working like bees in cells building up the
tunnel sides, some upon the centre turning
the great arches, some stretched upon
their backs putting the key-bricks to the
crown—all speaking in a hundred dialects,
with dangers known and unknown impending
on every side; with commands and
countermands echoing about through air
murky with the smoke and flame of burning
tar-barrels, cressets, and torches.

Such was the interior of Watford tunnel.
There were shops in it, too: not only beer
or fuddling-shops, but tommy-shops. The
navvy knows that he is a helpless being if he
cannot get his tommy; and this word, which
comprehends all animal supplies (drink is
wet tommy), signifies beef, bacon, cheese,
coffee, bread, butter, and tobacco.

My job as bucket-steerer did not last long;
for the drift north of the tunnel being soon
cut through, no more earth was taken up
the shaft; it was all carried out through
Hazlewood cutting, to be used in the formation
of the long embankment between Hunton
Bridge and King's Langley.

Frazer, who told me that I was a handy
lad, did not discharge me altogether, but
shifted me to a gang of regular navvies in
the tunnel. With my first fortnight's wages
I had got me a suit of new moleskin and a
pair of highlows; now, therefore, I had only
to buy pick and shovel, and my equipment was
complete. My hands had become coarse, my
face was sunburnt, and my hair shaggy.
What matter? I felt a hearty pride in
myself, and my prospects.

The gang I joined consisted of some forty
men, each of whom bore a nickname. There
were Happy Jack, Long Bob, Dusty Tom,
Billy-goat, Frying-pan, Red-head, and the
rest with names more or less ludicrous, For
myself, my new clothes and tools entitled
me to the style of Dandy Dick. I was fined
two gallons footing, which I paid; and was
put to work with a lad, whom they called
Kick Daddy, in clearing out a trench.

With this gang I worked steadily and
punctually, making no enemies and one
friend. This friend was Canting George; a
tall, thin, hard-lined, stern-featured, middle-
aged man, commonly sneered at by his
fellows because he was said to be religious;
though I never knew him attempt to make
a proselyte, or interfere at any time by
word or deed with drinking, swearing,
quarrelling, or fighting. His only cause of
offence, as far as my observation extended,
was, that he was never at any time drunk
or riotous himself. Canting George was a
native of an obscure spot in Warwickshire.
He was an extreme Calvinist, and miserably
ignorant, for he could not even read; yet
he possessed very good reasoning powers.

My education having more than once
betrayed itself, this man, who had a thirst for
knowledge, fastened himself upon me. But
his friendship was not altogether selfish; for
I soon owed much to his protection. Bullhead,
as our ganger was called, was a surly
brute, and Canting George frequently saved
me from his violence. But for him, too,
instead of continuing to live at my lodgings in
a clean cottage at Hunton Bridge, I should
have been compelled to live in the shanty
with the rest of the gang; and rather than
have done that, I should have given up the
effort to make myself an engineer altogether.

The shanty was a building of stone,
brick, mud, and timber, and roofed partly
with tile and partly with tarpaulin. It
consisted of a single oblong room, and
stood upon a piece of spare ground near
the tunnel mouth; another nearby shanty
tenanted by another of Frazer's gangs, stood
upon the high ground just above; and
between both, under a single roof, were Frazer's
office and his tommy-shop.

Almost every gang of navvies—and there
were sixty, at least, employed upon the
tunnel—was thus lodged; so that there were
several of these dens of wild men round
about the works. The bricklayers, masons,
mechanics, and their labourers were distributed
among the adjacent population, carrying
disorder and uproar wherever they went.
I will not attempt to say what might have
been the social aspect of affairs in the
neighbourhood of the line if the hordes of
reckless navigators had been lodged in the same
way. Their own arrangement was made,
not on moral grounds, entirely by the men
and their gaffers (the sub-contractors) to suit
their own convenience; for the navvie does
not like to reside far from his work.

The domestic arrangements of the
navigators' shanties were presided over by a set
of blear-eyed old crones, of whom there
was one to each gang. They were expected
to cook, make the beds, wash and mend the
clothes of their masters; who beat them fearfully
whenever the fancy of any one or more
of their rough lords and masters inclined
to that refreshment. In all the obscenity
and blasphemy they bore their part; in
the fighting they also lent a hand. With
features frightfully disfigured, with heads
cut and bandaged, they made themselves at
home in the midst of everything from which
pride and virtue shrink aghast.

Once only I visited our shanty. I was, in
spare hours, teaching George Hatley to read;
and it happened one Sunday morning early
in May that the rain, hindering church
attendance, I strolled up to the shanty to find
George; but he was gone out. Old Peg, the
presiding crone, who was then exhibiting two
black eyes and a bandaged chin, told me that
he would be back by eleven—it was then past
ten; and, having cursed me in a way intended
to be very friendly, she invited me to wait till
he returned. So I sat down on a three-legged
stool, and took a survey of the place.

The door was about midway in one of the
sides, having a window on each side of it,