Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/158

144 scene! Where or when did war ever dig such deep trenches or fill them with such battalions, or bring its land and sea forces into action with such united and concentrated power! Here were 10,000 pickmen sending up from holds, 500 feet deep, cartridges for loading the cupola cannon that were reddening the night with their blaze. Here were the deck or surface brigades standing to their batteries, and making each look like the old picture of "The Defence of Gibraltar." There were the Brades Works at the right centre of the line, discharging a thousand spades, hoes, trowels, and pruning-hooks an hour. Further down toward Birmingham there was a well-manned battery that poured forth a shower of bolts and nuts; and Chance's great fortress was all ablaze, with its hot fountains sending out acres of glass to be parcelled into panes of every size. To the right of us, to the left and front of us, the whole amphitheatre was in close action, working out for the world the thousand small arms of peace—cotton hoes for Brazil and harpoons for Behring's Straits, and, for all the countries between, every tool used in honest labour.

The moon rode up with its bland face a little flushed over the scene, and the whole heavens were suffused with the red illumination, as if in honour of human industry. Then at that moment all the church bells of Dudley sent forth a shower of