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Updated: May 1, 2025
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.
One morning Major Tracy and I had just got across the railway-line, when we heard the loading bell, and immediately there was a sauve qui pent among all the niggers round us, who had been but a moment before lolling, sleeping, and joking, in their usual fashion.
Chelsea Creek runs in here, cutting past the angle of Lots Road and turning northward to the King's Road, where it is crossed by Stanley Bridge. The West London railway-line has its Chelsea station just above the bridge. Even this remote corner of Chelsea is not without its historical associations.
The Boers continued to ride roughshod over the land, commandeering oxen and cattle, putting up to public auction such Government properties as they had seized at the different railway-stations, and employing hundreds of Kaffirs to tear up the railway-line.
And Meran-en-Laye had for the moment gained new importance, by virtue of a spur railway-line which ran through its outskirts and which made junction with a new set of tracks the American engineers were completing. Along this transverse of roads much ammunition and food and many fighting men were daily rushed. The safety of the village had thus become of much significance.
His whole brusque but honest soul took on fresh youth there, under the roof of his peaceful home, surrounded by the simple pieces of furniture that had been bought one at a time. This was all the reward he wanted. The cold that pierced his bones, out there in the storms along the railway-line, gradually changed to a glow of warmth in the caressing arms of his wife.
The rocking railway-train and the vanishing railway-line seemed to be going due east, as if disappearing into the sun; and save for the noise of the train there was no sound in all that grey and silver solitude; not even the sound of a bird. Yet the plantations were mostly marked out in private plots and bore every trace of the care of private owners.
For instance: on the railway-line from Jaffa to Jerusalem the train stops at a station beside which stands the tomb of a holy man. The schedule calls for a stop of a minute at most. But no sooner had we arrived than what was my stupefaction to see all the Mohammedans on the train get off, spread their prayer-rugs, and tranquilly begin their devotions.
When the doctor was not there she was quiet and sad, and now if she sometimes shed tears as she sat on my bed it was for reasons of which she did not speak. In August Radish ordered us to be ready to go to the railway-line. Two days before we were "banished" from the town my father came to see me.
The short African winter's day had faded into a blue and luminous night, resplendent with stars, and still our belated train tarried. However, the situation was improved, for later advices stated that the Boers had cleared off from the vicinity of the railway-line, and that we should surely leave before midnight.
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