Facing Death; Or, The Hero of the Vaughan Pit: A Tale of the Coal Mines Read online

  CHAPTER VIII.

  PROGRESS.

  "Bless me, lad, another poond o' candles! I never did hear o' sichwaste," Mrs. Haden exclaimed as Jack entered the cottage on a winter'safternoon, two years and a half after he had gone into the pit. "Anotherpoond o' candles, and it was only last Monday as you bought thelast--nigh two candles a night. Thou wilt kill thyself sitting upreading o' nights, and thy eyes will sink i' thy head, and thou'lt be asblind as a bat afore thou'rt forty."

  "I only read up to eleven, mother, that gives me six hours abed, and asthou know, six for a man, seven for a woman, is all that is needful; andas to the expense, as dad lets me keep all my earnings save five bob aweek--and very good o' him it is; I doan't know no man in the pit asdoes as much--why, I ha' plenty o' money for my candles and books, andto lay by summat for a rainy day."

  "Aye, aye, lad, I know thou be'st not wasteful save in candles; it's thyhealth I thinks o'."

  "Health!" Jack laughed; "why, there ain't a lad in the pit as strong asI am of my age, and I ha' never ailed a day yet, and doan't mean to."

  "What ha' ye been doing all the arternoon, Jack?"

  "I ha' been sliding in the big pond wi' Harry Shepherd and a lot o'others. Then Dick Somers, he knocked down Harry's little sister Fan, asshe came running across th' ice, and larfed out when she cried--a greatbrute--so I licked he till he couldn't see out o' his eyes."

  "He's bigger nor thee, too," Mrs. Haden said admiringly.

  "Aye, he's bigger," Jack said carelessly, "but he ain't game, Dickain't; loses his temper, he does, and a chap as does that when he'sfighting ain't o' no account. But I must not stand a clappeting here;it's past six, and six is my time."

  "Have your tea first, Jack, it's a' ready; but I do believe thou'dst gowi'out eating wi'out noticing it, when thou'st got thy books in thyhead."

  Jack sat down and drank the tea his mother poured out for him, anddevoured bread and butter with a zest that showed that his appetite wasunimpaired by study. As soon as he had finished he caught up his candle,and with a nod to Mrs. Haden ran upstairs to his room.

  Jack Simpson's craze for learning, as it was regarded by the other ladsof Stokebridge, was the subject of much joking and chaff among them. Hadhe been a shy and retiring boy, holding himself aloof from the sportsof his mates, ridicule would have taken the place of joking, andpersecution of chaff. But Jack was so much one of themselves, a leaderin their games, a good fellow all round, equally ready to play or tofight, that the fact that after six o'clock he shut himself up in hisroom and studied, was regarded as something in the nature of a humorousjoke.

  When he had first begun, his comrades all predicted that the fit wouldnot last, and that a few weeks would see the end of it; but weeks andmonths and years had gone by, and Jack kept on steadily at the work hehad set himself to do. Amusement had long died away, and there grew upan unspoken respect for their comrade.

  "He be a rum 'un, be Jack," they would say; "he looves games, and canlick any chap his age anywhere round, and yet he shoots himself oop andreads and reads hours and hours every day, and he knows a heap, Bull-dogdoes." Not that Jack was in the habit of parading his acquirements;indeed he took the greatest pains to conceal them and to show that in norespect did he differ from his playfellows.

  The two hours which he now spent twice a week with Mr. Merton, and hisextensive reading, had modified his rough Staffordshire dialect, andwhen with his master he spoke correct English almost free ofprovincialisms, although with his comrades of the pit he spoke as theyspoke, and never introduced any allusion to his studies. All questionsas to his object in spending his evenings with his books were turnedaside with joking answers, but his comrades had accidentally discoveredthat he possessed extraordinary powers of calculation. One of the ladshad vaguely said that he wondered how many buckets of water there werein the canal between Stokebridge and Birmingham, a distance of eighteenmiles, and Jack, without seeming to think of what he was doing, almostinstantaneously gave the answer to the question. For a moment all weresilent with surprise.

  "I suppose that be a guess, Jack, eh?" Fred Orme asked.

  "Noa," Jack said, "that's aboot roight, though I be sorry I said it; Ijoost reckoned it in my head."

  "But how didst do that, Jack?" his questioner asked, astonished, whilethe boys standing round stared in silent wonder.

  "Oh! in my head," Jack said carelessly; "it be easy enough to reckon inyour head if you practise a little."

  "And canst do any sum in thy head, Jack, as quick as that?"

  "Not any sum, but anything easy, say up to the multiplication ordivision by eight figures."

  "Let's try him," one boy said.

  "All right, try away," Jack said. "Do it first on a bit of paper, andthen ask me."

  The boys drew off in a body, and a sum was fixed upon and worked outwith a great deal of discussion.

  At last, after a quarter of an hour's work, when all had gone through itand agreed that it was correct, they returned and said to him, "Multiply324,683 by 459,852." Jack thought for a few seconds and then taking thepencil and paper wrote down the answer: 149,306,126,916.

  "Why, Jack, thou be'est a conjurer," one exclaimed, while the othersbroke out into a shout of astonishment.

  From that time it became an acknowledged fact that Jack Simpson was awonder, and that there was some use in studying after all; and aftertheir games were over they would sit round and ask him questions whichthey had laboriously prepared, and the speed and accuracy of his answerswere a never-failing source of wonder to them.

  As to his other studies they never inquired; it was enough for them thathe could do this, and the fact that he could do it made them proud ofhim in a way, and when put upon by the pitmen it became a common retortamong them, "Don't thou talk, there's Jack Simpson, he knows as much asthee and thy mates put together. Why, he can do a soom as long as aslaate as quick as thou'd ask it."

  Jack himself laughed at his calculating powers, and told the boys thatthey could do the same if they would practise, believing what he said;but in point of fact this was not so, for the lad had an extraordinarynatural faculty for calculation, and his schoolmaster was oftenastonished by the rapidity with which he could prepare in his brain longand complex calculations, and that in a space of time little beyond thatwhich it would take to write the question upon paper.

  So abnormal altogether was his power in this respect that Mr. Mertonbegged him to discontinue the practice of difficult calculation when atwork.

  "It is a bad thing, Jack, to give undue prominence to one description ofmental labour, and I fear that you will injure your brain if you arealways exercising it in one direction. Therefore when in the pit thinkover other subjects, history, geography, what you will, but leavecalculations alone except when you have your books before you."