Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/121

64 out.’ These ‘runners out’ had very short lengths to push the skips, and the cost, when the Company was working the heading, was more than ten times what it could have been done for by ponies, or perhaps twenty times what it could have been done for by proper hauling-engines.

There had been a bad spirit among the men from the time I had taken possession of the works. I believe they had wished that I should fail in pumping the water out of the tunnel. I am not quite sure that they had not wilfully caused some of the difficulties that had occurred; and now that the works were opened throughout, and there was a prospect of making better progress, they determined to make a stand, and either force me to abandon the work altogether, or to yield to their demands. Their discontent first showed itself by their jeering at the men who took their meals with them up the long heading, asking them why they did not get tin hats made to carry their dinners in; and then by assaulting in the darkness, or when they could meet with them alone, men I had brought from a tunnel I had just finished at Dover.

At last, on Saturday the 21st May, a notice appeared, written in chalk, at the top of the main shaft: ‘I hope the ———— bond will break, and kill any man that goes down to work.’

The men gathered round the pit, but refused to go below.

It was Saturday morning, and the pay of the