The Three Sentinels Read Online Free Page A

reluctant to come to the point.
    ‘You knew in your time that there was oil at 13,000 feet,’ said Sir Dave.
    His remark was almost an accusation, as if the pioneers of thirty years earlier must take part of the blame for whatever was wrong.
    ‘The geologists always thought it likely. We used to wonder if it would ever be possible to drill to that depth.’
    ‘It was not till 1950—not for a company of our resources at any rate,’ Henry said. ‘Up to then the field had stayed as you remember it—bailing and pumping wells
working at under 2,000 feet. They brought in No. 97 in 1954 and had the fright of their lives before they could cap it. Then 98 and 98A came in this year.
    ‘So we closed down the shallow field. There’s oil in it still, but why pump when we can fill tanks by turning a cock? That meant we had surplus labour. Some of them refused to
go.’
    ‘But they couldn’t stay with no wages.’
    ‘We’d made it a home from home for them, see?’ said Sir Dave. ‘A bloody garden city with clubs, canteens, allotments, the whole bag of tricks except a Women’s
Institute.’
    ‘They insisted they could live off the land,’ Henry explained. ‘Growing maize on the sports ground, our General Manager called it. He turned it down flat. Myself, I wanted to
hear more details.’
    ‘We could not allow a slum to grow up,’ Sir Dave rebuked him. ‘So the Company very generously shipped them off to inspect the jobs which were waiting for them, and Birenfield,
our manager, arranged that they should have plenty of time to make up their minds. But no patience! No gratitude at all! And then a foolish party tried to join them on foot.’
    On foot! The overland track had been used solely and very rarely by such tough, undesirable characters as could not establish a right to passage in the launches. Henry’s father—the
father, that is, whom he had invented for Henry—would have been just the fellow to go by land with a load of contraband on his back or his mule.
    ‘Why weren’t they sent by launch?’
    ‘They left without saying anything. It’s believed they were frightened when the police arrived. There was some street fighting.’
    ‘Afraid of the police? In my time, if there was real trouble threatening, we used to give the police a day off to go fishing.’
    Sir Dave stared at him. He remarked that Colonel Darlow’s comment was just the sort of shrewd advice the Company needed and that, aye, he might do.
    ‘You want me at Cabo Desierto?’
    ‘As temporary General Manager,’ Henry said.
    It was desperately disappointing. Henry must have forgotten that he had never been an oil engineer.
    ‘You have taken up my references?’
    ‘All of ’em,’ Sir Dave answered aggressively. ‘And I tell you straight that if we could find an experienced oilman with the qualities we want, I’d snap him up. But
what with all these new fields in Canada and Arabia there aren’t enough good men to go round. So the next best thing is a chap who knows the place and has proved he can manage native labour
even if he’s not so young as he was. What we want you to do is to break the strike, stay on a bit and then hand over.’
    ‘What’s the real grievance? Just the dismissals?’
    ‘They claim that some women died.’
    ‘Seventeen women and five children died on the overland track and two men and one woman trying to rescue them,’ said Henry Constantinides with a clarity which was openly contemptuous
of his Chairman. ‘Now you know what you are up against.’
    ‘What do they propose?’
    ‘Nothing! That’s the damnable part of it. Their attitude is: you broke a promise, you killed our women, you shall have no more oil ever. And they mean the blasted republic quite as
much as us. The Ministry sent the police. We didn’t.’
    ‘With the full approval of the Miner’s Union,’ Sir Dave added. ‘And I want you to remember, Colonel Darlow, that the strength of the Union must be built up. Organised
Labour is