FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[4]Ordering and drinking whisky, and having no intention of paying for the drink, is known to navvies as "shooting the crow."[5]Schooner. A large glass used for lager-beer and ale, which contains fourteen fluid ounces.[6]A stick. A half-glass of whisky mixed with beer—a navvyism forpetite verre.[7]Pulling the hare's foot. A farmyard phrase. The hare in the cornfield takes refuge in the standing corn when the servants are reaping. To the farmer himself belongs the privilege of catching the animal. If he is unable to corner the hare he stands drinks to all the harvesters, and the drink is usually a sure one.

[4]Ordering and drinking whisky, and having no intention of paying for the drink, is known to navvies as "shooting the crow."

[5]Schooner. A large glass used for lager-beer and ale, which contains fourteen fluid ounces.

[6]A stick. A half-glass of whisky mixed with beer—a navvyism forpetite verre.

[7]Pulling the hare's foot. A farmyard phrase. The hare in the cornfield takes refuge in the standing corn when the servants are reaping. To the farmer himself belongs the privilege of catching the animal. If he is unable to corner the hare he stands drinks to all the harvesters, and the drink is usually a sure one.

"Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining shovel is rude:Man by the ages of wrong subdued, marred, misshapen, misunderstood,Such is the Drainer."—FromSongs of a Navvy.

"Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining shovel is rude:Man by the ages of wrong subdued, marred, misshapen, misunderstood,Such is the Drainer."

"Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining shovel is rude:

Man by the ages of wrong subdued, marred, misshapen, misunderstood,

Such is the Drainer."

—FromSongs of a Navvy.

Late in the September of the same year I got a job at digging sheep drains on a moor in Argyllshire. I worked with a man named Sandy, and I never knew his second name. I believe he had almost forgotten it himself. He had a little hut in the centre of the moor, and I lived with him there. The hut was built of piles shoved into the ground, and the cracks between were filled with moss to keep out the cold. In the wet weather the water came through the floor and put out the fire, what time we required it most.

One night when taking supper a beetle dropped from the roof into my tea-can.

"The first leevin' thing I've seen here for mony a day, barrin' oursel's," Sandy remarked. "The verra worms keep awa' frae the place."

We started work at seven o'clock in the morning. Each of us dug a sod six inches deep and nine inches wide, and threw it as far as we could from the place where it was lifted. All day long we kept doing the same thing, just as Sandy had been doing it for thirty years. We hardly ever spoke to one another, there was nothing to speak about. The moor spread out on all sides, and littlecould be seen save the brown rank grass, the crawling bogbine, and the dirty sluggish water. We had to drink this water. The nearest tree was two miles distant, and the nearest public-house a good two hours' walk away. Sandy got drunk twice a week.

"Just tae put the taste o' the feelthy water oot o' my mooth," he explained in apologetic tones when he got sober. I do not know why he troubled to make excuses for his drunkenness. It mattered very little to me, although I was now teetotal myself. I was even glad when the man got drunk, for intoxicated he gave a touch of the ridiculous to the scene that was so killingly sombre when he was sober. In the end I became almost as soulless and stupid as the sods I turned up, and in the long run I debated whether I should take to drink or the road in order to enliven my life. I had some money in my pocket, and my thoughts turned to Norah Ryan. Perhaps if I went to Glasgow I would find her. I took it in my head to leave; I told Sandy and asked him to come.

"There's nae use in me leavin' here noo," he said. "I've stopped too lang for that."

The farmer for whom we wrought got very angry when I asked him for my wages.

"There's nae pleasin' o' some folk," he grumbled. "They'll nae keep a guid job when they get one."

The last thing I saw as I turned out on the high-road was Sandy leaning over his draining spade like some God-forsaken spirit of the moorland. Poor man! he had not a friend in all the world, and he was very old.

I stopped in Glasgow for four weeks, but my search for Norah was fruitless. She seemed to have gone out of the world and no trace of her was to be found.

"In the grim dead-end he lies,With passionless filmy eyes,English Ned, with a hole in his head,Staring up at the skies."The engine driver swore, as often he swore before:'I whistled him back from the flamin' track,And I couldn't do no more!'"The ganger spoke through the 'phone: 'Platelayer seventy-oneGot killed to-day on the six-foot wayBy a goods on the city run."'English Ned is his name, no one knows whence he came;He didn't take mind of the road behind,And none of us is to blame.'"—FromSongs of the Dead End.

"In the grim dead-end he lies,With passionless filmy eyes,English Ned, with a hole in his head,Staring up at the skies.

"In the grim dead-end he lies,

With passionless filmy eyes,

English Ned, with a hole in his head,

Staring up at the skies.

"The engine driver swore, as often he swore before:'I whistled him back from the flamin' track,And I couldn't do no more!'

"The engine driver swore, as often he swore before:

'I whistled him back from the flamin' track,

And I couldn't do no more!'

"The ganger spoke through the 'phone: 'Platelayer seventy-oneGot killed to-day on the six-foot wayBy a goods on the city run.

"The ganger spoke through the 'phone: 'Platelayer seventy-one

Got killed to-day on the six-foot way

By a goods on the city run.

"'English Ned is his name, no one knows whence he came;He didn't take mind of the road behind,And none of us is to blame.'"

"'English Ned is his name, no one knows whence he came;

He didn't take mind of the road behind,

And none of us is to blame.'"

—FromSongs of the Dead End.

The law has it that no man must work as a platelayer on the running lines until he is over twenty-one years of age. If my readers look up the books of the —— Railway Company, they'll find that I started work in the service of the company at the age of twenty-two. My readers must not believe this. I was only eighteen years of age when I started work on the railway, but I told a lie in order to obtain the post.

One day, five weeks following my return from the Argyllshire moors, and long after all my money had been expended on the fruitless search for Norah Ryan, I clambered up a railway embankment near Glasgow with the intention of seeking a job, and found that a man had justbeen killed by a ballast engine. He had been cut in two; the fingers of his left hand severed clean away were lying on the slag. The engine wheels were dripping with blood. The sight made me sick with a dull heavy nausea, and numberless little blue and black specks floated before my eyes. An almost unbearable dryness came into my throat; my legs became heavy and leaden, and it seemed as if thousands of pins were pricking them. All the men were terror-stricken, and a look of fear was in every eye. They did not know whose turn would come next.

A few of them stepped reluctantly forward and carried the thing which had been a fellow-man a few minutes before and placed it on the green slope. Others pulled the stray pieces of flesh from amidst the rods, bars, and wheels of the engine and washed the splotches of blood from the sleepers and rails. One old fellow lifted the severed fingers from the slag, counting each one loudly and carefully as if some weighty decision hung on the correct tally of the dead man's fingers. They were placed beside the rest of the body, and prompted by a morbid curiosity I approached it where it lay in all its ghastliness on the green slope with a dozen men or more circled around it. The face was unrecognisable as a human face. A thin red sliver of flesh lying on the ground looked like a tongue. Probably the man's teeth in contracting had cut the tongue in two. I had looked upon two dead people, Dan and Mary Sorley, but they might have been asleep, so quiet did they lie in their eternal repose. This was also death, but death combined with horror. Here and there scraps of clothing and buttons were scrambled up with the flesh, but all traces of clothing were almost entirely hidden from sight. The old man who had gathered up the fingers brought a bag forward and covered up the dead thing on the slope. The rest of the men drew back,quietly and soberly, glad that the thing was hidden from their eyes.

"A bad sight for the fellow's wife," said the old man to me. "I've seen fifteen men die like him, you know."

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"We was liftin' them rails into the ballast train, and every rail is over half a ton in weight," said the man, who, realising that I was not a railway man, gave full details. "One of the rails came back. The men were in too big a hurry, that's what I say, and I've always said it, but it's not their fault. It's the company as wants men to work as if every man was a horse, and the men daren't take their time. It's the sack if they do that. Well, as I was a-sayin', the rail caught on the lip of the waggon, and came back atop of Mick—Mick Deehan is his name—as the train began just to move. The rail broke his back, snapped it in two like a dry stick. We heard the spine crack, and he just gave one squeal and fell right under the engine. Ugh! it was ill to look at it, and, mind you, I've seen fifteen deaths like it. Fifteen, just think of that!"

Then I realised that I had been saved part of the worst terror of the tragedy. It must have been awful to see a man suddenly transformed into that which lay under the bag beside me. A vision came to me of the poor fellow getting suddenly caught in the terrible embrace of the engine, watching the large wheel slowly revolving downwards towards his face, while his ears would hear, the last sound ever to be heard by them, the soft, slippery movement of that monstrous wheel skidding in flesh and blood. For a moment I was in the dead man's place, I could feel the flange of the wheel cutting and sliding through me as a plough slides through the furrow of a field. Again my feelings almost overcame me, my brain was giddy and my feet seemed insecurely planted on the ground.

By an effort I diverted my thoughts from the tragedy, and my eyes fell on a spider's web hung between two bare twigs just behind the dead man. It glistened in the sunshine, and a large spider, a little distance out from the rim, had its gaze fixed on some winged insect which had got entangled in the meshes of the web. When the old man who had seen fifteen deaths passed behind the corpse, the spider darted back to the shelter of the twig, and the winged insect struggled fiercely, trying to free itself from the meshes of death.

On a near bough a bird was singing, and its song was probably the first love-song of the spring. In the field on the other side of the line, and some distance away, a group of children were playing, children bare-legged, and dressed in garments of many colours. Behind them a row of lime-washed cottages stood, looking cheerful in the sunshine of the early spring. Two women stood at one door, gossiping, no doubt. A young man in passing raised his hat to the women, then stopped and talked with them for a while. From far down the line, which ran straight for miles, an extra gang of workers was approaching, their legs moving under their apparently motionless bodies, and breaking the lines of light which ran along the polished upper bedes of the rails. The men near me were talking, but in my ears their voices sounded like the droning of bees that flit amid the high branches of leafy trees. The coming gang drew nearer, stepping slowly from sleeper to sleeper, thus saving the soles of their boots from the contact of the wearing slag. The man in front, a strong, lusty fellow, was bellowing out in a very unmusical voice an Irish love song. Suddenly I noticed that all the men near me were gazing tensely at the approaching squad, the members of which were yet unaware of the tragedy, for the rake of ballast waggons hid the bloodstained slag and scene of the accident from their eyes. The singercame round behind the rear waggon, still bellowing out his song.

"I'll leave me home again and I'll bid good-bye to-morrow,I'll pass the little graveyard and the tomb anear the wall,I have lived so long for love that I cannot live for sorrowBy the grave that holds me cooleen in a glen of Donegal."

"I'll leave me home again and I'll bid good-bye to-morrow,

I'll pass the little graveyard and the tomb anear the wall,

I have lived so long for love that I cannot live for sorrow

By the grave that holds me cooleen in a glen of Donegal."

Every eye was turned on him, but no man spoke. Apparently taking no heed of the splotches of blood, now darkly red, and almost the colour of the slag on which they lay, he approached the bag which covered the body.

"What the devil is this?" he cried out, and gave the bag a kick, throwing it clear of the thing which it covered. The bird on the bough atop of the slope trilled louder; the song of the man died out, and he turned to the ganger who stood near him, with a questioning look.

"It's Mick, is it?" he asked, removing his cap.

"It's Micky," said the ganger.

The man by the corpse bent down again and covered it up slowly and quietly, then he sank down on the green slope and burst into tears.

"Micky and him's brothers, you know," said a man who stood beside me in a whisper. The tears came into my eyes, much though I tried to restrain them. The tragedy had now revealed itself in all its horrible intensity, and I almost wished to run away from the spot.

After a while the breakdown van came along; the corpse was lifted in, the brother tottered weakly into the carriage attached to the van, and the engine puffed back to Glasgow. A few men turned the slag in the sleeper beds and hid the dark red clotted blood for ever. The man had a wife and several children, and to these the company paid blood money, and the affair was in a little while forgotten by most men, for it was no man's business. Does it not give us an easy conscience that this wrong and that wrong is no business of ours?

When the train rumbled around the first curve on its return journey I went towards the ganger, for the work obsession still troubled me. Once out of work I long for a job, once having a job my mind dwells on the glories of the free-footed road again. But now I had an object in view, for if I obtained employment on the railway I could stop in Glasgow and continue my search for Norah Ryan during the spare hours. The ganger looked at me dubiously, and asked my age.

"Twenty-two years," I answered, for I was well aware that a man is never taken on as a platelayer until he has attained his majority.

There and then I was taken into the employ of the —— Railway Company, as Dermod Flynn, aged twenty-two years. Afterwards the ganger read me the rules which I had to observe while in the employment of the company. I did not take very much heed to his droning voice, my mind reverting continuously to the tragedy which I had just witnessed, and I do not think that the ganger took very much pleasure in the reading. While we were going through the rules a stranger scrambled up the railway slope and came towards us.

"I heard that a man was killed," he said in an eager voice. "Any chance of gettin' a start in his place?"

"This man's in his shoes," said the ganger, pointing at me.

"Lucky dog!" was all that the man said, as he turned away.

The ganger's name was Roche, "Horse Roche"—for his mates nicknamed him "Horse" on account of his enormous strength. He could drive a nine-inch iron spike through a wooden sleeper with one blow of his hammer. No other man on the railway could do the same thing at that time; but before I passed my twenty-first birthday I could perform the same feat quite easily. Roche was ahard swearer, a heavy drinker, and a fearless fighter. He will not mind my saying these things about him now. He is dead over four years.

"For me has Homer sung of wars,Æschylus wrote and Plato thought,Has Dante loved and Darwin wrought,And Galileo watched the stars."—FromThe Navvy's Scrap Book.

"For me has Homer sung of wars,Æschylus wrote and Plato thought,Has Dante loved and Darwin wrought,And Galileo watched the stars."

"For me has Homer sung of wars,

Æschylus wrote and Plato thought,

Has Dante loved and Darwin wrought,

And Galileo watched the stars."

—FromThe Navvy's Scrap Book.

Up till this period of my life I had no taste for literature. I had seldom even glanced at the daily papers, having no interest in the world in which I played so small a part. One day when the gang was waiting for a delayed ballast train, and when my thoughts were turning to Norah Ryan, I picked up a piece of paper, a leaf from an exercise book, and written on it in a girl's or woman's handwriting were these little verses:

"No, indeed! for God aboveIs great to grant, as mighty to make,And creates the love to reward the love,—I claim you still, for my own love's sake!Delayed it may be for more lives yet,Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few—Much is to learn and much to forgetEre the time be come for taking you."I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,Given up myself so many times.Gained me the gains of various men,Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,Either I missed or itself missed me:And I want and find you, Evelyn HopeWhat is the issue? let us see!"

"No, indeed! for God above

Is great to grant, as mighty to make,

And creates the love to reward the love,—

I claim you still, for my own love's sake!

Delayed it may be for more lives yet,

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few—

Much is to learn and much to forget

Ere the time be come for taking you.

"I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,Given up myself so many times.Gained me the gains of various men,Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,Either I missed or itself missed me:And I want and find you, Evelyn HopeWhat is the issue? let us see!"

"I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,

Given up myself so many times.

Gained me the gains of various men,

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;

Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,

Either I missed or itself missed me:

And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope

What is the issue? let us see!"

While hardly understanding their import, the words went to my heart. They expressed thoughts of my own, thoughts lying so deeply that I was not able to explain or express them. The writer of the verse I did not know, but I thought that he, whoever he was, had looked deep into my soul and knew my feelings better than myself. All day long I repeated the words to myself over and over again, and from them I got much comfort and strength, that stood me in good stead in the long hours of searching on the streets of Glasgow for my luckless love. Under the glaring lamps that lit the larger streets, through the dark guttery alleys and sordid slums I prowled about nightly, looking at every young maiden's face and seeing in each the hard stare of indifference and the cold look of the stranger. Round the next corner perhaps she was waiting; a figure approaching reminded me of her, and I hurried forward eagerly only to find that I was mistaken. Oh! how many illusions kept me company in my search! how many disappointments! and how many hopes. For I wanted Norah; for her I longed with a great longing, and a dim vague hope of meeting her buoyed up my soul.

"And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!What is the issue? let us see!"

"And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!

What is the issue? let us see!"

Such comforting words, and the world of books might be full of them! A new and unexplored world lay open before me, and for years I had not seen it, or seeing, never heeded. I had once more the hope that winged me along the leading road to Strabane when leaving for a new country. Alas! the country that raised such anticipations was not what my hopes fashioned, but this newer world, just as enticing, was worthy of more trust and greater confidence. I began to read eagerly, ravenously. I read Victor Hugo in G—— Tunnel. One day a falling rail broke the top joint of the middle finger of my left hand. Being unablefor some time to take part in the usual work of the squad I was placed on the look-out when my gang worked on the night-shift in the tunnel at G——. When the way was not clear ahead I had to signal the trains in the darkness, but as three trains seldom passed in the hour the work was light and easy. When not engaged I sat on the rail beside the naphtha lamp and read aloud to myself. I lived with Hugo's characters, I suffered with them and wept for them in their troubles. One night when readingLes MiserablesI cried over the story of Jean Valjean and little Cosette. Horse Roche at that moment came through the darkness (in the tunnel it is night from dawn to dawn) and paused to ask me how I was getting along.

"Your eyes are running water, Flynn," he said. "You sit too close to the lamp smoke."

I remember many funny things which happened in those days. I read the chapter onNatural Supernaturalism, fromSartor Resartus, while seated on the footboard of a flying ballast train. Once, when Roche had left his work to take a drink in a near public-house, I read several pages fromSesame and Lilies, under shelter of a coal waggon, which had been shunted into an adjacent siding. I read Montaigne'sEssaysduring my meal hours, while my mates gambled and swore around me.

I procured a ticket for the Carnegie Library, but bought some books, when I had cash to spare, from a second-hand bookseller on the south side of Glasgow. Every pay-day I spent a few shillings there, and went home to my lodgings with a bundle of books under my arm. The bookseller would not let me handle the books until I bought them, because my hands were so greasy and oily with the muck of my day's labour. I seldom read in my lodgings. I spent most of my evenings in the streets engaged on my unsuccessful search. I read in the spare moments snatchedfrom my daily work. Soon my books were covered with iron-rust, sleeper-tar and waggon grease, where my dirty hands had touched them, and when I had a book in my possession for a month I could hardly decipher a word on the pages. There is some difficulty in reading thus.

I started to write verses of a kind, and one poem written by me was calledThe Lady of the Line. I personified the spirit that watched over the lives of railway men from behind the network of point-rods and hooded signals. The red danger lamp was her sign of power, and I wrote of her as queen of all the running lines in the world.

I read the poem to my mates. Most of them liked it very much and a few learned it by heart. When Horse Roche heard of it he said: "You'll end your days in the madhouse, or"—with cynical repetition—"in the House of Parliament."

On Sunday afternoons, when not at work, I went to hear the socialist speakers who preached the true Christian Gospel to the people at the street corners. The workers seldom stopped to listen; they thought that the socialists spoke a lot of nonsense. The general impression was that socialists, like clergymen, were paid speakers; that they endeavoured to save men's bodies from disease and poverty as curates save souls from sin for a certain number of shillings a day. From the first I looked upon socialist speakers as men who had an earnest desire for justice, and men who toiled bravely in the struggle for the regeneration of humanity. I always revolted against injustice, and hated all manner of oppression. My heart went out to the men, women, and children who toil in the dungeons and ditches of labour, grinding out their souls and bodies for meagre pittances. All around me were social injustices, affecting the very old and the very young as they affected the supple and strong. Social suffering begins at any age, and death is often its only remedy. That remedy is only for theindividual; the general remedy is to be found in Socialism. Industry, that new Inquisition, has thousands on the rack of profit; Progress, to millions, means slavery and starvation; Progress and Profit mean sweated labour to railway men, and it meant death to many of them, as to Mick Deehan, whose place I had filled. I had suffered a lot myself: a brother of mine had died when he might have been saved by the rent which was paid to the landlord, and I had seen suffering all around me wherever I went; suffering due to injustice and tyranny of the wealthy class. When I heard the words spoken by the socialists at the street corner a fire of enthusiasm seized me, and I knew that the world was moving and that the men and women of the country were waking from the torpor of poverty, full of faith for a new cause. I joined the socialist party.

For a while I kept in the background; the discussions which took place in their hall in G—— Street made me conscious of my own lack of knowledge on almost any subject. The members of the party discussed Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Karl Marx, Ricardo, and Smith, men of whom I had never even heard, and inwardly I chafed at my own absolute ignorance and want of the education necessary for promoting the cause which I advocated. Hours upon hours did I spend wading through Marx'sCapital, and Henry George'sProgress and Poverty. The former, the more logical, appealed to me least.

I had only been two months in the socialist party when I organised a strike among the railway men, the thirty members of the Flying Squad on which I worked.

We were loading ash waggons at C—— engine shed, and shovelling ashes is one of the worst jobs on the railway. Some men whom I have met consider work behind prison walls a pleasure when compared with it. As these men spoke from experience I did not doubt their words. The ash-pit at C—— was a miniature volcano. Thered-hot cinders and burning ashes were piled together in a deep pit, the mouth of which barely reached the level of the railway track. The Flying Squad under Horse Roche cleared out the pit once every month. The ashes were shovelled into waggons placed on the rails alongside for that purpose. The men stripped to the trousers and shirt in the early morning, and braces were loosened to give the shoulders the ease in movement required for the long day's swinging of the shovel. Three men were placed at each waggon and ten waggons were filled by the squad at each spell of work. Every three wrought as hard as they were able, so that their particular waggon might be filled before the others. The men who lagged behind went down in the black book of the ganger.

On the day of the strike the pit was a boiling hell. Chunks of coal half-burned and half-ablaze, lumps of molten slag, red-hot bricks and fiery ashes were muddled together in suffocating profusion. From the bottom of the pit a fierce impetus was required to land the contents of the shovel in the waggon overhead. Sometimes a brick would strike on the rim of the waggon and rebound back on the head of the man who threw it upwards. "Cripes! we'll have to fill it ourselves now," his two mates would say as they bundled their bleeding fellow out of the reeking heat. A shower of fine ashes were continuously falling downwards and resting upon our necks and shoulders, and the ash-particles burned the flesh like thin red-hot wires. It was even worse when they went further down our backs, for then every move of the underclothing and every swing of the shoulders caused us intense agony. Under the run of the shirt the ashes scarred the flesh like sand-paper. All around a thick smoke rested and hid us from the world without, and within we suffered in a pit of blasting fire. I've seen men dropping at the job like rats in a furnace. These were usually carried out, and a bucket of water wasemptied on their face. When they recovered they entered into the pit again.

Horse Roche stood on the coupling chains of the two middle waggons, timing the work with his watch and hastening it on with his curses. He was not a bad fellow at heart, but he could do nothing without flying into a fuming passion, which often was no deeper than his lips. Below him the smoke was so thick that he could hardly see his own labourers from the stand on the coupling chain. All he could see was the shovels of red ashes and shovels of black ashes rising up and over the haze that enveloped the pit beneath. But we could hear Roche where we wrought. Louder than the grinding of the ballast engine was the voice of the Horse cursing and swearing. His swearing was a gift, remarkable and irrepressible; it was natural to the man; it was the man.

"God's curse on you, Dan Devine, I don't see your shovel at work at all!" he roared. "Where the hell are you, Muck MaCrossan? Your waggon isn't nearly water-level yet, and that young whelp, Flynn, has his nearly full! If your chest was as broad as your belly, MacQueen, you'd be a danged sight better man on the ash-pile! It's not but that you are well enough used to the ashes, for I never yet saw a Heelin man who didn't spend the best part of his life before a fire or before grub! Come now, you men on the offside; you are slacking it like hell! If you haven't your waggon up over the lip, I'll sack every God-damned man of you on the next pay day! Has a brick fallen on Feeley's head? Well, shove the idiot out of the pit and get on with your work! His head is too big, anyhow, it's always in the road!"

This was the manner in which Horse Roche carried on, and most of the men were afraid of him. I felt frightened of the man, for I anticipated the gruelling which he would give me if I fell foul of him. But if we had come to blowshe would not, I am certain, have much to boast about at the conclusion of the affair. However, I never quarrelled with Roche.

On the day of the strike, about three o'clock in the afternoon, when fully forespent at our work, the ballast engine brought in a rake of sixteen-ton waggons. Usually the waggons were small, just large enough to hold eight tons of ashes. The ones brought in now were very high, and it required the utmost strength of any one of us to throw a shovelful of ashes over the rim of the waggon. Not alone were the waggons higher, but the pile in the pit had decreased, and we had to work from a lower level. And those waggons could hold so much! They were like the grave, never satisfied, but ever wanting more, more. I suggested that we should stop work. Discontent was boiling hot, and the men scrambled out of the pit, telling Roche to go to hell, and get men to fill his waggons. Outside of the pit the men's anger cooled. They looked at one another for a while, feeling that they had done something that was sinful and wrong. To talk of stopping work in such a manner was blasphemy to most of them. Ronald MacQueen had a wife and a gathering of young children, and work was slack. Dan Devine was old, and had been in the service of the company for twenty years. If he left now he might not get another job. He rubbed the fine ashes out of his eyes, and looked at MacQueen. Both men had similar thoughts, and before the sweat was dry on their faces they turned back to the pit together. One by one the men followed them, until I was left alone on the outside. Horse Roche had never shifted his position on the coupling chains. "It'll not pain my feet much, if I stand till you come back!" he cried when we went out. He watched the men return with a look of cynical amusement.

"Come back, Flynn," he cried, when he saw me standingalone. "You're a fool, and the rest of the men are cowards; their spines are like the spines of earth worms."

I picked up my shovel angrily, and returned to my waggon. I was disgusted and disappointed and ashamed. I had lost in the fight, and I felt the futility of rising in opposition against the powers that crushed us down. That night I sent a letter to the railway company stating our grievance. No one except myself would sign it, but all the men said that my letter was a real good one. It must have been too good. A few days later a clerk was sent from the head of the house to inform me that I would get sacked if I wrote another letter of the same kind.

Then I realised that in the grip of the great industrial machine I was powerless; I was a mere spoke in the wheel of the car of progress, and would be taken out if I did not perform my functions there. The human spoke is useful as long as it behaves like a wooden one in the socket into which it is wedged. So long will the Industrial Carriage keep moving forward under the guidance of heavy-stomached Indolence and inflated Pride. There is no scarcity of spokes, human and wooden. What does it matter if Devine and MacQueen were thrown away? A million seeds are dropping in the forest, and all women are not divinely chaste. The young children are growing. Blessings be upon you, workmen, you have made spokes that will shove you from the sockets into which your feet are wedged, but God grant that the next spokes are not as wooden as yourselves!

Again the road was calling to me. My search in Glasgow had been quite unsuccessful, and the dull slavery of the six-foot way began to pall on me. The clerk who was sent by the company to teach me manners was a most annoying little fellow, and full of the importance of his mission. I told him quietly to go to the devil, an advice which he didnot relish, but which he forbore to censure. That evening I left the employ of the —— Railway Company.

Just two hours before I lifted my lying time, the Horse was testing packed sleepers with his pick some distance away from the gang, when a rabbit ran across the railway. Horse dropped his pick, aimed a lump of slag at the animal and broke its leg. It limped off; we saw the Horse follow, and about a hundred paces from the point where he had first observed it Roche caught the rabbit, and proceeded to kill it outright by battering its head against the flange of the rail. At that moment a train passed us, travelling on the down line. Roche was on the up line, but as the train passed him we saw a glint of something bright flashing between the engine and the man, and at the same moment Roche fell to his face on the four-foot way. We hurried towards him, and found our ganger vainly striving to rise with both arms caught in his entrails. The pick which he had left lying on the line got caught in the engine wheels and was carried forward, and violently hurled out when the engine came level with the ganger. It ripped his belly open, and he died about three minutes after we came to his assistance. The rabbit, although badly wounded, escaped to its hole. That night I was on the road again.

"You're hungry and want me to give you food? I'll see you in hell first!"—FromWords to the Hungry.

I left my job on Tuesday, and tramped about for the rest of the week foot-free and reckless. The nights were fine, and sleeping out of doors was a pleasure. On Saturday night I found myself in Burn's model lodging-house, Greenock. I paid for the night's bedding, and got the use of a frying-pan to cook a chop which I had bought earlier in the day. Although it was now midsummer a large number of men were seated around the hot-plate on the ground floor, where some weighty matter was under discussion. A man with two black eyes was carrying on a whole-hearted argument with a ragged tramp in one corner of the room. I proceeded to fry my trifle of meat, and was busily engaged on my job when I became aware of a disturbance near the door. A drunken man had come in, and his oaths were many, but it was impossible to tell what he was swearing at. All at once I turned round, for I heard a phrase that I knew full well.

"There's a good time comin', though we may never live to see it," said the drunken man. The speaker was Moleskin Joe, and face to face he recognised me immediately.

"Dermod Flynn, by God!" he cried. "Dermod—Flynn—by—God! How did you get on with your milkin', sonny? You're the only man I ever cheated out of fivebob, and there's another man cheatin' you out of your bit of steak this very minute."

I turned round rapidly to my frying-pan, and saw a man bending over it. This fellow, who was of middle age, and unkempt appearance, had broken an egg over my chop, and was busily engaged in cooking both. I had never seen the man before.

"You're at the wrong frying-pan," I roared, knowing his trick.

"You're a damned liar," he answered.

"No, but you are the damned liar," I shouted in reply.

"Good!" laughed Moleskin, sitting down on a bench, and biting a plug of tobacco. "Good, Flynn! Put them up to Carroty Dan; he's worth keepin' your eye on."

"If he keeps his eye on me, he'll soon get it blackened," replied the man who was nick-named Carroty, on account of his red hair. "This is my frying-pan."

"It is not," I replied.

"Had you an egg on this chop when you turned round?" asked Carroty.

"I had not."

"Well, there's an egg on this pan, cully, so it can't be yours."

I knew that it would be useless to argue with the man. I drew out with all my strength, and landed one on the jowl of Carroty Dan, and he went to the ground like a stuck pig.

"Good, Flynn!" shouted Moleskin, spitting on the planking beneath his feet. "You'll be a fighter some day."

I turned to the chop and took no notice of my fallen enemy until I was also lying stretched amidst the sawdust on the floor, with a sound like the falling of many watersringing in my head. Carroty had hit me under my ear while my attention was devoted to the chop. I scrambled to my feet but went to the ground again, having received a well-directed blow on my jaw. My mouth was bleeding now, but my mind was clear. My man stood waiting until I rose, but I lay prone upon the ground considering how I might get at him easily. A dozen men had gathered round and were waiting the result of the quarrel, but Moleskin had dropped asleep on the bench. I rose to my knees and reaching forward I caught Carroty by the legs. With a strength of which, until then, I never thought myself capable, I lifted my man clean off his feet, and threw him head foremost over my shoulders to the ground behind. Knowing how to fall, he dropped limply to the ground, receiving little hurt, and almost as soon as I regained my balance, he was in front of me squaring out with fists in approved fashion. I took up a posture of instinctive defence and waited. My enemy struck out; I stooped to avoid the blow. He hit me, but not before I landed a welt on the soft of his belly. My punch was good, and he went down, making strange noises in his throat, and rubbing his guts with both hands. His last hit had closed my left eye, but all fight was out of Carroty; he would not face up again. The men returned to their discussion, Moleskin slid from his bench and lay on the floor, and I went on with my cooking. When Carroty recovered I gave him back his egg, and he ate it as if nothing had happened to disturb him. He asked for a bit of the chop, and I was so pleased with the thrashing I had given him that I divided half the meat with the man.

Later in the evening somebody tramped on Moleskin Joe and awoke him.

"Who the hell thinks I'm a doormat?" he growled on getting to his feet, and glowered round the room. No oneanswered. He went out with Carroty, and the two of them got as drunk as they could hold. I was in bed when they returned, and Carroty, full of a drunken man's courage, challenged me again to "put them up to him." I pretended that I was asleep, and took no notice of his antics, until he dragged me out of the bed. Stark naked and mad with rage, I thrashed him until he shrieked for mercy. I pressed him under me, and when he could neither move hand nor foot, I told him where I was going to hit him, and kept him sometimes over two minutes waiting for the blow. He was more than pleased when I gave him his freedom, and he never evinced any further desire to fight me.

"It's easy for anyone to thrash poor Carroty," said Joe, when I had finished the battle.

On Sunday we got drunk together in a speak-easy[8]near the model, and it was with difficulty that we restrained Carroty from challenging everybody whom he met to fistic encounter. By nightfall Moleskin counted his money, and found that he had fourpence remaining.

"I'm off to Kinlochleven in the morning," he said. "There's good graft and good pay for a man in Kinlochleven now. I'm sick of prokin' in the gutters here. Damn it all! who's goin' with me?"

"I'm with you," gibbered Carroty, running his fingers through the "blazing torch"—the term used by Joe when speaking of the red hair of his mate.

"I'll go too," I said impulsively. "I've only twopence left for the journey, though."

"Never mind that," said Moleskin absently. "There's a good time comin'."

Kinlochleven is situated in the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, and I had often heard of the great job going onthere, and in which thousands of navvies were employed. It was said that the pay was good and the work easy. That night I slept little, and when I slept my dreams were of the journey before me at dawn, and the new adventures which might be met with on the way.

FOOTNOTE:[8]A shebeen. "You must speak easy in a shebeen when the police are around."

[8]A shebeen. "You must speak easy in a shebeen when the police are around."

"The road runs north, the road runs south, and there foot-easy, slow,The tramp, God speed him! wanders forth, and nature's gentry go.Gentlemen knights of the gravelled way, who neither toil nor spin,Men who reck not whether or nay the landlord's rents come in,Men who are close to the natal sod, who know not sin nor shame,And Way of the World or Way of the Road, the end is much the same."—FromA Song of the Road.

"The road runs north, the road runs south, and there foot-easy, slow,

The tramp, God speed him! wanders forth, and nature's gentry go.

Gentlemen knights of the gravelled way, who neither toil nor spin,

Men who reck not whether or nay the landlord's rents come in,

Men who are close to the natal sod, who know not sin nor shame,

And Way of the World or Way of the Road, the end is much the same."

—FromA Song of the Road.

In the morning I was afoot before any of my mates, full of impatience, and looking forward eagerly to the start.

"Wake up, Moleskin!" I cried, as I bent over my mate, where he lay snoring loudly in the bed; "it is time to be away."

"It's not time yet, for I'm still sleepy," said Moleskin drowsily. "Slow and easy goes far in a day," he added, and fell asleep again. I turned my attention to Carroty.

"Get up, Carroty!" I shouted. "It's time that we were out on our journey."

"What journey?" grumbled Carroty, propping himself up on his elbow in the bed.

"To Kinlochleven," I reminded him.

"I never heard of it."

"You said that you would go this morning," I informed him. "You said so last night when you were drunk."

"Well, if I said so, it must be so," said the red-hairedone, and slipped out of the blankets. Moleskin rose also, and as a proof of the bond between us, we cooked our food in common on the hot-plate, and at ten minutes to ten by the town clock we set out on the long road leading to Kinlochleven. Our worldly wealth amounted to elevenpence, and the distance to which we had set our faces was every inch, as the road turned, of one hundred miles, or a six days' tramp according to the computation of my two mates. The pace of the road is not a sharp one. "Slow and easy goes far in a day," is a saying amongst us, and it sums up the whole philosophy of the long journey. Besides our few pence, each man possessed a pipe, a knife, and a box for holding matches. The latter, being made of tin, was very useful for keeping the matches dry when the rain soaked the clothing. In addition, each man carried, tied to his belt, a tin can which would always come in handy for making tea, cooking eggs, or drinking water from a wayside well.

When we got clear of the town Moleskin opened his shirt front and allowed the wind to play coolly against his hairy chest.

"Man alive!" he exclaimed, "this wind runs over a fellow's chest like the hands of a soncy wench!" Then he spoke of our journey. Carroty was silent; he was a morbid fellow who had little to say, except when drunk, and as for myself I was busy with my thoughts, and eager to tramp on at a quicker pace.

"We'll separate here, and each must go alone and pick up what he can lay his hands on," said Moleskin. "As I'm an old dog on the road, far more knowing than a torch-headed boozer or young mongrel, I'll go ahead and lead the way. Whenever I manage to bum a bit of tucker from a house, I'll put a white cross on the gatepost; and both of you can try your luck after me at the same place. If you hear a hen making a noise in a bunch of brambles, just look about there and see if you can pick up an egg ortwo. It would be sort of natural for you, Carroty, to talk about your wife and young brats, when speaking to the woman of a house. You look miserable enough to have been married more than once. You're good lookin', Flynn; just put on your blarney to the young wenches and maybe they'll be good for the price of a drink for three. We'll sit for a bite at the Ferry Inn, and that is a good six miles of country from our feet."

Without another word Joe slouched off, and Carroty and I sat down and waited until he turned the corner of the road, a mile further along. The moment he was out of sight, Carroty rose and trudged after him, his head bent well over his breast and his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. This slowness of movement disgusted me. I was afire to reach Kinlochleven, but my mates were in no great hurry. They placed their faith in getting there to-morrow, if to-morrow came. Each man was calmly content, when working out the problem of the day's existence, to allow the next day to do for itself.

Carroty had barely turned the corner when I got up and followed. Over my head the sun burned and scalded with its scorching blaze. The grey road and its fine gravel, crunching under the heels of my boots, affected the ears, and put the teeth on edge. Far in front, whenever I raised my head, I could see the road winding in and out, now losing itself from my view, and again, further on, reappearing, desolate, grey, and lonely as ever. Although memories of the road are in a sense always pleasing to me, the road itself invariably depressed me; the monotony of the same everlasting stretch of dull gravelled earth gnawed at my soul. Most of us, men of the road, long for comfort, for love, for the smile of a woman, and the kiss of a child, but these things are denied to us. The women shun us as lepers are shunned, the brainless girl who works with a hoe in a turnip field will have nothing to do with a trampnavvy. The children hide behind their mothers' petticoats when they see us coming, frightened to death of the awful navvy man who carries away naughty children, and never lets them back to their mothers again.

He is a lonely man who wanders on the roads of a strange land, shunned and despised by all men, and foul in the eyes of all women. Rising cold in the morning from the shadow of the hedge where the bed of a night was found, he turns out on his journey and begs for a crumb. High noon sees nor wife nor mother prepare his mid-day meal, and there is no welcome for him at an open door when the evening comes. Christ had a mother who followed him all along the road to Calvary, but the poor tramp is seldom followed even by a mother's prayers along the road where he carries the cross of brotherly hate to the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Suddenly I saw a white cross on a gate in front of a little cottage. A girl stood by the door, and I asked for a slice of bread. From the inside of the house a woman cried out: "Don't give that fellow anything to eat. We're sick of the likes of him."

The maiden remonstrated. "Poor thing! he must eat just like ourselves," she said.

Once I heard one of the servant girls on Braxey Farm use the same words when feeding a pig. I did not wait for my slice of bread. I walked on; the girl called after me, but I never turned round to answer. And the little dignity that yet remained made me feel very miserable, for I felt that I was a man classed among swine, and that is a very bitter truth to learn at eighteen.

Houses were rare in the country, but alas! rarer were the crosses of white. I had just been about two hours upon the journey, when as I was rounding a bend of the road I came upon Carroty sitting on a bank with his arms around a woman who sat beside him. I had been walkingon the grass to ease my feet, and he failed to hear my approach. When he saw me, he looked half ashamed, and his companion gazed at me with a look half cringing and half defiant. She put me in mind of Gourock Ellen. Her face might have been handsome at one time, but it was blotched and repugnant now. Vice had forestalled old age and left its traces on the woman's features. Her eyes were hard as steel and looked as if they had never been dimmed by tears. I wondered what Carroty could see in such a person, and it was poor enough comfort to know that there was at least one woman who looked with favour upon a tramp navvy.

"Tell Moleskin that I'm not comin' any further," Carroty shouted after me as I passed him by.

"All right," I answered over my shoulder. Afterwards I passed two white crosses, and at each I was refused even a crust of bread. "Moleskin has got some, anyhow, and that is a comfort," I said to myself. Now I began to feel hungry, and kept an eye in advance for the Ferry Inn. Passing by a field which I could not see on account of the intervening hedgerow, I heard a voice crying "Flynn! Flynn!" in a deep whisper. I stopped and could hear some cows crop-cropping the grass in the field beyond. "Flynn!" cried the voice again. I looked through the hedgerow and there I saw Moleskin, the rascal, sitting on his hunkers under a cow and milking the animal into his little tin can. When he had his own can full I put mine through the branches and got it filled to the brim. Then my mate dragged himself through the branches and asked me where I had left Carroty. I told him about the woman.

"The damned whelp! I might have known," said Joe, but I did not know whether he referred to the woman or the man. We carried our milk cans for a little distance, then turning off the road we sat down in the corner of a field under a rugged tree and began our meagre meal. Joe hadonly one slice of bread. This he divided into equal shares, and when engaged in that work I asked him the meaning of the two white crosses by the roadside, the two crosses, which as far as I could see, had no beneficial results.

"They were all right," said Joe. "I got food at the three places."

"What happened to the other two slices?" I asked.

"I gave it to a woman who was hungrier than myself," said Joe simply.

We sat in a nice cosy place. Beside us rumbled a little stream; it glanced like anything as it ran over the stones and fine sands in its bed. From where we sat we could see it break in small ripples against the wild iris and green rushes on the bank. From above, the gold of the sunlight filtered through the waving leaves and played at hide and seek all over our muck-red moleskin trousers. Far down an osier bed covered the stream and hid it from our sight. From there a few birds flew swiftly and perched on the tree above our heads and began to examine us closely. Finding that we meant to do them no harm, and observing that Moleskin threw away little scraps which might be eatable, one bold little beggar came down, and with legs wide apart stood a short distance away and surveyed us narrowly. Soon it began to pick up the crumbs, and by-and-bye we had a score of strangers at our meal.

Later we lay on our backs and smoked. 'Twas good to watch the blue of the sky outside the line of leaves that shaded us from the sun. The feeling of rest and ease was sublime. The birds consumed every crumb which had been thrown to them; then they flew away and left us. When our pipes were finished we washed our feet in the passing stream, and this gave us great relief. Moleskin pared a corn; I turned my socks inside out and hit down a nail which had come through the sole of my bluchers, using a stone for a hammer.

"Now we'll get along, Moleskin," I said, for I was in a hurry.

"Along be damned!" cried my mate. "I'm goin' to have my dog-sleep."[9]

"You have eaten," I said, "and you do not need your dog-sleep to-day."

Joe refused to answer, and turning over on his side he closed his eyes. At the end of ten minutes (his dog-sleep usually lasted for that length of time), he rose to his feet, and walked towards the Clyde, the foreshore of which spread out from the lower corner of the field. A little distance out a yacht heaved on the waves, and a small boat lay on the shingle, within six feet of the water. The tide was full. Joe caught hold of the boat and proceeded to pull it towards the water, meanwhile roaring at me to give him a hand. This was a new adventure. I pulled with all my might, and in barely a minute's space of time the boat was afloat and we were inside of it. Joe rowed for all he was worth, and soon we were past the yacht and out in the deep sea. A man on the yacht called to us, but Joe put down one oar and made a gesture with his hand. The man became irate and vowed that he would send the police after us. My mate took no further heed of the man.

"Can you row?" he asked me.

"I've never had an oar in my hand in my life," I said.

"How much money have you?" he asked as he bent to his oars again. "I gave all mine to that woman who was hungry."

"I have only a penny left," I said.

"We have to cross the Clyde somehow," said Joe, "and a penny would not pay two men's fares on a ferry-boat. It is too far to walk to Glasgow, so this is the only thing to do. I saw the blokes leavin' this boat when we were atour grubbin'-up, so there was nothin' to be done but to take a dog-sleep until they were out of the way."

My respect for Joe's cleverness rose immediately. He was a mate of whom anyone might have been proud.

When once on the other side, we shoved the boat adrift; and went on the road again, outside the town of Dumbarton. Joe took the lead along the Lough Lomond road, and promised to wait for me when dusk was near at hand. The afternoon was very successful; I soon had my pockets crammed with bread, and I got three pipefuls of tobacco from three several men when I asked for a chew from their plugs. An old lady gave me twopence and later I learned that she had given Moleskin a penny.

Far outside of Dumbarton in a wild country, I overtook my mate again. It was now nearly nightfall, and the sun was hardly a hand's breadth above the horizon. Moleskin was singing to himself as I came up on him. I overheard one verse and this was the kind of it. It was a song which I had heard often before sung by navvies in the models.

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