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Show strike, some of them might survive to dig out the others and save some lives. He moved the men to rooms on different floors and in opposite ends of the building. At two o'clock in the morning on Good Friday, 2 April, one segment of the Black Bear slide roared down its chute. The vibration woke H. J. " Anyhow that's over," he thought in relief. Before he could let out his breath, a second wave squirted sideways out of the channel. It broke the boarding-house in two. The western piece was hurled almost intact toward the base of the cliffs. The other section, the kitchen end, was crunched into fragments and strewn, together with pieces of other buildings, half a mile down the slope into the basin. For H. J. the episode began as a splintering crash, a whirl through blackness, then ended in appalling quiet. He felt no pain, but when he tried to move nothing happened. For a moment he dissolved into panic there in the soft, total darkness. Then he took hold of himself and began to reason. He was flat on his back. Deliberately, experimentally, starting with his bare feet, he tried to move some part of himself. He could not bend a joint. He was packed in compressed snow as form- fitting as a concrete mold. Strangely, it did not occur to him at first to try wiggling his neck. Finally, he discovered that he could wag his head sideways an inch or two. After rubbing it back and forth for a while he decided that he was touching a piece of corrugated iron from the wall outside his room. There was a small air space above his nose. Breathing deeply, he tried to gain room by flexing and relaxing different muscles. But the snow kept settling and he made no gain. After a while he heard a faint crackling sound. He could not analyze what it might be, but he shouted as loudly as he could. The noise ended, and at last Harry began to feel uncomfortable. The heat of his body was melting the snow that touched him, and the wetness made him cold and miserable. Oddly, the touch of the corrugated iron, the one man- made thing left in his constricting world, kept helping him. RESCUE Two of the men had been in the unbroken section of the boardinghouse, Shaken but unhurt by the building's wild flight, they crawled out of their beds onto the sloping floor, collected their wits, pulled on their clothes, and made their way outside. Enough of the mine works remained intact for them to orient themselves in the moonlight that seeped through the clouds. They started down the line of debris to see whether anything stirred. No luck. They started back up. In order to cover the area as thoroughly as possible, they separated and zigzagged methodically back and forth. In a depression tented by splintered timbers they found one man still in his bed. Though not seriously injured, he was painfully bruised and chilled through. They took him to the intact portion of the boardinghouse and put him on the floor between two mattresses. As the two searchers zigzagged down the mat of snow and debris, another man appeared 1ike a genie |
