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Updated: June 22, 2025
They were ordinary men, flesh and blood and all the rest; but they did not tend to break our dreaming. Our last memories of men were of United States marshals and of panicky little merchants with rusty dollars for souls, who, in a reeking atmosphere of soot and coal-dust, laid grimy hands upon the Snark and held her back from her world adventure. But these men who came to meet us were clean men.
Hastening along the road towards Aubin, I soon found that the two places, separated according to the map by a considerable distance, had grown together. The long road powdered with coal-dust was now a street lined on each side with houses and hovels.
I'm nobbut a sack o' faggots." Mrs. Morel laughed. He had still a wonderfully young body, muscular, without any fat. His skin was smooth and clear. It might have been the body of a man of twenty-eight, except that there were, perhaps, too many blue scars, like tattoo-marks, where the coal-dust remained under the skin, and that his chest was too hairy. But he put his hand on his side ruefully.
"Where is it?" asked the postmaster, with a peculiar smile. "Out West somewhere. It ain't but fifty cents a share, an' it's goin' up like a skyrocket, an' there's others. There's a new railroad out there, an' other mines, an' a new invention for makin' fuel out of coal-dust, an' some other things." "Is Captain Carroll the president of them?" asked the small man, with an impressed air.
When I was told to pull and haul away at the ropes, I did so with might and main; and, as everything on board was thickly coated with coal-dust, I very soon became, as begrimed as the rest of the crew. I was rather astonished, on asking Captain Grimes when tea would be ready for I was very hungry to be told that I might get what I could with the men forward.
Two hundred convicts were engaged in shovelling down the guano, and a number of stout negroes are employed in the hold to distribute it as it comes down through a canvas shoot. They have to wear iron masks, as the fresh guano is stronger than volatile salts, and more penetrating than coal-dust. The bird which produces the guano is a sort of tern, with red bill and legs.
We had plenty of work, cleaning out the hold and getting rid of the coal-dust, and then we scrubbed the deck, and blacked down the rigging, and painted the bulwarks and masts, till the change in the appearance of the dingy collier was like that of a scullery-maid when she puts on her Sunday best.
His hollow cheeks betrayed themselves through the scraggy beard, and his eyes seemed to have retired into deep caverns where they burned with cold fires. His hands were grained from exposure and hard work, and the nails were rimmed with tight-packed dirt and coal-dust.
But the doctor told him that he must not think of it; that the coal-dust and bad air would hurt his lungs, and that he would very soon die if he did. If he ever got strong, he must find work above ground.
By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.
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