Adventures of Working Men Part 11

"The engine-room was now cleared, and in spite of my trembling and horror, as every big piece was disturbed, nothing had been found; but all at once, as we were trying to clear behind the biler, and get down to the stoke-hole, one of the men gate a cry. I caught at the man nearest to me, and then lights, rubbish, the strange wild scene, all seemed to run round me, and I should have fallen only the man held me up, and some one brought me some brandy.

"I was myself again directly, and stumbling over the bricks to where a knot of men had collected, and a policeman had his bull's-eye lantern open, and they were stooping to look at something that lay just under a beam they had raised--to the left of where I expected she would be found.

"'Smashed,' I heard some one, with his back to me, say; and then some one else, 'Poor little thing, she must have run past here!'

"Then, with my throat dry and my eyes staring, I crept up and thrust two men aside, right and left, when the others made way for me without speaking, and, when I got close up, I covered my face with my hands, and softly knelt down.

"The policeman said something, and some one else spoke cheerily; but I couldn't hear what they said, for my every thought was upon what I was going to see. And now, for the first time, the great, blinding tears came gushing from my eyes, so that when I slowly took down first one hand and then another, I was blinded, and could not see for a few moments; till, stooping a little lower, there, smashed and flattened, covered with mortar and dust, was my old red cotton handkercher tied round the basin and plate that held my dinner, dropped here by my little darling girl.

"For a few moments I was, as it were, struck dumb--it was so different a sight to what I had expected to see; and then I leaped up and laughed, and shouted, and danced--the relief was so great.

"'Come on!' I cried again; and then, for an hour or more, we were at it, working away till the light began to come in the east, and tell us that it was daybreak.

"Late as it was, plenty of people had stopped all the time; for, somehow or another, hundreds had got to know the little bright, golden-haired thing that trotted backwards and forwards every day with my dinner basin. She was too little to do it, but then, bless you, that was our pride; for the wife combed and brushed and dressed her up on purpose.

And fine and proud we used to be of the little thing, going and coming-- so old-fashioned. Why, lots of heads used to be thrust out to watch her; and seeing how pretty, and artless, and young she was, we used to feel that every one would try and protect her; and it was so. Time after time, that night, I saw motherly-looking women, that I did not know, with their ap.r.o.ns to their eyes, sobbing and crying; and though I didn't notice it then, I remembered it well enough afterwards--ah! and always shall; while the way in which some of the men worked--well-to-do men, who would have thought themselves insulted if you'd offered 'em five shillings for their night's job--showed how my poor little darling had won the hearts of all around. Often and often since, too, I could have stopped this one, and shook hands with that one for their kindness; only there's always that shut-upness about an Englishman that seems to make him all heart at a time of sorrow, and a piece of solid bluntness at every other time.

"Well, it was now just upon morning, and we were all worked up to a pitch of excitement that nothing could be like. We had been expecting to come upon the poor child all the afternoon and night, but now there could be no doubt of it. She must be here; for we were now down in the stoke-hole, working again with more vigour than had been shown for hours. Men's faces were flushed, and their teeth set. They didn't talk, only in Whispers; and the stuff went flying out as fast as others could take it away.

"'Easy, easy,' the sergeant of police kept saying, as he and two of his men kept us well lit with the strong light of their lanterns.

"But the men tore on, till at last the place was about cleared out, and we had got to a ma.s.s of brick wall sloping against one side, and a little woodwork on the other side, along with some rubbish.

"And now was the exciting time, as we went, four of us, at the brick wall, and dragged at it, when some women up above shrieked out, and we stood trembling, for it had crumbled down and lay all of a heap where we had raised it from.

"'Quick!' I shouted, huskily. And we tore the bricks away till there was hardly a sc.r.a.p left, and we stood staring at one another.

"'Why, she ain't here, arter all!' says a policeman.

"'I'm blest,' says another.

"But I couldn't speak, for I did not know what to do; but stood staring about as if I expected next to see the little darling come running up again unhurt.

"'Try there,' says the sergeant.

"Then he turned on his light in a dark corner, where the bits of wood lay, and I darted across and threw back two or three pieces, when I gave a cry, and fell on my knees again. For there was no mistake this time: I had uncovered a little foot, and there was the white sock all blood-stained; and I felt a great sob rise from my breast as I stooped down and kissed the little red spot.

"'Steady,' said the sergeant; and then quickly, as I knelt there, they reached over me, and lifted piece after piece away, till there, in the grey light of the morning, I was looking upon the little motionless figure, lying there with her golden hair, as I had fancied, dabbled in blood from a cut in her little white forehead, where the blood had run, but now lay hard and dry. Covered with blood and sc.r.a.ps of mortar, she lay stretched out there, and I felt as if my heart would break to see the little, peaceful face almost with a smile upon it; while, as if out of respect to my feelings, the men all drew back, till I knelt there alone.

"And now far up in the sky the warm light of the rising sun shone, and it was reflected down upon that tiny face, and as I knelt there in the still silence of that early morn I could hear again and again a half-stifled sob from those looking on.

"With trembling hands I leaned forward and gently raised her head; then, pa.s.sing one beneath her, I rose on my knee to bear her out, when I stopped as if turned to stone, then left go, and clasped both my raw and bleeding hands to my blackened forehead, as shrieking out--'My G.o.d, she's alive!' I fell back insensible; for those little blue eyes had opened at my touch, and a voice, whispered the one word--

"'Father!'

"That's her, sir. Fine girl she's grown, ain't she? but she was beautiful as a child. Hair ever so many shades lighter; and, unless you went close up, you couldn't see the mark of that cut, though it was some time before the scar gave over looking red.

"But really, you know, sir, there ought to be something done about these bilers; for the rate at which they're a-bustin's fearful."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

MY PATIENT THE CAPTAIN.

Captain Greening as he was called was a curious old patient of mine whom I had to attend pretty regularly when I lived at Basingstoke. His t.i.tle of captain was derived from the fact that he had in his younger days been captain of a barge plying along the ca.n.a.l. His was a chronic case that was incurable, so I rarely called upon him at a busy time, for nothing pleased the old fellow better than b.u.t.tonholing me for a long talk.

"Look ye here, doctor," he'd say, "I like you, and it's a pleasure to be ill that it is, so as to have you to talk to."

I believe that any good return would have done as well but I did not say so, and we remained the best of friends.

I called upon him one day at his cottage where he very comfortably enjoyed the snug winter of his days, and found him so excited over a newspaper that he forgot all about his asthma, and could only answer my questions with others.

"Have you seen about this Regent's Park accident?" he exclaimed.

"Yes," I replied, "I read it all yesterday morning. Terrible affair."

"Awful, only it might have been so much worse. There sit down, doctor.

You know I used to have a ca.n.a.l boat--monkey boat we called 'em, because they are so long and thin."

"Yes, I know it," I said.

"Ah, and I've had a load of powder scores o' times both in monkey boats and lighters on the Thames. You ain't in a hurry to-day, doctor?"

"Not particularly," I said.

"That's good," said the old fellow. "Asthma's better. Look here, doctor, I might have been blown up just as those poor chaps was at any time, and I nearly was once."

"What, blown up by powder!"

"To be sure I was. Look here, I take my long clay pipe off the table-- so; I pulls the lead tobacco box towards me--so; I fills my pipe-bowl-- so; and then I pulls open this neat little box, made like somebody's first idea of a chest of drawers, takes out one of these little splints of wood, rubs it on the table, no good--on the floor, no good--on the sole of my boot, no good; but when I gives it a snap on the side of a box--fizz, there's a bright little light, the wood burns, and I am holding it to the bowl of my pipe, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out again, looking at you pleasantly through the thin blue cloud, and-- how are you?

"Times is altered since I was a lad, I can tell you. Why, as you know, that there match wouldn't light not nowhere but on the box, so as to be safe and keep children from playing with 'em and burning themselves, or people treading on 'em and setting fire to places; and what I've got to say is this, that it's a precious great convenience--so long as you've got the box with you--and a strange sight different to what it was when I was a boy.

"Now I'll just tell you how it was then, whether you know or whether you don't know. Lor' bless you, I've seen my old aunt do it lots o' times.

There used to be a round, flat tin box, not quite so big as the top of your hat; and the lid on it used to be made into a candlestick, with a socket to hold a dip. Then into this box they used to stuff a lot of old cotton rag, and set light to it--burn it till it was all black, and the little sparkles was all a-running about in it, same as you've seen 'em chasing one another in a bit o' burnt paper. Down upon it would come a piece o' flat tin and smother all the sparkles out, 'cos no air could get to 'em; and then they'd put on the lid, and there was your tinder-box full o' tinder.

"Next, you know, you used to have a piece o' soft iron, curled round at each end, so as you took hold on it, and held it like a knuckle-duster; and also you had a bit o' common flint, such as you might pick up in any road as wasn't paved with granite; and, lastly, you had a bundle--not a box, mind, but a bundle--of matches, and them was thin splints o' wood, like pipe lights, pointed at the ends same's wood palings, and dipped in brimstone. Them's what the poor people used to sell about the streets, you know--a dozen of 'em spread out and tied like a lady's fan--in them days, and made 'em theirselves, they did. A piece o' even splitting wood and a penn'orth o' brimstone was a stock in trade then, on which many a poor creetur lived--helped by a bit o' begging.

"Say, then, you wanted a light--mind, you know, those was the days when the sojers used to carry the musket they called Brown Bess, as went off with a flint and steel, long before the percushin cap times--well, say you wanted a light, you laid your match ready, took your tinder-box off the chimneypiece, opened it, took the bit o' flint in one hand and the steel or iron in the other, and at it you went--nick, nick, nick, nick, nick, with the sparks flying like fun, till one of 'em dropped on your black tinder, and seemed to lie there like a tiny star. You were in luck's way if you did that at the end of five minutes; and then you made yourself into a pair o' human bellows, and blew away at that spark, till it began to glow and get bigger, when you held to it one of the brimstone matches, and that began to melt and burn blue, and flamed up; when the chances was as the stifling stuff got up your nose, and down your throat, and you choked, and sneezed, and puffed the match out, and had to begin all over again.

"Well, that's a long rigmarole about old ways of getting a light; but I mention it because we'd got one o' them set-outs on board, and that's the way we used to work. You know, after that came little bottles in which you dipped a match, and lit it that way--in fosseros, I think you call it. Next came what was a reg'lar wonder to people then--lucifers, which in them days was flat-headed matches, which you put between a piece of doubled-up stuff, like a little book cover, and pulled 'em out smart. Soon after, some one brought out them as you rubbed on the bottoms of the box on sand-paper, and they called them congreves; but by degrees that name dropped out, and we got back to lucifers for name, and now folks never says nothing but matches.

"In the days I'm telling you about, I was capen of a lighter--a big, broad, flat barge, working on the Thames; not one of your narrow monkey boats as run on the ca.n.a.ls, though it was the blowing up of the _Tilbury_ the other day as put me in mind of what I'm going to tell you in my long-winded, roundabout fashion. But I s'pose you ain't in no hurry, so let me go on in my own way.

"You see, your genuine lighterman ain't a lively sort of a chap, the natur' of his profession won't lot him be; for he's always doing things in a quiet, slow, easy-going fashion. Say he's in the river: well, he tides up and he tides down, going as slow as you like, and only giving a sweep now and then with a long oar, to keep the barge's head right, and stay her from coming broadside on to the piers o' the bridges.

"Well, that's slow work, says you; and so it is. And it ain't no better when your bargeman gets into a ca.n.a.l, for then he's only towed by a horse as ain't picked out acause he's a lovely Arab as gallops fifty mile an hour--one and a half or two's about his cut, and that ain't lively. As for your new-fangled doing with your steam tugs, a-puffing, and a-blowing, and as smoking, like foul chimneys on a foggy day, what I got to say about them is as it's disgustin', and didn't ought to be allowed. Just look at 'em on the river now, a-drawing half-a-dozen barges full o' coal at once, and stirring up the river right to the bottom! Ah! there warn't not no such doings when I was young, and a good job too.

"Well, as I was going to tell you, I was capen of the _Betsy_--as fine a lighter as you'd ha' found on the river in them days, and I'd got two hands aboard with me. There was Billy Jinks--Gimlet we used to call him, because he squinted so. I never did see a fellow as could squint like Billy could. He'd got a werry good pair o' eyes, on'y they was odd uns and didn't fit. They didn't belong to him, you know, and was evidently put in his head in a hurry when he were made, and he couldn't do nothing with 'em. Them eyes of his used to do just whatever they liked, and rolled and twissened about in a way as you never did see; and I've often thought since as it was them eyes o' Billy's as made him take to drink--and drink he could, like a fish.