Adventures of Working Men Part 20

"Thud-thud, thud-thud went the pump, and the pressure was awful; while at the same time, as I vainly writhed and tried to press down the heavy plate that was crus.h.i.+ng me, I was conscious of a great light which shone around, and which I thought was caused by the flus.h.i.+ng sensation in my eyes; but no, for directly there came the noise of shouting, louder every moment; and then I made out, ringing up from the yard, those horrid words, 'Fire! fire!' and then I knew that Wood must have fired the warehouse.

"Shouts, cries, and the noise of hurrying feet; and Wood stood in the glare of light, looking first one way and then the other, as if confused, for he had quitted the pump on the first noise of shouting.

All at once he darted away; and half fainting and suffocated with the pressure, I could do nothing but groan feebly, after struggling a little, to find every effort vain; and then with sharpened senses gaze at the flames licking the roof of the floor I was on, and escaping up the sides of wool bales, and the more inflammable goods that were in the warehouse. The smoke soon became blinding and the heat stifling; and for me there seemed no hope, since I was sure no one would be able to penetrate to where I was; when again I gave a struggle, and stretched down my hand backwards to try and reach the tap, which would let off the water and set me at liberty, or at least place me in a position to try and escape the horrible death that seemed my fate.

"But no, the handle was far out of my reach; and I groaned and wept at my helpless condition. The press held me by the chest with awful power, but my hands and arms were at liberty; while my head hanging down backwards enabled me to see the flames creeping along faster and faster, as I saw them reversed, and began to calculate how long it would be before they would reach me and end my misery.

"All at once, when nearly fainting, my hand came in contact with the iron bar used to lengthen the handle of the pump, to force in the water with more ease when greater power was required; and then my heart gave a leap as I thought I might be able to strike the handle of the tap and let out the water.

"I grasped the bar, and then I began swinging it about slowly, to try and strike the tap; but in vain, for I could do nothing with it from only being able to swing it at random, for I could not see. Nearer came the flames, louder rose the shouts; and as I looked along the warehouse I could see that all escape was out off by the stairs, even if I had been at liberty; and now, completely overcome by the pressure and the horror of my position, I groaned heavily, and the bar fell from my grasp.

"'The last hope gone,' I thought; when at the same moment a familiar sound struck my ear, for in falling the bar had struck upon the tap, when there came the fierce gush of the compressed water, and the ram began slowly to descend till I could crawl out, to fall fainting upon the floor.

"But I was up again directly, for there was a fierce glow in the place; and now I could see Wood busily at work tearing out wool to feed the flames, and das.h.i.+ng everything else he could lay his hands upon into the fire, which seemed at times to singe him.

"I looked round, for he took no notice of me; and I had before seen there was no escape by the door, so, running to the open door by the crane, I caught hold of the rope, and began lowering it down as fast as possible, with the light s.h.i.+ning full upon me, and the people below either groaning with horror or cheering me on as I tore at the stout rope, and sent the crane handle spinning round and round.

"Could I but get enough rope out before Wood's attention was taken, I felt safe, for I knew that I could slide down easily enough; but, as I dreaded, he caught sight of me, and leaving his fiery task, he rushed towards the door; when, with a yell of terror, I leaped from the flooring, clinging tightly to the rope, which began to run swiftly out as I swung to and fro till it was all out, when the jerk nearly dashed me off. But, after sliding down some little way, I recovered myself, and letting the rope glide slowly through my hands, I went lower and lower, with my eyes fixed on the blazing floor above.

"All at once I felt the rope jerked and swung about, and I could see the figure of Wood at it; and then again I was being drawn up, and I knew he must be busy at the crane handle; but the next minute he must have loosened his hold.

"There was a yell from the crowd, something dark dashed by me with a rus.h.i.+ng noise, and as I clung trembling to the rope I heard a horrible dull thud, and slipping swiftly down the rope for the remainder of the distance, I suppose I fell fainting by the side of Wood's mutilated form.

"The fire was got under when our floor was burned out, though much damage was done by water; but with the exception of a strange, nervous timidity that I fancy I shall never get the better of, I was not much the worse."

"And was Jacob Wood killed?"

"No, sir," he said; "he fell upon some bales of wool; but he was dreadfully hurt, and never man enough to take his turn in the warehouse again, and very glad we all were."

"And yet you men rather need an example."

"Well, yes, sir, we do," he said, thoughtfully; "but I'm going to turn over a new leaf."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

MY PATIENT IN THE RIVER POLICE.

"Don't you find it very dreary at night upon the river?" I said to one of my regular patients--a river policeman--who preferred my services to those of the divisional surgeon for a long bout of sciatica.

"Just like the old woman's eels, sir, and the skinning: one gets used to it. It's lonesome like of a night upwards; but there you have the lights on the bridges and there's gas here and gas there; and a faint roar comes over the housetops from out of the streets. It's when you're below bridge that it seems dull; where the big vessels are moored in the black muddy stream, that goes hurrying by them with a low, rus.h.i.+ng noise--creeping and leaping at their slimy sides, covering their anchor chains, or the buoy to which they swing, with all sorts of muddy refuse; and sometimes of a night there'll be a body get hanging on somehow, ready for us to find and take ash.o.r.e.

"Now, if I give you a bit of tight chain going from a s.h.i.+p's bows to an anchor down in the mud, on one side; and if I give you a dead body floating along on the other side, you'd think directly as there'd be no chance of the one stopping by the other--you'd think as one would float down all slimy and horrible, touch against t'other, and then rising, it would ride far enough out to sea. But, Lor' bless you, that's where you're wrong; for how it is I can't tell you, but it always seems to me, and has seemed ever since I was in the river police, that dead bodies lash and hang themselves somehow against mooring chains, on purpose that they might be found, and get a decent burial. Else how could they stop as they do, over and over again? I can't tell, nor you can't tell, nor n.o.body can't tell; it's a nat'ral mystery, and mysteries is things as gets over all of us.

"Since I was nearly being found myself, hitched on to a mooring chain-- for I'll lay any money that if I had been bested I should have gone quite naturally all the same to where I'd seen so many before--I've got to take a little more than a business interest in such things. It's very awful, you know; and though I'm an ignorant man, it often sets me thinking on the dark nights when our galley's going slowly with the stream, floating along the black, rus.h.i.+ng river--yes, it often sets me thinking about the state of affairs in our great city, and wondering whether all our great civilisation's so good after all, when it brings down stream to-night a decently-dressed body with the pockets inside out, and marks as of blows on the swollen face; to-morrow night a well-dressed body with no marks, and money and watch and all there; next night the body of a young woman with an oldish face, but on that face a weary, despairing look, that seems to say there was no rest anywhere but in the river, and into the river she had come; next night, again, perhaps another well-dressed body, most likely with a bit of paper and a half washed-out address pinned inside the torn dress bosom--and this one, perhaps, would be young, and fair, and pale, and sometimes not at all horrible to look at.

"There, I've seen great, strong, rough men, used to all sorts of things, stand with their hats off by such sights, and speak in even choky voices, as if they could hardly keep back something that they would be ashamed for others to see, down by some river stairs, where the muddy tide has gone 'lap, lap,' at one, two, or three o'clock in the morning.

Why, at such times I've often felt creepy myself; for people may say what they like, but you never do get used to death, and whenever you meet it you feel a strange sense of quietness stealing over you; and one of the first things generally done when we land a body is, old or young, to cover it with sheet or sack; and even then there's a horrible sort of drawing of you in it; and I've sat before now watching, and unable to get away from the uncouth covered thing, with the stream of water trickling slowly away to get back to the river.

"But, there, I think you've had enough about what goes floating down the river and floating up the the river, backwards and forwards, with the tide grinding it against wharf, and pier, and b.u.t.tress, till there's no telling who or what it was. I dare say you've had enough; but it's a thing I could go on talking about for hours--beginning with me, or one of my mates, or a River Jack finding of them, and then going on, through the giving notice, and the inquest, and all the rest of it; and it's all going on day after day, month after month, year after year. Talk of the River Jacks, though, what a singular thing it is: they never by any chance find a body with any valuables about it; but always, when they come across it, watch, money, pins, brooches, they're all gone; and when, quite serious-like, I've asked them how they can account for it, I've always got the same answer--a knowing wink of the left eye.

"Ours is a strange sort of life, and lots hardly know of our existence; but, bless you, there'd soon be some rum goings-on if our little row galleys were not always busy at work up and down the river. You take plenty of precautions on sh.o.r.e, don't you, where there's wealth? Well, don't you think there's as much need afloat, where there's millions of pounds' worth of stuff almost at the mercy of the thief? For though sailors are pretty good at keeping watch out at sea, get 'em in port, and watching with them means choosing the softest plank under the bulwarks, and having a good caulk. So that's where we come in useful-- working along with the Custom House officers to keep down the plundering and smuggling that, but for us, would be carried on to an awful extent.

For, you see, there are gangs who make it a practice to work with lightermen and with sailors; and sometimes by night, sometimes in open day--they carry off prizes that are pretty valuable.

"River pirates you may call them, though they've got half a score of cant names, and tea chests, bags of rice or sugar, kegs of spirits, rolls of tobacco, all's fish that comes to their net; and if they can't get things of that sort, why they'll go in for bits of sails, ropes and chains, or blocks, anything even to a sheet of copper or a seaman's kit--once they get their claws into it, there's not much chance of its being seen again.

"It used to be ten times worse than it is now, and in those days there was a fellow whom I'll call River Jack, who was about the most daring and successful rascal that ever breathed. We knew his games, but we could never catch him in the fact; and at last of all I got so riled at the fault found with us, as robbery after robbery took place, that one night, after a row about a s.h.i.+p's bell stolen off the deck of a large Swedish corn barque, I made up my mind that I'd never let things rest till I'd caught Mr River Jack at some one or other of his games, and had him sent out of the country.

"Now, talking was one thing and doing another, and just at that time I'd been making arrangements for putting a stop to my activity by hanging a weight round my neck. I needn't mention any names, but there was a young lady there--my wife now--that I used to go and see, and as soon as ever it came to my time for going off to duty there used to be a scene, for she got it into her head that I should be sure to meet with some terrible accident on the river; and at last, from being rather soft after her, what with the talk and tears, I used to be in anything but a good trim for my spell.

"'There, don't be such a chicken,' I used to say, when she'd laid her little head on my shoulder, and been talking a whole lot of unreasonable nonsense; but it was of no use to talk, she would be a chicken; and one night I went away, feeling as if I had caught the infection, for I never felt more chicken-hearted in my life.

"An hour after I was on the river, with three more, pulling very gently along in and out amongst the shadows of the great s.h.i.+ps. But whether we were in the shadow or out, it did not make much difference, for a darker night I never saw, and one and all we came to the conclusion that if we were lucky, there must be something for us to do; for that some of River Jack's gang would be at work we were one and all sure. You see, it was just the sort of night they would like; for looking out was no use, since we could see nothing four yards ahead; all we could do was to wait in the hope that our friends might come near us--and come they did.

"We had been paddling gently about for a couple of hours, and at last had pulled under the stern of a great vessel that had come up the river that evening, but had been too late to get into dock. She was fresh over from the East Indies; and besides saltpetre, and tea, and cochineal, she had on board a large freight of odds and ends-- curiosities and such-like. Of course we did not know this then; but a big vessel like she was seemed very likely to prove a bait to the river pirates, and there we lay holding on to the rudder chains.

"'I wish I was a-bed,' says Jack Murray, one of the men under me that night.

"'I wish I was over a pipe and a gla.s.s of grog,' says Tom Grey, who was another.

"And then we sat still again, knowing that we should be sure to hear of something wrong in the morning, and knowing, too, that even if there was some game carried on within a dozen yards of us we should not hear it.

"We were in luck, though, this night, for a minute after there was a soft plash heard above the rus.h.i.+ng of the river, something dark pa.s.sed over where a miserable glim of a lamp was s.h.i.+ning. Then there was a faint low whistle from over our heads, another from out of the black darkness where we heard the plash, and then a boat brushed close by us; there was the sound as of something being lowered down, and before you could say 'Jack Robinson' we'd grappled that boat, and the man in it; slipped on the handcuffs, and got him fast, with a bale of silk handkerchiefs in his boat; and in a few minutes we'd got a couple of the sailors as well.

"You may guess my surprise and delight when I took a look at our prisoner with a lantern, to find that it was River Jack himself; and, to make a long story short, he was convicted and sentenced to ten years'

transportation.

"'But I'll be back before that, Tom Johnson,' he shouts to me as soon as he had got his sentence; 'and when I do come--look out.'

"He was hurried out of court before he could say any more; but those words somehow, for a time, sunk into my memory, and worried me a deal, till I got married, and then I forgot them.

"Well, my married life was just the same as any other man's married life, except that my wife always had such a dislike to my way of business. Twenty times over she would have had me leave it for something else; but, as I said to her, 'a bird in the hand's worth two in the bush, 'specially if the one's bread and cheese and the other ain't.' For, you know, what was the good of me giving up the certain sure for the certain chance?

"'But I do have such horrible dreams about you,' she says.

"'Dreams never come true,' says I.

"'Oh, yes, they do,' she says. 'My aunt once dreamt that they were going to have the bailiffs in; only a month after, in they came.'

"'Well, I don't mind believing that,' says I, 'for it's a very likely thing to happen to any of us.'

"'But I'm always dreaming you're being drowned,' she says.

"'Well, then don't dream so any more,' I says huffishly, for I was in a hurry to be off.

"And I ask you, just as a fair question, is it pleasant, if your duty takes you on the water all day or all night, as the case may be, to have the wife of your bosom always dreaming that you are brought home drowned?

"I got to be obstinate at last, for it was all nonsense to think of giving up a decent position on chance; so the more my wife dreamed about me being drowned, the more I came home at regular times, sound as a roach, and dry as a bone, except in wet weather. Matters went on as usual; chaps were caught stealing or smuggling, and they were imprisoned or fined; and all this time I'd forgotten about River Jack, till one evening, when, from information I'd received, I had myself rowed, as soon as it was dark, on to one of half a score of lighters moored off the Surrey sh.o.r.e, and loaded with the freight they had been taking out of a full-rigged s.h.i.+p, just about a hundred yards ahead. For, you see, some owners won't go to the expense of having their vessel in dock, but have it unladen where she lies. I had had a hint or two that there was likely to be something on the way; but as it was a light night, I knew very well that if our boat lay anywhere on the watch, the consequence would be that the plundering party would never come near.