Patrick MacGill

“ He had a bunk to himself at the corner of the shack, and there he coughed out the long sleepless hours of the night, bereft of all hope, lacking sympathy from any soul sib to himself, and praying for the grave which would end all his troubles. For days at a stretch he lay supine in his bed, unable to move hand or foot, then, when a moment's relief came to him, he rose and started on his shift again, crawling out with his mates like a wounded animal.
Winter came along and Sandy got no better; he could hardly grow worse and remain alive. ”

“ But I did not treasure them so much as the long scar stretching across my cheek, and the disfigured eye, which were tokens of the fight in which I thrashed Hell-fire Gahey. All that day I lived the fight over and over again, and the victory caused me to place great confidence in myself. From that day forward I affected a certain indifference towards other fights, thus pretending that I considered myself to be above such petty scrapes.
By instinct I am a fighter. I never shirk a fight, and the most violent contest is a tonic to my soul. ”

“ Inside each shack a dozen or more gamblers sat cross-legged in circles on the ground, playing banker or brag, and the clink of money could be heard as it passed from hand to hand. Above them the naphtha lamps hissed and spluttered and smelt, the dim, sickly light showed the unwashed and unshaven faces beneath, and the eager eyes that sparkled brightly, seeing nothing but the movements of the game. Down in the cuttings men were labouring on the night-shift, gutting out the bowels of the mountain places, and forcing their way through the fastness steadily, slowly and surely. ”

“ We were now working on a farm where the River Clyde broadens out to the waters of the deep ocean. One evening, when supper was over, I went out alone to the fields and sat down on the green sod and looked outwards to the grey horizon of the sea. Beside me ran a long avenue of hazel bushes, and a thrush was singing on a near bough, his amber and speckled bosom quivering with the passion of his song. The sun had already disappeared, trailing its robe of carmine from off the surface of the far water, and an early star was already keeping its watch overhead. ”

“ We were an army of scarecrows, ragged, unkempt scare crows of civilisation. We came down from Kinlochleven in the evening with the glow of the setting sun full in our faces, and never have I looked on an array of men such as we were. Some were old, lame men who might not live until they obtained their next job, and who would surely drop at their post when they obtained it. These were the veterans of labour, crawling along limply in the rear, staggering over boulders and hillocks, men who were wasted in the long struggle and who were now bound for a new place—a place where a man might die. ”

“ No one spoke of my proposed fight with Gahey, and I wondered at this silence. I asked Moleskin if Hell-fire was afraid of me.
"Not at all," said Joe. "But he won't put his dinner-hour to loss by thrashin' a light rung of a cully like you. That's the kind of him."
I laughed as if enjoying Joe's remark, but in my mind I resolved to go for Gahey as soon as I got the chance, and hammer him, if able, until he shrieked for mercy. It was most annoying to know that a man would not put his time to loss in fighting me. ”

“ At home I heard them say when a child was born to such and such a person that it was the will of God, just as if man and woman had nothing to do with the affair. I wished that I had never been born. My parents had sinned against me in bringing me into the world in which I had to fight for crumbs with the dogs of the gutter. And now they wanted money when I was hardly able to keep myself alive on what I earned. Bringing me into the world and then living on my labour—such an absurd and unjust state of things! ”

“ But my love for Norah was different. To me she represented a youthful ideal which was too beautiful and pure to be degraded by anything in the world.
Norah had given her love to another. Who was I that I should blame her? In her love she was helpless, for love is not the result of effort. It cannot be stopped; its course cannot be stayed. As well ask the soft spring meadows to prevent the rising freshet from wetting the green grass, as ask a maiden to stem the torrent of the love which overwhelms her. Love is not acquired; it is not a servant. It comes and is master. ”

“ At intervals during the day the winds of the mountain put their heads together and swept a whirlstorm of snow down upon us, wetting each man to the pelt. Our tools froze until the hands that gripped them were scarred as if by red-hot spits. We shook uncertain over our toil, our sodden clothes scalding and itching the skin with every movement of the swinging hammers. Near at hand the lean derrick jibs whirled on their pivots like spectres of some ghoulish carnival, and the muck-barrows crunched backwards and forwards, all their dirt and rust hidden in woolly mantles of snow. ”

“ Every door is a puzzle, every lighted window an enigma. The great city is a Sahara, in which you look for one special grain of sand; and doubt, perplexity, and heart yearning accompany you on your mission. I could not write, neither could I turn my attention to manual labour. My whole being was centred on my search, and the thought of anything else was repugnant to me. My desire for Norah grew and grew, it filled my soul, leaving no room for anything else.
To Moran's, where I stayed, the navvies came daily when out on their eternal wanderings, and here I met many of my old mates. ”

“ But to man, a physical contest is a pastime and a joy. I love to see a fight with the bare fists, the combatants stripped naked to the buff, the long arms stretching out, the hard knuckles showing white under the brown skin of the fists, the muscles sliding and slipping like live eels under the flesh, the steady and quick glance of the eye, the soft thud of fist on flesh, the sharp snap of a blow on the jaw, and the final scene where one man drops to the ground while the other, bathed in blood and sweat, smiles in acknowledgment of the congratulations on the victory obtained. ”

“ A woman of untidy appearance disgusts me, a man who talks filthily without reason is utterly repellent to me. The ploughman with his loose jokes I loathed, the girls I despised even more than they despised me. Their dislike was more affected than real; my dislike was real though less ostentatious. It gave me no pleasure to tell a dirty slut that she was dirty, but a dirty woman annoyed me in those days. I could not imagine a man falling in love with one of those women, with their short, inelegant petticoats and hobnailed shoes caked with the dried muck of the farmyard. ”

“ His swearing was a gift, remarkable and irrepressible; it was natural to the man; it was the man.
"God's curse on you, Dan Devine, I don't see your shovel at work at all!" he roared. "Where the hell are you, Muck MaCrossan? Your waggon isn't nearly water-level yet, and that young whelp, Flynn, has his nearly full! If your chest was as broad as your belly, MacQueen, you'd be a danged sight better man on the ash-pile! It's not but that you are well enough used to the ashes, for I never yet saw a Heelin man who didn't spend the best part of his life before a fire or before grub! ”

“ Both men smiled, but the smile was a mask, behind which, clear-headed and cool-eyed, each of them looked for an opening and an opportunity to drive home a blow. To each belonged the wisdom bred of many weary, aching fights and desperate gruellings. Gahey was by far the quicker man; his long brown arms shot out like whiplashes, and his footwork was very clever. He was a man, untrained in the art, but a natural fighter. His missing thumb seemed to place him at no disadvantage. Joe was slower but by far the stronger man. ”

“ He was not a bad fellow at heart, but he could do nothing without flying into a fuming passion, which often was no deeper than his lips. Below him the smoke was so thick that he could hardly see his own labourers from the stand on the coupling chain. All he could see was the shovels of red ashes and shovels of black ashes rising up and over the haze that enveloped the pit beneath. But we could hear Roche where we wrought. Louder than the grinding of the ballast engine was the voice of the Horse cursing and swearing. ”

“ What did the men think of as they walked down from Kinlochleven? It is hard to say, for the inmost thoughts of a most intimate friend are hidden from us, for they lack expression and cannot be put into words. As to myself, I found that my thoughts were running back to Norah Ryan and the evenings we spent on the shores of the Clyde. I was looking backward; I had no thoughts, no plans, for the future.
I was now almost careless of life, indifferent towards fortune, and the dreams of youth had given place to a placid acceptance of stern realities. ”

“ Fleet Street is the home of chicanery, of fraud, of versatile vices and unnumbered sins. It is an outcome of the civilisation which it rules, a framer of the laws which it afterwards destroys or protects at caprice; without conscience or soul it dominates the world. Only in its falseness is it consistent. Truth is further removed from its jostling rookeries than the first painted savage who stoned the wild boar in the sterile wastes of Ludgate Circus."
Barwell's gestures were as astonishing as his eloquence. ”

“ If you find the company of another woman pleasant you have your old crow to jaw at you from the chimney corner. You'll bring up a breed of children that will leave you when you need them most. Your wife will get old, her teeth will fall out, and her hair will get thin, until she becomes as bald as the sole of your foot. She'll get uglier until you loathe the sight of her, and find one day that you cannot kiss her for the love of God. But all the time you'll have to stay with her, growl at her, and nothin' before both of you but the grave or the workhouse. ”

“ As for myself, when I see a man droppin' down like a haltered gin-horse at his work I don't hold much with what parsons say about the goodness of Providence. At other times, when I am tramping about in the lonely night, with the stars out above me and the world kind of holding its breath as if it was afraid of something, I do be thinking that there is a God after all. I'd rather that there is none; for He is sure to have a heavy tally against me if He puts down all the things I've done. ”

“ In the fight to come the chances were against us. Rugged cabins with unplanked floors, leaking roofs, flimsy walls, through the chinks of which the winds cut like knives, meagre blankets, mouldy food, well-worn clothes, and battered bluchers were all that we possessed to aid us in the struggle. On the other hand, the winter marshalled all her forces, the wind, the hail, frost, snow, and rain, and it was against these that we had to fight, and for the coming of the opposing legions we waited tensely and almost eagerly. ”

“ The drill holder cowered on his seat and feared for the moment when an erring hammer might fly clear and finish his labours for ever. Hourly our tempers grew worse, each movement of the body caused annoyance and discomfort, and we quarrelled over the most trivial matters. Red Billy cursed every man in turn and all in general, until big Jim Maloney lost his temper completely and struck the ganger on the jaw with his fist, knocking him senseless into a snowdrift. ”

“ Joe interrupted.
"It was the only remark which the man was able to make," I said. "The pig has its grunt, the bull its bellow, the cock its crow, and the plougher his boasted decency. To each his crow, grunt, boast, or bellow, and to all their ignorance. It is impossible to argue against ignorance, Moleskin. It is proof against sarcasm and satire and is blind to its own failings and the merits of clever men like you." ”

“ Since I came to Kinlochleven I had not looked on a woman, and the thoughts of womankind had almost entirely gone from my mind. With the rest of the men it was the same. The sexual instinct was almost dead in them. Women were merely dreams of long ago; they were so long out of sight that the desire for their company had almost expired in every man of us. Still, it was strange that I should think of Norah Ryan as I trudged down the hillside from Kinlochleven. ”

“ I took my way over the slope of the mountain, over the pigmies who wrought beneath, fighting the great fight which man has to wage eternally against nature. Down in the cuttings I could see my mates toiling amidst the broken earth, the sharp ledges of hewn rock, and the network of gang-planks and straining derricks that rose all around them. ”