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He would not add the oil to the common stock of his gang, but would save and sell it. "I knew these workings before you were born," Janki Meah used to reply; "I don't want the light to get my coal out by, and I am not going to help you. The oil is mine, and I intend to keep it." A strange man in many ways was Janki Meah, the white-haired, hot tempered, sightless weaver who had turned pitman.
'If the water has reached the smoking-gallery, said Janki, 'all the Company's pumps can do nothing for three days. 'It is very hot, moaned Jasoda, the Meah basket-woman. 'There is a very bad air here because of the lamps. 'Put them out, said Janki; 'why do you want lamps? The lamps were put out and the company sat still in the utter dark.
Somebody rose quietly and began walking over the coals. It was Janki, who was touching the walls with his hands. 'Where is the ledge? he murmured to himself. 'Sit, sit! said Kundoo. 'If we die, we die. The air is very bad. But Janki still stumbled and crept and tapped with his pick upon the walls. The women rose to their feet. 'Stay all where you are.
The pony would come to his side, and Janki Meah would clamber on to its back and be taken at once to the plot of land which he, like the other miners, received from the Jimahari Company.
'Without doubt God gives the blind knowledge, said Kundoo, with a look at Unda. 'Let it be as you say. I, for my part, do not know where lies the gallery of Tibu's gang, but I am not a withered monkey who needs oil to grease his joints with. Kundoo swung out of the hut laughing, and Unda giggled. Janki turned his sightless eyes towards his wife and swore.
Kundoo was a great workman, and did his best not to get drunk, because, when he had saved forty rupees, Unda was to steal everything that she could find in Janki's house and run with Kundoo to a land where there were no mines, and every one kept three fat bullocks and a milch-buffalo. While this scheme ripened it was his custom to drop in upon Janki and worry him about the oil-savings.
All day long except on Sundays and Mondays when he was usually drunk he worked in the Twenty-Two shaft of the Jimahari Colliery as cleverly as a man with all the senses. At evening he went up in the great steam-hauled cage to the pit-bank, and there called for his pony a rusty, coal-dusty beast, nearly as old as Janki Meah.
'I have land, and I have sold a great deal of lamp-oil, mused Janki; 'but I was a fool to marry this child. A week later the Rains set in with a vengeance, and the gangs paddled about in coal-slush at the pit-banks. Then the big mine-pumps were made ready, and the Manager of the Colliery ploughed through the wet towards the Tarachunda River swelling between its soppy banks.
There was a rush in the dark, and Janki felt the first man's face hit his knees as the Sonthal scrambled up the ledge. 'Who? cried Janki. 'I, Sunua Manji. 'Sit you down, said Janki. 'Who next? One by one the women and the men crawled up the ledge which ran along one side of 'Bullia's Room. Degraded Muhammadan, pig-eating Musahr and wild Sonthal, Janki ran his hand over them all.
They formed a line in the darkness and Janki led them for a pit-man in a strange pit is only one degree less liable to err than an ordinary mortal underground for the first time. At last they saw a flare-lamp, and Gangs Janki, Mogul, and Rahim of Twenty-Two stumbled dazed into the glare of the draught-furnace at the bottom of Five: Janki feeling his way and the rest behind.
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