The Angry Tide (15 page)

_Book
Two

Chapter
One

Ross did not go back to London that year. The disaster at the mine occupied him for the better part of two months. He wrote a letter to Lord Falmouth explaining.

Demelza
, always looking for the bright side, said it could have been so much worse; and, for once, Ross had to agree with her. Two lives lost - that was the tragedy; but miners were constantly in danger. Three had been killed at Wheal Kitty last year - all in trifling accidents. One or two a year had been a natural wastage when Gramblcr was working. The miracle here was that a major disaster had killed so few.

There had been some miraculous escapes. Micky Green had been on his own in the 50 level and had heard the water coming - it had sounded, he said, like the burst of a boiler. He had run to a hummock of rising ground and climbed to a cross-piece of timber and clung there for two hours with the water surging and boiling round him. Then as the worst began to subside he had lowered himself, and cautiously, still waist deep, made for
the
nearest shaft. One of the Carters, a boy of thirteen, had hung back behind Sam because he was unable to swim, and when they were gone he had made his way up the lad
der - from which Sparrock had re
cendy been swept to his death - and had somehow avoided the worst of the falling debris and came to the surface bruised all over and as grey as a rat.

Chief honour for the minimal loss of life fell on Sam Carnc, but he was a difficult man to thank. He did not drink. He did not favour a party at which, inevitably, everyone else would get drunk. He shrugged off, smilingly, words of appreciation and usually tried to turn the conversation to the propects of Another Life than this. He seemed sometimes even
a little sadder about it all th
an he had any overt reason to be, and it took
Demelza
a while to discover the truth. Then she said: 'Oh, Sam
...
Oh, Sam. I'm that sorry. Oh, Sam, I feel it is part my fault.'

'No, no, sister, te
s far f
rom that. You did what you b'lie
ved to be best. And mebbe
twas f
or the best. The eternal Jehovah have thought fit to put this temporal burden upon me and I must thank Him for the privilege of His mercy and forgiveness. If I have sinned, then I must seek to be cleansed. If dear Emma have sinned then I do truly b
elieve that in the goodness of t
ime her spirit too will be cleansed and she will come to a new life in the spirit of Christ.'

It was hard at times to feel total sympathy for a young man who embellished his personal feelings with the language of revivalism, but
Demelza
, who knew her brother fairly well, perceived that under his genuine, burning religious faith he was suffering just as acutely as any man who sees the girl he dearly loves lost to him for ever. And sometimes, she saw, in the dark of the night he would wake and know - the earthy carnal side of him would know - that but for his religion he could have married her last year. Even maintaining his religion at a slightly less personal and intense level, he could still have married her.
Demelza
thought, too, that they would have been good for each other; Sam toning down Emma's vulgar high spirits, Emma charming and teasing Sam into a more homely approach to his faith.

But it was not to be; and Demelza felt unhappy for her part in it. Now Sam, hero of the whole community, found himself joyless, a
nd it was a joyle
ssness which for a while at least would affect his attitude to God and his flock.

Work soon began again in the 40-fathom level of Wheal Grace, and much later in the 50-fathom, but it was work of repair without ore being raised. The great flood had broken the pumping rods, and this was the first and most essential repair. Then in many places in the 50 level soft ore-bearing ground, which did not look likely to yield rich results, had been set aside in substantial piles while the better lodes were pursued; it was intended to be taken up whenever there was more time and less good work ahead. But the torrent of water had spread this around, along with whatever attic had been left, so that it had been sucked out of the caverns and blocked the tunnels. Men going down as the water was laboriously pumped out had found themselves knee-deep in mud and unable to get through to the paying lodes until the mud and the rock had been dug out and wheeled back to the kibbal buckets and hauled to the surface.

The water had brought down falls of rock, and in places the timber supports had collapsed, making the roof and sides dangerous. In an old book on minin
g Ross had read that 'after fyre
water be ye clement most penetrating and destructive.' So he found it. Since any normal method of payment was invalid while the mine was in such a state, he introduced the old Whip system, whereby the number of kibbals of mixed ore, attle, mud and stones that were brought to the surface each day were counted and a payment made per kibbal, divided equally among every person working at
the
mine.

At first they had wondered whether the present fire-engine would be able to cope with the vast amount of additional water. The 40-fathom level had soon cleared, but it was almost two weeks after the pump rods had been repaired that one saw a lowering of the water further down. Then it was inch by inch, day by day, and always the fear that autumnal rains would check the gain.

November came in wild and wet, but in the main the rain was fine stuff driven this way and that by
the
gales. At tim
es the wind was so thunderous th
at it drowned the roar of the sea. There had not been many substantial wrecks on Hendrawna recently, but two came ashore in the middle of the month: a small schooner outward bound from Truro to Dublin, carrying serges and carpets and paper, and a larger brig, with coal out of Swansea.

The schooner drifted in stern first and broke up below Wheal Leisure: the crew of four were saved, but the contents of the vessel vanished like magic in the wild wind and the rain. Ross, once he knew the crew was safe, discreetly kept his house; he wanted no repetition of
the
charges of 1790. The brig came ashore far up the beach, almost under the Dark Cliffs where no one lived at all, and seven of the nine crew were drowned. This wreck too was of value to the district, and few poor people went short of coal that winter. For the next month and more the tawny sands of Hendrawna were black-edged like a mourning card.

Towards the end of November Jeremy caught a cold, which developed into a cough, as usual, and he ran a fever. For the offspring of such healthy stock on both sides, he had a surprisingly weak chest. There was consumption enough in the villages, not only among forty-year-old miners, whose complaint was a natural consequence of the conditions in which they worked, but among the young, and there were special families where one after another of a handsome brood would cough and sicken and
the
. Sometimes a whole family of five children would be wiped out in five years, leaving behind two healthy parents without issue. Sometimes five or six out of eight would go. And this would be among children who had survived the perils of childhood and were just entering their teens. It ran in families, inexplicably, with the next-door house or cottage immune.

But Jeremy, who had been warm and cared for and never gone short in his life, was a chesty subject and therefore suspect.
Demelza
mentioned this to Dwight, who reassured her that he could detect no symptoms of phthisis.

On the afternoon of the 28th she came downstairs after sitting with Jeremy for an hour, and found Ross had returned in her absence. He was reading a book, standing over it by the window where the light was best. Even now they scarcely used the new library except on special occasions. She saw the book was
Mineralogia Cornubiensis,
published twenty years before by a surgeon from Redruth, one William Pryce, and the pages of it were as often thumbed by Ross as the Bible's were by Sam.

She went to peer out at the other window. This afternoon the clouds matched the colour of the beach: sagging bags of coal moving over the valley with the swiftness of the turning world. The lilac tree beside the window bent and quivered; her garden looked derelict; the unknown plant left her by Hugh Armitagc flattened its big green leaves against the library wall.

He said: 'Another month should
see
us working the 50 level again. It will have meant about three months' loss of output - that is all - if you count it just as profit and loss.'

'No one does that, Ross.'

'I wonder sometimes. Li
sten to this: this is what Pryce
says: "In some places, especially where a new adit is brought home to an old mine which has not been wrought in the memory of man, they have holed unexpectedly to the house of water before they thought themselves near to it, and have instantly perished. Great precaution must therefore be taken, and a hole should be bored with an iron rod to the distance of a fathom or two so that before breaking the ground with a pick-axe they may have timely notice of the bursting forth of the water. This advice however may not be relished by those who are impatient to be rich and value a little money more than the lives of their fellow creatures."'

'What is that saying? When the damage is done everyone is wise?'

'Presumably I was impatient to be rich and valued a little money more than the lives of my fellow creatures.'

Demelza
pushed her hair back impatiently. 'You know that to be untrue, so why say it? Money was never the important thing in your mind. Not like the time when the mine fell in - then we were living from hand to mouth, and maybe a risk was something we
had
to take. So you could reproach yourself then. Not now.'

Ross closed the book. 'All the same, what Pryce says makes uncomfortable reading.' 'Then don't read it.'

Ross half smiled: 'The more I hear of your reasoning, the more specious it sounds.'

'I don't know what specious means,'
Demelza
said, picking at a small cut in her thumb.

'Well - nor I, to be exact. Plausible but devoid of inner truth -that's as near as I can get.'

'That's near enough. Well, your specious wife thinks tis time you stopped plaguing your conscience with specious arguments as to why you are to blame for the errors of the whole specious world!'

'You'll make it sound like a swear word soon.'

'That's what it is,' said
Demelza
.

Ross laughed and picked up the book. 'I'll take this back where it belongs. And my uneasy conscience too.' He peered out through the same window as
Demelza
. 'God, look at those clouds.'

She said: 'Did you go into the Maiden workings yesterday?'

'Yes. They're dry enough, for all the water has drained into Grace. They're dry, that is, except for the stinking mud. But the air's so bad we could hardly venture any distance. All the mud and attle tipped down the shafts, instead of preventing water accumulating, imprisoned it; and there's no air from the shafts at all.'

'I don't like you going down,' said
Demelza
. ‘I
always think what happened to Francis.'

'He went on his own. And would you have me shrink from the tasks I expect others to do?'

'No,' she said, 'I can bear you as you are. But I don't want to lose you as you are.'

He put his hand on her arm. 'Are
you fretting about Jeremy?'

'No, no. I just wish the fever would abate.'

From this window they could see a few lights beginning to wink up at the mine.

'Would you like Dwight to come again? I can send Benjy Carter.' T thought not to bother him, Ross. Sarah is none too well, he says.'

Ross looked up. 'Sarah?'

Demelza raised her dark eyebr
ows at him. 'Sarah. His own littl
e girl. Why do you look so strange?' 'Do I? No. I could not think who you meant.' 'She has caught a cold like Jeremy. There are so many about. Half the countryside is snorting and sniffing.'

'Ah,' said Ross. 'Well, yes. I suppose.' He patted her arm again and went through the dining-room into the library.

She put coal on the fire, watched a spurt of smoke billow into the room as the uncertain wind eddied about the chimney. Then she went to the piano and began to play a piece she knew by heart, a simplified sonata by Scarlatti that Mrs Kemp had taught her.

Ross came in again. 'I had forgot,' he said. 'There is some unfinished business up at the mine. It will take me about an hour. It will be - well, I'll be back in good time for supper.'

She nodded, hair over brow, tongue between teeth and hp, where it tended to go when she was playing. But presently she heard a clatter on the cobbles and she went out to the kitchens.

'Has Captain Poldark taken his horse?
’

'Yes, ma'am. John have saddled it for 'n.'

'To go up to the mine?'

'Dunno, ma'am. He just say to John, he say, I'm taking Sheridan.'