United States or Japan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And as a result he had had to stand aside and see all sorts of gentry taken on for the numerous expeditions that were constantly being arranged: runaway seamen, cooks, stewards, and stokers from the ships, gangers and navvies from the railways, ne'er-do-wells of all descriptions, with but here and there an old "river digger," or genuine prospector to leaven the lump.
Outside, through the clearing with its stumps of jack-pine, ran a path, a short cut, connecting the station at Laggan with a section-house further up the line. As McEwen's eyes followed it, he began to be aware of a group of men emerging from the trees on the Laggan side, and walking in single file along the path. Navvies apparently carrying bundles and picks.
A railway-line was being constructed in our neighbourhood. On the eve of feast days the streets were thronged with ragged fellows whom the townspeople called "navvies," and of whom they were afraid.
As Jonah had no piano, the boy came half an hour early to his lesson to practise, but the twenty minutes' journey from the Silver Shoe occupied the best part of an hour, for Ray, who took to the streets as a duck takes to water, could spend a morning idling before shop windows, following fiddlers on their rounds, watching navvies dig a drain, with a frank, sensuous delight in the sights and sounds of the streets, an inheritance from Jonah's years of vagabondage.
The spade is the first thing, but the average ironmonger will show you an unwieldy weapon only meant to be used by navvies. Don't buy it. Get a small spade, about half-size it is nice and light and doesn't tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm, and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife.
"Look here," he said, "I will take a step or two forward as if I meant to run away; then you must put your hand on my shoulder roughly, and I will stumble; when I do, slip the bracelets on." From the mouth of the tunnel the plate-layer, the foreman and the navvies all followed with their eyes the unintelligible conversation passing between the gendarme and the tramp a hundred yards away.
They found wages better than warfare. As navvies, they were paid half a crown a day, and were reported to do more work as spade-men than an equal number of soldiers would. At no time did the Maoris seem to make such material progress as during the twelve peaceful years beginning with 1848. With his brown subjects, Grey, after once beating them, trod the paths of pleasantness and peace.
They would only need a few grains of sand to fill the void and restore the causeway. They do not for a moment dream of it, plucky navvies though they be, capable of raising miniature mountains of excavated soil. We can get them to give us an enormous cone of earth, an instinctive piece of work, but we shall never obtain the juxtaposition of three grains of sand, a reasoned piece of work.
There was a satisfaction in his largeness, his commonsense, his breeziness. She liked hearing his quaint Bush colloquialisms, when he leaned out of the window at the small stations and exchanged greetings with whomsoever happened to be there officials, navvies, miners, even Chinamen most of whom saluted him with a 'Glad to see you back, sir! ... or a 'Good-day, Boss.
Not a soul followed not even the living dog of the dead man, if he had one. The day was rainy and dismal; passers by lifted the hat as is usual when a funeral passes, and that was all. At length it passed two English navvies, who found themselves in Paris on their way from Spain. A right feeling spoke from beneath their serge jackets.
Word Of The Day