The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,64

that he knew, that he had seen before. By accustomed practice this had to be reported immediately to someone in authority. Shielding the flame with his hand, he made his way back along the gallery, found the assistant overman tallying the corves at the pit bottom and told him he suspected that firedamp had gathered in the area where he was working. The men would not be cleared from the workings until the presence of gas was definitely established. Bordon offered to do the testing himself, and this was agreed. He asked for a knife to trim the wick of his candle, and one was found for him. He scraped off the layers of semiliquid sheep fat from the top of the candle, snuffed the wick short and carefully cleaned away the fiery particles that had collected on it. When he was satisfied that the flame was as pure as possible, he returned to the section of the face where he had been working, accompanied by the overman, whose duty this was, having once been informed of the danger.

Holding the candle between the fingers and thumb of his right hand, Bordon made a screen with the palm of his left, so that nothing but the spire of the flame could be seen. The gas was known to be lighter than air, and he began close to the floor, raising the flame, and his screening hand, very slowly. At a height of five feet or so the flame took on a slight tinge of bluish gray, shooting up from the peak of the spire and ending in a fine point of deeper blue that was neither flame nor air. This, as the candle was raised slightly higher, increased in size and deepened in color. It was an infallible sign: they were no more than two feet from the firing point, and both men knew it. They retreated to the pit bottom and the overman rang the bell that was kept there as an emergency signal for the men to return to the surface. There were a dozen men and boys working in this section of the mine; they were checked by name as they came out from the workings and were winched up to the surface.

So it was that these men returned to the village before midday, an event of rare occurrence. Percy Bordon had no notion of it and did not see them come, engrossed as he was in a game of marbles with his best friend, Billy Scotland. These two had known each other since the toddling stage and were bound by their shared knowledge that they were only weeks away from the first step toward manhood and the dignity of wage earners.

In spite of this friendship, there was very keen competition between them when it came to marbles. This was so even when the winner stood to gain only the small and common marbles called pot alleys, made of baked clay and stained in dull colors. But today it was keener than ever, because in a spirit of mutual challenge and bravado they had agreed to stake a glass alley, larger, much more beautiful, with a blaze of color at the heart of it, red or blue or yellow. Whoever won would dispossess the other, a sore loss as they were rare and greatly prized.

“Cow-cow-diddio, there’s rings round it,” Percy chanted as his friend took aim. It was a magic formula designed to put Billy off his stroke and make him miss. Whoever got his alley into the small and shallow scrape of ground known as the mott had the right to shoot it between forefinger and thumb and strike, if his aim was good, that of his adversary. This mott-and-strike, if repeated three times, decided the winner. Billy was ahead by two to one, and Percy was seriously worried.

The game was played on the waste ground adjoining the back lanes of the village, and for this reason neither of the boys was aware of the men’s return until they heard the voices from the front of the houses. Billy had so far failed to make the winning stroke and Percy had caught up, so they were two games each. However, now that the issue was so much on a knife edge and could go either way, both of them were regretting the reckless challenge of earlier. It seemed much preferable not to risk their glass alleys after all. And the voices of the returning miners came at