[Sam P. Davis, Mark Haverly, from Short Stories (1886)]

 

MARK HAVERLY.

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            He was an engineer working in the Belcher.  He was noted for his grit, attention to business, and superstitions. One day a comrade was passing, and Mark called him up with : " Jack, do you hear that noise—a sort of a grinding sound that comes and goes ? Hark ! can't you hear it now ?"

            "It's just like any machinery makes."

            " No, no, Jack ; it don't belong to the machinery ; it's a voice, I tell you, from the other world. I've heard that sound for two days now, and it means death, death close at hand, and no power on earth can stave it off."

            " Oil the engine a little, old boy, and it'll be all right."

            The other passed on and went down the shaft. Mark, meanwhile, bent his ear to the machinery, and out of the indistinguishable din of a dozen sounds caught this strange noise which had such an influence upon him, heard it constantly above the clank of levers, the roar of wheels, and the hiss of steam. Presently a bell sounded at his side. It was the signal from the 2,000 level to hoist the cage. He pressed the lever, and the great reel began to whirl the cable from the lower depths. His eye followed the long finger of the indicator as it slowly pointed out the stations passed. The cage had almost reached the top when the horrible grinding noise, like a moan from the

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grave, came from the machinery at his side. The sound made his nerves melt. He turned his head toward the spot shuddering, while his hand, as it clasped the lever, was like a child's. The cage shot up from the shaft's mouth ; he grasped the lever and threw his weight upon the brake. Too late ; the cage rushed into the "sheaves."

            The floor of the cage became vertical as it struck the wheel. The cable stretched under the fearful strain, snapped like a thread, and the cage fell back to the shaft's mouth. Three of its occupants had leaped upon the timbers and hung suspended ; the other two had made the same leap, but their fingers slipped from the slimy timbers made so by the long contact with the vapors from the mine, and one after another they fell headlong down the shaft.

            Meanwhile Mark had stopped his engine, resumed his coat, and staggered out of the works. On such occasions an engineer is considered discharged without notice. He actually ceases to be in the employ of the company when the cage strikes the " sheaves," and such an accident makes his discharge perpetual with every mine on the Comstock.

            For the next week or two he wandered about the town like a man barely in his senses. He finally got work under ground, but was oftener found somewhere about the hoisting works, near the machinery. He would, at times, sit for hours watching the work of those metallic giants, occasionally turning toward the mouth of the shaft with a shudder, and again bending his head to catch what he called the " death moan." His comrades said he was "a little off. "

            One day the writer entered into a conversation with him. His superstition had not left him. " I tell you,"

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said he, " I've studied everything about a mine, above ground and below. You brutes who write for the press take a sneering view of everything. You laugh when I say an engine gives warning of death. You call this piece of machinery a thing inanimate. I tell you that it has a construction in all respects like a man. It has lungs and sinews, and a big heart that throbs and pulsates. It has its fatigues from overwork. At times it whirls merrily, and work seems nothing ; then it groans and labors as if exhausted. We treat it as we do the sick. When its lungs get clogged with " scale " we feed it a composition that makes it well again. It has a voice always, and roars, sings, groans, laughs, and sobs in turn. When I touch a lever I feel a magnetism such as flows from flesh and blood.

            " The dark levels below us are full of mysteries. I learn more and more of their secrets every year. You remember how Jack Henly died. He fainted on the Ophir cage, and went down the shaft. A few days before it I noticed as I worked beside him how the flame of his candle pointed directly toward him like a mariner's needle. Whenever he moved the flame followed. He didn't notice it, but I did, and it had a wavy, uncertain motion for a day or so. One day it became steady, as steady as if carved in stone. I knew the crisis was not far off. We came up on the cage ; as we passed the first station the flame burned low, and at the twelve-fifty station it was almost gone. Suddenly it went out ; Jack reeled back against the timbers, and was twisted under the cage at once. It was but a moment. I heard his dreadful cry ring out as his bones were crushed between the stage floor and the timbers, and his body shot down the shaft.

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            "Hawkins, who used to work for Joe Cowan, had the same kind of a warning. Wherever he worked a shadow kept close to him on the rock. His lantern made one shadow, but this was a deeper and darker one, and had separate motions, and it seemed to get blacker every shift he worked till a blast tore away his chest. I have seen a man's light blow out, and, in a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, keep right over his head. Such a man had better leave the mines at once.

            " When I worked in the Savage I used to see a shift of spectres working, most generally at the foot of the incline, but sometimes in the east drift of the 1750. There was about half a dozen of 'em at work as a rule, but sometimes more. They would pick away in the face of the drift and make no sound, and pale lights burned at their sides. When the five o'clock whistle blew in the morning they would vanish.

            "Once I saw a man sitting down on the steps of the incline ; he was in my way, and I touched him on the shoulder. Heavens ! how I sprang back ; for there was no flesh and bones there—only a shadow as it were. He turned round, and his face was half gone and his shoulder torn away, from a blast. Blood was streaming from the wounds. He then walked down the incline, and melted into the vapors that rise from the waters of the sump. The next day John Owens slipped at that very spot, and, unable to hold on to the slimy timbers, fell into the boiling water. He was cooked like a lobster.

            " At times one hears strange voices. Ghostly voices call to each other from drift to drift ; there are whisperings in the rocks, and terrible groans in the sides of the cross-cuts. In the Belcher I once heard a fearful shriek

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come from the winze. It echoed from drift to drift, and startled everybody. I rushed to where the sound was, but there was nothing. Bill Sharon don't dare to go down the Yellow Jacket. The last time he did a troop of miners sheeted in flame followed him along the drifts to the foot of the shaft. He rushed to the cage like a madman, and rang for the quick-hoist. When the cage reached the top he lay on the floor insensible. He never told what it was ; but I know."

            Thus the poor fellow would spend hours telling of the mysterious sights and sounds he had encountered in the depths of the great lode. Sometimes he worked underground, but he always seemed discontented, even morose, because it was no longer permitted to him to grasp the lever of an engine. He felt a stain upon his reputation, and looked hopefully forward to the time when he could wipe it out.

            The opportunity came. One night he came into the South Consolidated works and sat watching the machinery. Suddenly he turned to the engineer and said : " I hear the death-moan on the wheels, Tom."

            Had the engineer looked at Mark's face, masked in a horrible pallor, he would have indeed thought the man heard a sob from the grave. Mark bent his head a little lower and waited. Out of the roar and rumble he heard only the " death-moan " as he called it. Suddenly the bell rang out so quick and sharp that both men were startled. It was the signal of danger and the quick hoist. The wheel began to whirl until the spokes mingled in a maze. A moment later, a puff of smoke drifted from the shaft's mouth, and then a shower of sparks. The mine was on fire.

            The cage came whizzing to the surface, and a crowd of

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half-naked men reeled off, blistered and half suffocated, into the dressing-rooms. The whistle of the mine sent forth a cry for help, and, in a few seconds more, other whistles took up the cry and bellowed forth their hoarse notes, from the North Consolidated to the Belcher. Scarcely was the cage emptied when those below signaled sharply for it to come down. It shot back into the depths almost as fast as if it had been dropped. The cable touched a piece of iron near the sheaves, and from the point of contact streamed a line of sparks. Another burst of smoke came up the shaft, and a sheet of flame followed for an instant. The timbers became a mass of fire. The hoisting works went like a tinder-box.

            The engineer must not only bring the cage to the surface, but must stop it there. The machinery was growing hot to the touch. The cage reached the bottom, and then came the signal to hoist. Just as he reversed the lever, a falling timber knocked him senseless at his post.

            A dozen men sprang to the unmanned engine ; but Mark was there first, and, picking up the body at his feet, he handed it to the nearest two men as if it had been a child, and merely said, "Take him away."

            A man close at his side leaned forward to grasp the lever, but he flung him back into the crowd. A flare of flames sent them all staggering away. Mark laid his hand upon the lever--the first time in five years—and grasped it with his old energy. The breath of hell was in his face. It would be a long minute and a half before the cage reached the surface, where he must prevent its dreadful ascent into the " sheaves." His hand held the lives of a dozen men. He faced the fire like a salamander. A prolonged cheer went up, and then the folds of red smoke covered him from sight.

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            The cage reached the shaft's mouth full of men, most of them insensible as they were dragged out. As Mark threw the lever back to its place and stopped the engines the flames closed about him. 'The Superintendent called out :

            " One thousand dollars to the man who saves him !"

            A dozen brave men had already started. It was too late ; the flames had overwhelmed him. Three days later the men whose lives he had saved dug among the ruins. Lying by the engine they found his charred remains, and stood by them awhile with uncovered heads. They bore away the remains of Mark Haverly in a box, and the next day three thousand mourners walked behind the coffin. As they pressed down the earth over his grave, and threw the last sprig of green down upon it, one of the pall-bearers remarked : " There was good leather in that man."