a number of different parts of the mine in the past months. Sometimes the workings they were taken to required crossing the main tunne
l, according to the map in his head, and sometimes they simply went deeper into the rock, but stayed on the same side of the main tunnel.

  It should be safe to assume that they would always be working at the farthest point at which the mine had followed the veins of gold ore into the mountain. If that was so, then it was only reasonable to assume that the main tunnel—though Bart’s working group had never worked on it—was only driven forward when necessary to keep up with the progress of the workings that were being dug forward on either side of it.

  He had always assumed, therefore, that the main tunnel went merely to a dead end; no farther than the farthest of the workings to which he had been taken.

  So, since only yesterday Gregory had taken them to a new working, crossing the main tunnel here in the process, then the main tunnel itself should go for only a short distance more, then stop.

  But if that was so, what was that considerable party doing, headed down it, beyond the chamber in which he had seen them? Above all, where had Emma and her brother been taken? Certainly not just to see the wall of rock at the end of a tunnel.

  Where was Emma now?

  She could not have been brought into the mine for any good reason. The only reason for being here was to take out gold-laden ore; and she was not physically fitted to be a miner—for that matter, Arthur would probably have lasted no more than a week or two in one of the chained groups.

  They must have been headed toward something Bart could not even imagine. There remained, he knew, the possibility that Emma and her group had returned up the tunnel in the time that had passed since he had seen them. But he did not believe that. Whatever it was that they went to, it must be important, and that implied time—it was more likely than not that they were still down that tunnel to his right. Something inside him was certain Emma had gone down it and not come back. Perhaps Arthur had been condemned by his fellow Scottites to something, and Emma had insisted on sharing whatever sentence had been given to her brother. It would be just like her to do something like that.