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The two drives branch off from this space: the main is 6 feet 3 inches in height, broad, and splendidly timbered with stout wood all the way along. The Chinamen did this work. Water is running everywhere. We try to walk upon the rails on which the trucks run, to keep our feet dry. But it is of no use, as there is more water in our way to get through.
No sooner had they delivered this ultimatum than a regular stampede took place. Some hundreds of them stopped the first passing train by throwing themselves on the rails in front of the engine, and then, swarming on to the trucks and throwing in their possessions anyhow, they fled from the accursed spot.
I kept the police slips of a single day in May two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. That was unusual, but no day has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents, which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were the pet of some mansion on Fifth Avenue that was slain.
Immediately under the cross-beam a hatch was formed in the roadway of the bridge, measuring seven feet in length and five feet in breadth, made to shut with folding boards like a double door, through which stones and other articles were raised; the folding doors were then let down, and the stone or load was gently lowered upon a waggon which was wheeled on railway trucks towards the lighthouse.
This tramway or railroad was narrow, not quite three feet in width; and small trucks were fitted to it, so that the heavy stones of the building might be easily run to the exact spot they were to occupy. From this circular rail several branch lines extended to the different creeks where the boats deposited the stones.
Motor trucks and ambulances were more frequent than ever, and it was a common occurrence now to pass soldiers, marching in both directions to the front and away from it. There was always some-one to recognize me and start a volley of "Hello, Harrys" coming my way, and I answered every greeting, you may be sure, and threw cigarettes to go with my "Hellos."
He pointed to the four massive cables which supported the sun at each corner of the platform and extended upward till they were enveloped in the darkness. "They hold us up," he said, "where do they go to?" "To the big trucks which run on the tracks near the roof of the cavern; the endless cables are up there, too, but we can not see them with this glare about us."
He said to himself that if one of those fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars, trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot-passengers going and coming to and from the crowded pavements, under the web of the railroad tracks overhead, and amid the spectacular approach of the streets that open into the square, he would have it down in his sketch-book at once.
Early though it was, the narrow streets of the wholesale district reverberated with the rattle of trucks and echoed with the shouts of drivers. The day promised to be scorching. At the door of the warehouse of Breck and Company I was greeted by the ineffable smell of groceries in which the suggestion of parched coffee prevailed.
Gradually a low moan of pain and misery made itself heard in one of the trucks, which soon spread to the others as the miserable men became unable to bear their tortures any longer in silence. "By Jove!" exclaimed Jim, "this is awful; what fiends these Peruvians are!
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