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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.
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.
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. "Alone I found the way," explained Janki Meah, "and now will the Company give me pension?"
On the strength of this concession and his accumulated oil-savings, Janki Meah took a second wife a girl of the Jolaha main stock of the Meahs, and singularly beautiful. Janki Meah could not see her beauty; wherefore he took her on trust, and forbade her to go down the pit. He had not worked for thirty years in the dark without knowing that the pit was no place for pretty women.
'Now follow after, said he, 'catching hold of my heel, and the women catching the men's clothes. He did not ask whether the men had brought their picks with them. A miner, black or white, does not drop his pick. One by one, Janki leading, they crept into the old gallery a six-foot way with a scant four feet from hill to roof. 'The air is better here, said Jasoda.
'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, clamoured 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.
Custom stronger even than the Jimahari Company dictated that Janki, by right of his years, should manage these things, and should, also, work despite his blindness. In Indian mines where they cut into the solid coal with the pick and clear it out from floor to ceiling, he could come to no great harm.
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.
He loaded her with ornaments not brass or pewter, but real silver ones and she rewarded him by flirting outrageously with Kundoo of Number Seven gallery gang. Kundoo was really the gang-head, but Janki Meah insisted upon all the work being entered in his own name, and chose the men that he worked with.
He loaded her with ornaments not brass or pewter, but real silver ones and she rewarded him by flirting outrageously with Kundoo of Number Seven gallery gang. Kundoo was really the gang-head, but Janki Meah insisted upon all the work being entered in his own name, and chose the men that he worked with.
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