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Updated: April 30, 2025
I was the boy who would have been sent home with a hole through him I the boy who write this and the other boy who would have been broken in half, was one whom I had encountered at the dock-gates, where we had both arrived together, that miserable, mizzly morning, in four-wheeled cabs with our sea-chests on the top, and both in mortal dread and yet somehow hopeful that we should be too late, and that the good ship Burgh Castle had sailed.
But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work. Here is the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels. C. is a fine built man, standing nearly six feet. He has been in the Royal Artillery for eight years and held very good situations whilst in it. It seems that he was thrifty and consequently steady.
Some clock ashore beyond the dock-gates struck two. And then he heard nothing more, because he went off into a light sleep from which he woke up with a start. He had not taken his clothes off, it was hardly worth while. He jumped up and went on deck.
Among the great crowds pouring out of the dock-gates at such hours, of course these smugglers stood little chance of detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by.
Small wonder that some of them descend to a lower grade and in addition to being unemployed, become unemployable. Look at those thousands of men clamouring daily at our dock-gates; about one-half of them will obtain a few hours' hard work, but the other half will go hopeless away.
They will gather some courage during the night, for the next morning they will find their way to, and be knocking once more at, the same dock-gates. It takes sterling qualities to endure this life, and there can be no greater hero than the man who goes through it and still retains manhood.
Those miserable women who work from early morning to late night, condemned to a slavery worse than any we have abolished; those hungry men who besiege the dock-gates for a day's work, and have nothing in the whole world but a pair of hands; that vast class which is separated from starvation by a single day what thought, interest, or care can they have for anything in the world but the procuring of food?
The tugs backed and filled in the stream, to hold the ship steady at the dock-gates; from her bows two lines went through the air whistling, and struck at the land viciously, like a pair of snakes. A bridge broke in two before her, as if by enchantment; big hydraulic capstans began to turn all by themselves, as though animated by a mysterious and unholy spell.
He had a rum time of it, in his sailor rig, but hoisted in a wonderful deal of gibberish, according to his own account of his cruise. Captain Johnston now got a freight for the ship, and we hauled into the stream, abreast of the dock-gates, and took in shingle ballast. The Prussian, Dane, second mate, and the English cooper, all left us, in London.
It might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van, nothing more probable. Or at any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that second passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of Sugar and Spice. You never could tell.
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