Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/276

230 All navvies love drink—if they are real navvies, and not warehousemen or others seeking blisters, thrills, and new swear words; but to our never ceasing astonishment we discovered, when working below, that there was one thing we loved better—fresh air.

When we got back to where the smoke was slowly circling, the struggling ducks fitfully flickered and then gave up the battle in despair, leaving us to grope our way in darkness to the pipe end. After a period of cursing and stumbling over each other, and barking our fingers and shins, we would eventually fix the loose section and throw ourselves down to the vent, taking deep draughts of the horribly sweet stuff and feeling that life was again worth living.

Or again, a short fuse would burn too rapidly and, instead of getting out of the range of the throw of stuff, we would have time to run only a few yards and throw ourselves flat on the ground, or take cover behind some rough of rock in the tunnel side before the roar sounded.

We were always in too great a hurry to be frightened on these occasions—though I remember the first time I was caught the muscles of my legs seemed to get out of control, my knees jerked up and down, and my feet knocked on the ground like drumsticks. But, strangely enough, I had no thought of fear, only wonder. My shelter was a small angle of stone like the point of a blacksmith's anvil, it merely sheltered my waist for a few seconds, for the first explosions sent a mass of rock against it and rock and shelter shattered about my beating feet, whilst from the second burst a stone as big as a chair hurtled close to my face—I felt the rush of wind as it passed.

Yorky had to carry me to the air pipe, for I could not for the life of me get my feet to do anything but beat aimlessly up and down.

These premature and delayed explosions were the cause of nearly all the altercations between members of the gang. If Yorky said that only three holes had been fired, and Tafty swore that four had gone, then we considered it up to Taffy to back his words by hustling up with the air pipe. If he were wrong and got knocked over by the late fire of the fourth blast, he swore that Yorky had run five holes instead of four. Anyway there was a row, but a row which seldom lasted long, for Clinker checked it by cursing the disputants into working the edges off their tempers.

One day, however, things came to a head. Yorky and Taffy had