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It seemed to be in an earlier age that the dark colliers had silently climbed the steep of Bycars Lane amid the dankness and that the first column of smoke had risen forlornly from the chimney. In spite of her desolated heart, and of her primness, Rachel stepped forward airily.
Expedients of this kind had long been employed in India and America, where wide rivers were crossed by means of bridges formed of ropes and chains; and even in this country a suspension bridge, though of a very rude kind, had long been in use near Middleton on the Tees, where, by means of two common chains stretched across the river, upon which a footway of boards was laid, the colliers were enabled to pass from their cottages to the colliery on the opposite bank.
I feel rather like a man I know at home who was brought up on the sheltered life system, nursery governess, private tutor, etc., who when he came of age just ran amok, drank, fought with the colliers on his own estate, and then enlisted in an irregular corps and went to fight the Spaniards in Cuba, just to prove to himself that he wasn't the ninny his father had tried to make him.
But do not forget the little guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from a cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins; or the light cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the 2,300 trawlers and mine-layers, and what not, all under his direction. He had submarines, too, double the number of the German. But with all the German men-of-war in harbour, they had no targets.
He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. Just across was his own house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down the dark, wintry garden.
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.
Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers, where they see a great deal of severe coasting service.
Penrose, helpless and silent, stood at the foot of the settle on which lay the dying boy, the colliers seeking the gloomy corners of the large kitchen, where in shadow they awaited in rude fear the death of their little companion.
"I do not half like this boat-service in open daylight, Winchester," observed the senior, beckoning to the other to take a chair. "The least bungling may spoil it all; and then it's ten to one but your ship goes half-manned for a twelvemonth, until you are driven to pressing from colliers and neutrals." "But we hope, sir, there'll be no bungling in anything that the Proserpine undertakes.
In one sense he found that, as far as the privates went, the army was a great democracy. One man was as good as another. The sons of well-to-do families rubbed shoulders with colliers and farm labourers. Tommy was Tommy, whether he was "Duke's Son" or "Cook's Son." And yet, in another sense, education and social status were recognised.
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