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 call—
Run, you fool! Number Two’s gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall!
Say, hello! there below—any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life?
‘Heave away!’ says the knocker. ‘They’ve started. God be praised, he’s no youngsters or wife!’

Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur,
And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir
With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague frightened murmur of birds,
With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticulate words.
From the black belt of bush come the miners, and they gather by Mack on the brace,
Out of breath, barely clad, and half-wakened, with a question in every face.

‘Who’s below?’ ‘Where’s the fall?’ Didn’t I tell you?—Didn’t I say that them sets wasn’t sound?’
‘Is it Fred? He was reckless was Baker; now he’s seen his last shift underground.’
‘And his mate? Where is Sandy M‘Fadyn?’ ’Sandy’s snoring at home on his bunk.’
‘Not at work! Name o’ God! a foreboding?’ ‘A foreboding be hanged! He is drunk!’
Take it steady there, lads!’ the boss orders. He is white to the roots of his hair.
We may get him alive before daybreak if he’s close to the face and has air.’

In the dim drive with ardour heroic two facemen are pegging away.
Long and Coots in the rise heard her thunder, and they fled without word or delay
Down the drive, and they rushed for the ladders, and they went up the shaft with a run,
For they knew the weak spot in the workings, and they guessed there was graft to be done.
Number Two was pitch dark, and they scrambled to the plat and they made for the face,
But the roof bad come down fifty yards in, and the reef was all over the place.

Fresher men from the surface replace them, and they’re hauled up on top for a blow;
When a life and death job is in doing there’s room only for workers below.
Bare-armed, and bare-chested, and brawny, with a grim, meaning set of the jaw,
The relay hurries in to the rescue, caring not for the danger a straw;
’Tis not toil, but a battle, they’re called to, and like Trojans the miners respond,
For a dead man lies crushed ’neath the timbers, or a live man is choking beyond.

By the faint, yellow glow of the candles, where the dank drive is hot with their breath,
On the verge of the Land of the Shadow, waging war breast to bosom with Death,
How they struggle, these giants! and slowly, as the trucks rattle into the gloom,
Inch by inch they advance to the conquest of a prison—or is it a tomb?
And the working’s re-echo a volley as the timbers are driven in place;
Then a whisper is borne to the toilers ‘Boys, his mother is there on the brace!’

Like veterans late into action, fierce with longing to hew and to hack,
Riordan’s shift rushes in to relieve them, and the toil-stricken men stagger back.
‘Stow the stuff, mates, wherever there’s stowage! Run the man on the brace till he drops!
There’s no time to think on this billet! Bark the heels of the trucker who stops!
Keep the props well in front, and be careful. He’s in there, and alive, never fret.’
But the grey dawn is softening the ridges, and the word has not come to us yet.

Still the knocker rings out, and the engine shrieks and strains like a creature in pain
As the cage rushes up to the surface and drops back into darkness again.
By the capstan a woman is crouching. In her eyes neither hope nor despair;
But a yearning that glowers like frenzy bids those who’d speak pity forbear.
Like a figure in stone she is seated till the labour of rescue be done.
For the father was killed in the Phoenix, and the son—Lord of pity! the son?

‘Hello! there on top!’ they are calling. ‘They are through! He is seen in the drive!’
‘They have got him—thank Heaven! they’ve got him, and oh, blessed be God, he’s alive!’
‘Man on! heave away!’ ‘Step aside, lads; let his mother be first when he lands.’
She was silent and strong in her anguish; now she babbles and weeps where she stands,
And the stern men, grown gentle, support her at the mouth of the shaft, till at last
With a rush the cage springs to the landing, and her son’s arms encircle her fast.

She has cursed the old mine for its murders, for the victims its drives have ensnared,
Now she cries a great blessing upon it for the one precious life it has spared.

The Old Whim Horse

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,
   And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,
With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly,
   And he bears all over the brands of graft;
And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder
   Why by night and day the whim is still,
Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder
   Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.

In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed
   On the riven summit of Giant's Hand,
And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed
   All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land;
And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning,
   And he knew the calls of the boys below;
Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning,
   He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.

But the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow
   In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay,
And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow
   O'er the grass-grown brace in the summer day;
And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners
   Of the forge, and down where the timber lies;
And the crows are perched like a band of mourners
   On the broken hut on the Hermit's Rise.

All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out,
   And the company waits till the calls come in;
But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out,
   And no market's near for his bones and skin.
So they let him live, and they left him grazing
   By the creek, and oft in the evening dim
I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing
   At the ruined brace and the rotting whim.

The floods rush high in the gully under,
   And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees,
Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder
   As the fires drive by on the summer breeze.
Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders
   To the lonely ring, though the whistle's dumb,
And with hanging head by the bow he ponders
   Where the whim boy's gone -- why the shifts don't come.

But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing
   In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill,
When he hears again all the stampers going --
   Though the huts are dark and the stampers still:
When he sees the steam to the black roof clinging
   As its shadows roll on the silver sands,
And he knows the voice of his driver singing,
   And the knocker's clang where the braceman stands.

See the old horse take, like a creature dreaming,
   On the ring once more his accustomed place;
But the moonbeams full on the ruins streaming
   Show the scattered timbers and grass-grown brace.
Yet HE hears the sled in the smithy falling,
   And the empty truck as it rattles back,
And the boy who stands by the anvil, calling;
   And he turns and backs, and he "takes up slack".

While the old drum creaks, and the shadows shiver
   As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close,
And the bats dip down in the shaft or quiver
   In the ghostly light, round the grey horse goes;
And he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder,
   Hears again the voice that was dear to him,
Sees the form he knew -- and his heart grows bolder
   As he works his shift by the broken whim.

He hears in the sluices the water rushing
   As the buckets drain and the doors fall back;
When the early dawn in the east is blushing,
   He is limping still round the old, old track.
Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying
   To a call unspoken, with eyes aglow,
And he sways and sinks in the circle, dying;
   From the ring no more will the grey horse go.

In a gully green, where a dam lies gleaming,
   And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim,
And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming
   On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame,
Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting
   In the high rank grass by the dried-up course,
Nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting
   Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.