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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374810" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Rescue</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THERE’S a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft,<br>Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft:<br>‘Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call—<br>Run, you fool! Number Two’s gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall!<br>Say, hello! there below—any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life?<br>‘Heave away!’ says the knocker. ‘They’ve started. God be praised, he’s no youngsters or wife!’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur,<br>And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir<br>With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague frightened murmur of birds,<br>With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticulate words.<br>From the black belt of bush come the miners, and they gather by Mack on the brace,<br>Out of breath, barely clad, and half-wakened, with a question in every face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Who’s below?’ ‘Where’s the fall?’ Didn’t I tell you?—Didn’t I say that them sets wasn’t sound?’<br>‘Is it Fred? He was reckless was Baker; now he’s seen his last shift underground.’<br>‘And his mate? Where is Sandy M‘Fadyn?’ ’Sandy’s snoring at home on his bunk.’<br>‘Not at work! Name o’ God! a foreboding?’ ‘A foreboding be hanged! He is drunk!’<br>Take it steady there, lads!’ the boss orders. He is white to the roots of his hair.<br>We may get him alive before daybreak if he’s close to the face and has air.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the dim drive with ardour heroic two facemen are pegging away.<br>Long and Coots in the rise heard her thunder, and they fled without word or delay<br>Down the drive, and they rushed for the ladders, and they went up the shaft with a run,<br>For they knew the weak spot in the workings, and they guessed there was graft to be done.<br>Number Two was pitch dark, and they scrambled to the plat and they made for the face,<br>But the roof bad come down fifty yards in, and the reef was all over the place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fresher men from the surface replace them, and they’re hauled up on top for a blow;<br>When a life and death job is in doing there’s room only for workers below.<br>Bare-armed, and bare-chested, and brawny, with a grim, meaning set of the jaw,<br>The relay hurries in to the rescue, caring not for the danger a straw;<br>’Tis not toil, but a battle, they’re called to, and like Trojans the miners respond,<br>For a dead man lies crushed ’neath the timbers, or a live man is choking beyond.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By the faint, yellow glow of the candles, where the dank drive is hot with their breath,<br>On the verge of the Land of the Shadow, waging war breast to bosom with Death,<br>How they struggle, these giants! and slowly, as the trucks rattle into the gloom,<br>Inch by inch they advance to the conquest of a prison—or is it a tomb?<br>And the working’s re-echo a volley as the timbers are driven in place;<br>Then a whisper is borne to the toilers ‘Boys, his mother is there on the brace!’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like veterans late into action, fierce with longing to hew and to hack,<br>Riordan’s shift rushes in to relieve them, and the toil-stricken men stagger back.<br>‘Stow the stuff, mates, wherever there’s stowage! Run the man on the brace till he drops!<br>There’s no time to think on this billet! Bark the heels of the trucker who stops!<br>Keep the props well in front, and be careful. He’s in there, and alive, never fret.’<br>But the grey dawn is softening the ridges, and the word has not come to us yet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still the knocker rings out, and the engine shrieks and strains like a creature in pain<br>As the cage rushes up to the surface and drops back into darkness again.<br>By the capstan a woman is crouching. In her eyes neither hope nor despair;<br>But a yearning that glowers like frenzy bids those who’d speak pity forbear.<br>Like a figure in stone she is seated till the labour of rescue be done.<br>For the father was killed in the Phoenix, and the son—Lord of pity! the son?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Hello! there on top!’ they are calling. ‘They are through! He is seen in the drive!’<br>‘They have got him—thank Heaven! they’ve got him, and oh, blessed be God, he’s alive!’<br>‘Man on! heave away!’ ‘Step aside, lads; let his mother be first when he lands.’<br>She was silent and strong in her anguish; now she babbles and weeps where she stands,<br>And the stern men, grown gentle, support her at the mouth of the shaft, till at last<br>With a rush the cage springs to the landing, and her son’s arms encircle her fast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She has cursed the old mine for its murders, for the victims its drives have ensnared,<br>Now she cries a great blessing upon it for the one precious life it has spared.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edward+George+Dyson">Edward George Dyson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374810" data-title="The Rescue de Edward George Dyson" data-description="THERE’S a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft,
Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft:
‘Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a ca..."></div>
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