Golden Soak by Hammond Innes

Author:Hammond Innes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

The news that the men were missing did not go out on the Jarra Jarra radio until five that afternoon. The search had taken us over three hours, for the way into the mine from the old shearing shed was no more than a pilot gallery barely 4 feet high. It had been driven from the second level in 1934, when the eastward end of the reef had become so narrow it was no longer workable, and there were innumerable offshoots where the miners had probed in the hope of striking a widening of the quartz band. All these had to be explored crawling on our hands and knees. That was after we had reached the second level and had found the gallery blocked by a new fall at the point where they had ceased mining the reef.

After he had sent the call out, Ed Garrety went straight to his room to have a bath. He looked grey and ill, and he didn't want to talk about it. He was over fifty and had been in a Jap P.O.W. camp for two years during the war. Now he had been at full stretch for over thirty-six hours with no sleep and very little food. But he wouldn't eat. Janet took him a cup of tea which was all he seemed to want. 'He's very tired.' She looked very tired herself, the eyes overbright and her face pinched.

'If he gets some sleep ... I put some whisky in it. Do you think he'll drink it? He doesn't usually touch liquor.' Her voice was flat with exhaustion, but it was more mental than physical - a note of uneasiness in it, too. 'Would you like some?'

She gave us both a stiff whisky, pouring it from the bottle into tumblers, her hands trembling. We drank it neat while she cooked us a steak. And then we took the Land-Rover and went back to the mine. But it was a waste of time. We got as far as the shaft and that was all, the wooden head of it collapsed, the ladders gone and the open well of it blocked with debris about 140 feet down. There was dust and rubble everywhere, and remembering the poor sloping, the softness of the pillars, I didn't reckon it was even worth trying to get in by the shaft. Any attempt to reach the men would have to be made from the other entrance, and it would be slow work in the cramped space of that pilot gallery.

There was nothing we could do, so we went back to the homestead. Janet met us with the news that the Shire Clerk would be arriving from Nullagine around midnight with a team from Grafton Downs. Also, a mining engineer from Mt Newman was waiting to see me. He was Italian, a thickset hairy man who talked with an accent that sounded distinctly Welsh. He had been sent up to assess the situation and Ed Garrety was with him. He

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