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Updated: May 17, 2025
At Home, where they undercut the coal and bring it down in crashing avalanches from the roof, he would never have been allowed to set foot in a pit. He was not a popular man, because of his oil-savings; but all the gangs admitted that Janki knew all the khads, or workings, that had ever been sunk or worked since the Jimahari Company first started operations on the Tarachunda fields.
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!
'By the Holy Grove, what has happened to the air! It was a Sonthal gangman of Gang Mogul in Number Nine gallery, and he was driving a six-foot way through the coal. Then there was a rush from the other galleries, and Gang Janki and Gang Rahim stumbled up with their basket-women. 'Water has come in the mine, they said, 'and there is no way of getting out.
"By the Holy Grove, what has happened to the air!" It was a Sonthal gangman of Gang Mogul in Number Nine gallery, and he was driving a six-foot way through the coal. Then there was a rush from the other galleries, and Gang Janki and Gang Rahim stumbled up with their basket-women. "Water has come in the mine," they said, "and there is no way of getting out."
Unda sat in a corner and nodded approval. On the night when Kundoo had quoted that objectionable proverb about weavers, Janki grew angry. "Listen, you pig," said he, "blind I am, and old I am, but, before ever you were born, I was grey among the coal. Even in the days when the Twenty-Two khad was unsunk and there were not two thousand men here, I was known to have all knowledge of the pits.
"I went down," said Janki "down the slope of my gallery, and I felt the water." "There has been no water in the cutting in our time," clamored the women, "Why cannot we go away?" "Be silent!" said Janki, "Long ago, when my father was here, water came to Ten no, Eleven cutting, and there was great trouble. Let us get away to where the air is better."
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.
"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 toward the Tarachunda River swelling between its soppy banks.
The pony knew that place, and when, after six years, the Company changed all the allotments to prevent the miners from acquiring proprietary rights, Janki Meah represented, with tears in his eyes, that were his holding shifted, he would never be able to find his way to the new one. 'My horse only knows that place, pleaded Janki Meah, and so he was allowed to keep his land.
Whether the mehter made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively. He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly: "You spoke the truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end. Jove! It almost astonishes ME! That Bronckhorst-beast isn't fit to live."
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