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A loud and altered clank upon the pavement warned him, before he could discern what was passing there, that the man was coming back alone. Clennam lounged into the road, towards the railing; and the man passed at a quick swing, with the end of his cloak thrown over his shoulder, singing a scrap of a French song. The whole vista had no one in it now but himself.
"Go then to the lee of the promenade deck. You will find others there." He did not stop to ask himself if solicitude for the unfortunates wounded in the fight were of any avail. His mind was clear, the habit of command strong in him. Not until the sea claimed him would he cease to rule. The clank of pulleys, the cries of the sailors heaving at the ropes, told him that the crew were at work.
Then suddenly a sense of neglected duty would seize some little body with a hand to its side, nine times out of ten a girl, whose mother, perhaps, lay sick at home, and a stern idea of responsibility began to make the buckets clank.
Silence was particularly golden in these days, and in the stillness of the night the little click of a sheep's trotters descending a mountain pathway was often mistaken for the clank of a scabbard point, or the clink of a gun-butt striking a loose stone. Girls in moorland farms lay awake, half-fearing, half-hoping to hear the saddle-chains of the laden horses, each led by a lover or a brother.
And it was ever observed that, should the soldiers be passing from Portsmouth, or should the clank of trumpet or the rattle of drum break upon his ear, he would arch his old neck, throw out his grey-streaked tail, and raise his stiff knees in a pompous and pedantic canter.
'We shall call you if there be aught to report. I needed no second invitation, but flinging myself down without undressing, I sank in a few minutes into a dreamless sleep, which neither the gentle motion of the boat nor the clank of feet above my head could break off.
But, as he spoke, the clank of a sabre was heard, and at the same instant a tall, soldierlike figure stooped beneath the low doorway, and came forth. "The colonel of the Tenth, I presume?" said I, handing the despatch from General Damrémont. "What! my old college friend and companion!" cried the colonel, as he stepped back in amazement. "Have I such good fortune as to see you in my regiment?"
And Pierre was struck by the deep and discreet silence in which all this colossal labour was accomplished; not a sound reaching the streets from the tribunals, parliaments, and factories for the manufacture of saints and nobles, whose mechanism was so well greased, that in spite of the rust of centuries and the deep and irremediable wear and tear, the whole continued working without clank or creak to denote its presence behind the walls.
"Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr, And thousands of wheels a-spinning Oh, it's dreary work and it's weary work, But none of us all will fail or shirk; Not women's work that should make, not mar, But the Devil drives when the world's at war; And it's long and long the day is."
He did not speak; the whip conveyed his desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence. And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloud of its own making.
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