Lights bobbing in the blackness of the shaft, black faced coalminers, white helmets with headlamps spew out of the shaft; removing their goggles reveals that some have white skin under the black coaldust. The stream winds its way to a big open aired inn, the mine camp wet mess. It will take a few jugs of beer to wash the coaldust out of their throats. Music is playing the mood is camaraderie among the black faced miners, but doesn’t extend to any with white skin under the coaldust. But they don’t complain. They have their own bench table, the beer is cold and the service warm, as it always is from the ladies behind the bar.
“This is their way of getting rid of us,” one suggested, “I’ve seen them back home, old coalminers coughing up blood, gasping just to draw breath. This mine will be the death of us all.”
“I don’t see anybody dying;” his Captain reassured, “I see myself getting well paid, getting well fed, sitting here enjoying a cold beer and fine food with mates, and then adjourning to comfortable quarters for the evening. We won’t be here long enough to die; they’ll send someone to look for us, and this time ten times the number of soldiers will take to the streets and drive them out. We will take this country city by city, and it will be easy because I still have not seen a single soldier, not one weapon of any kind, apart from their fire breathing tin can. They are nothing but a leaderless rabble. While we wait, we do whatever work they give us to do, and we do it better than any blackfalla.”
A low rumble of “Ay-Ay Captain,” was the reassurance he sought.