A Time for Courage by Margaret Graham Page A

caught up with Sam who was relighting his pipe in a hacked-out bay of the main seam. They walked on together, their arms knocking, their feet kicking up dust which caught in their throats. Though he would have liked to stay for longer, Harry knew it put the men on edge to have the boss and the owner’s son standing behind them as they worked, and besides, Eliza was preparing one of her cream teas for them.
    And then he stopped, every muscle tense. He knew before he heard the creak, knew from the feeling which made his hands go cold; but nothing had happened, yet. It was not a feeling that had been growing as they walked – it was a sudden knowledge, a certainty which stopped him in his tracks and made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He half-turned, oblivious to everything else, not knowing whether Sam had also stopped, only knowing that he must listen to the next sound, listen hard for it above the noise of the mine; knowing that in a moment his world had changed from normality to crisis, from contentment to animal instinct. It would come and his world had ended, his life forced from his body if he couldn’t place the next small sound.
    He held quite still, his eyes straining into the darkness which lay beyond the candle’s glow and there it was again, a creak; above him of course but to the left or to the right? He couldn’t decide. He breathed through his mouth to hear just that fraction better. The dust made him want to cough but he did not, he could not afford to miss the next warning but where was it coming from, God damn it? Where?
    There was a creak again, but faint, and he wanted to call for silence but that would distract him for perhaps a vital moment. If only it wasn’t so dark. Then there was a crack. A noise which was taken up again and again. He strained to hear above the drilling, the rumbling of the trolleys, the shouts of the men. He strained to see into the thick darkness.
    He held his breath and looked for Sam who was also standing quite still, waiting with his head cocked, his face tense and strained in the flicker of the candle-light. Christ, which way to move? To the left, or to the right or to stay here? Where was safety? There was too much darkness outside the flicker of his candle, too much darkness all around, pressing down on them, a thousand feet of heavy darkness pressing and cracking and coming to suck the breath from him. He was panting now, breathing up in his throat, trying to think, trying to hear because he had to guess right. Now there was no more time though how did he know that? He just did.
    He moved then, to the right, gripping Sam, pulling him with him, feeling the canvas of his jacket, feeling the weight of the man resisting his slowness, but he did not let go. The cracking was louder but still the ceiling held though the dust was coming down now, dousing his candle, Sam’s candle – but not before he had seen the man’s face in the last flicker of the light, seen the fear which must have mirrored his own.
    He hauled hard, sweating with effort, bracing his feet and taking Sam as though in a rugby tackle, letting his own weight take them across the main seam. Christ, let me be right, he groaned, and knew that he spoke aloud because he could taste the grit in his open mouth. Then it came, the roar that Harry had known would come in that first moment, which was probably only a few seconds ago. A grinding roar which exploded into bursting air, knocking them hard into the rock wall, blowing the breath from his body, hurling him down, on to the ground so hard that he thought his ribs were broken. And then he waited for the crushing weight of the tumbling ore to bear down and finish him, finish Sam. He reached out for the man, finding his arm and gripping it, not wanting to be alone when it came; and all the time there was a roaring.
    But he had guessed right and no great weight came cutting into him or Sam. There was only pressure that hurt his ears, dust that whirled and