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"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.
They could hear her heart beating in thick, sick bumps. "Slowly, slowly," said Janki. "I am an old man, and I forget many things. This is Tibu's gallery, but where are the four bricks where they used to put their huqa fire on when the Sahibs never saw? Slowly, slowly, O you people behind." They heard his hands disturbing the small coal on the floor of the gallery and then a dull sound.
But the flight had no panic in it. Men had run over from Five with astounding news, and the foremen could not hold their gangs together. Presently, surrounded by a clamorous crew, Gangs Rahim, Mogul, and Janki, and ten basket-women, walked up to report themselves, and pretty little Unda stole away to Janki's hut to prepare his evening meal.
'Water has come into Twenty-Two. God knows where are the others. I have brought these men from Tibu's gallery in our cutting; making connection through the north side of the gallery. Take us to the cage, said Janki Meah. At the pit-bank of Twenty-Two, some thousand people clamoured and wept and shouted. One hundred men one thousand men had been drowned in the cutting.
Janki Meah glared at Kundoo, but, as Janki Meah was blind, Kundoo was not impressed. He had come to argue with Janki Meah, and, if chance favored, to make love to the old man's pretty young wife. This was Kundoo's grievance, and he spoke in the name of all the five men who, with Janki Meah, composed the gang in Number Seven gallery of Twenty-Two.
All through those thirty years he had regularly, every morning before going down, drawn from the overseer his allowance of lamp-oil just as if he had been an eyed miner. What Kundoo's gang resented, as hundreds of gangs had resented before, was Janki Meah's selfishness. He would not add the oil to the common stock of his gang, but would save and sell it.
Pigji! Dogji! What do these fat slugs from Calcutta know? He draws and draws and draws, and talks and talks and talks, and his maps are all wrong. I, Janki, know that this is so. When a man has been shut up in the dark for thirty years, God gives him knowledge. The old gallery that Tibu's gang made is not six feet from Number Five.
An hour the men worked, and then the women cleared away the coal. "It is farther than I thought," said Janki. "The air is very bad; but strike, Kundoo, strike hard," For the fifth time Kundoo took up the pick as the Sonthal crawled back. The song had scarcely recommenced when it was broken by a yell from Kundoo that echoed down the gallery: "Par hua! Par hua! We are through, we are through!"
Without the lamps you cannot see, and I I am always seeing, said Janki. Then he paused, and called out: 'Oh, you who have been in the cutting more than ten years, what is the name of this open place? I am an old man and I have forgotten. 'Bullia's Room, answered the Sonthal who had complained of the vileness of the air. 'Again, said Janki. 'Bullia's Room. 'Then I have found it, said Janki.
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