THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE LAST.

The air blew freshly over the bright waving grass of a broad sloping field, on which the morning dews were sparkling and glancing in the sun. The clouds moved quickly over head, in clear grey and golden tints on their upper edges and foamy crests, with dark billows beneath, and their shadows chased each other down the green slopes of the field in rapid succession. Swiftly following them—now in the midst of them—now seeming to lead them on, a fine bay horse with flying mane, wild outspreading tail, and dilated nostrils, dashed onward exulting in his liberty, his strength, his speed, and all the early associations and influences of nature around him! He was a coal-mine horse, and had been just brought up the shaft for a holiday.

All this Flashley saw very distinctly, having been hastily landed at the top of the shaft, lifted into a tram-cart, and trundled off, he knew not by what enginery, till he was suddenly shot out on the top of a green embankment, and rolling down to the bottom, found himself 91lying in a fresh green field. He enjoyed the action, the spirit, and every motion of the horse. It was the exact embodiment in activity of his strongest present feelings and impulses. He jumped up to run after the horse, and mount him if he could, or if not, scamper about the field with him in the same fashion. But while he sought to advance, he felt as if he were retreating—in fact, he was sure of it;—the grass ran by him, instead of his running over it—the hedges ran through him, instead of his passing along them—the trees sped away before him into the distance, as he was carried backwards. He lost his legs—he sank upon the air—he was still carried backwards—all the landscape faded, and with a loud splash he fell into the sea!

Down he sank, and fancied he saw green watery fields rolling on all sides, and over him; and presently he heard a voice hoarsely calling as if from some bank above. He certainly had heard the voice before, and recognised it with considerable awe, though the words it uttered were homely and unromantic enough. It shouted out ‘Nancy, of Sunderland!—boat ahoy!’

By some inexplicable process—though he clearly distinguished a boat-hook in the performance—Flashley was picked up from beneath the waves, and lifted into a boat. It was a little, dirty, black, thick-gunnelled jollyboat, rowed by two men in short black over-shirts and smutty canvas trowsers. In the stern sat the captain with his arms folded. A broad-brimmed tarpaulin hat shaded his face. They pulled alongside a ship as black as death, but very lively; and a rope being lowered from the side, it was passed under Flashley’s arms in a noose, and the next moment he was hoisted on deck, and told to attend to his duty.

‘My duty!’ ejaculated Flashley, ‘Attend to my duty! Oh, what is my duty?’ His eyes wandered round. Nothing but hard black planks and timbers, and masts with reefed sails, and rigging all covered with coal-dust, met his gaze. The sky, however, was visible above him—that was a great comfort.

‘Scrape these carrots and parsnips,’ said the Captain solemnly, ‘very clean, d’ye mind!—and take them to the cook in the galley, who’ll let you know what’s next. When he has done with you, clean my sea-boots, and grease them with candle-ends; dry my peajacket, pilot-coat, and dreadnoughts; clean my pipe, and fill it—light, and take three whiffs to start it; mix me a glass of grog, and bring it with the lighted pipe; then, go and lend a hand in tarring the weather-rigging, and stand by, to go aloft and ease down the fore-top-gallant mast when the mate wants her on deck.’

‘Oh, heavens!’ thought Flashley, ‘are these then my duties! This hideous black ship must be a collier—and I am the cabinboy!’

A mixed impulse of equal curiosity and apprehension (it certainly was from no anxiety to commence his miscellaneous duties) caused him to ‘inquire his way’ to the cook’s galley. He was presently taken to a square enclosure, not unlike a great black rabbit-hutch, open at both sides, in which he was received by a man of large proportions, who was seated on an inverted iron saucepan, smoking. The black visage gave a grim smile and familiar wink. It could not be the miner who had acted as his guide and companion underground! And yet—

Flashley stepped back hastily, and cast an anxious look towards the after-part of the deck. There stood the Captain. A short yet very heavily-built figure,—a kind of stunted giant. He was not an Indian, nor a Mulatto, nor an African,—and yet his face was as black as a coal, in which several large veins rose prominently, and had a dull yellow tinge, as if they had been run with gold, or some metallic substance of that colour. Who could he be? Some demon incog.? No, not that—but some one whom Flashley held in equal awe.

How long poor Flashley continued to perform his multifarious duties on board the ‘Nancy’ he had no idea, but they appeared at times very onerous, and he had to undergo many hardships. This was especially the case in the North Sea during the winter months, which are often of the severest kind on the coast between Sunderland and the mouth of the Thames. The rigging was all frozen, so that to lay hold of a rope seemed to take the skin off his hand; the cold went to the bone, and he hardly knew if his hands were struck through with frost, or by a hot iron. The decks were all slippery with ice, so were the ladders down to the cabins, and the cook’s galley was garnished all round with large icicles, from six inches to a foot and a half in length, which kept up a continual drip, drip, on all sides, by way of complimentary acknowledgment of the caboose-fire inside. Sometimes the wind burst the side-doors open—blew the fire clean out of the caboose, and scattered the live and dead coals all over the deck, or whirled them into the sea. One night the galley itself, with all its black and smutty paraphernalia, was torn up and blown overboard. It danced about on the tops of the waves—made deep curtseys—swept up the side of a long billow—was struck by a cross-wave, and disappeared in a hundred black planks and splinters. That same night Flashley was called up from his berth to go aloft and lend a hand to close-reef the main-topsail. The sail was all frozen, and so stiff that he could not raise it; but as he hauled on one of the points, the point broke, and something happened to him,—he did not know what, but he thought he fell backwards, and the wind flew away with him.

The next thing he remembered was that of lying in his berth with a bandage round one 92arm, and a large patch on one side of his head, while the cook sat on a sea-chest by his side reading to him.

A deep splashing plunge was now heard, followed by the rapid rumbling of an iron chain along the deck overhead. The collier had arrived off Rotherhithe, and cast anchor.

‘Up, Flashley!’ cried the cook; ‘on deck, my lad! to receive the whippers who are coming alongside.’

‘What for?’ exclaimed Flashley; ‘why am I to be whipped?’

‘It is not you,’ said the cook, laughing gruffly, as he ran up the ladder, ‘but the coal-baskets that are to be whipped up, and discharged into the lighter.’

The deck being cleared, and the main hatchway opened, a small iron wheel (called gin) was rigged out on a rope passing over the top of a spar (called derrick) at some 18 or 20 feet above the deck. Over this wheel a rope was passed, to which four other ropes were attached lower down. These were for the four whippers. At the other end of the wheel-rope was slung a basket. A second basket stood upon the coals, where four men also stood with shovels—two to fill each basket, one being always up and one down. The whippers had a stage raised above the deck, made of five rails, which they ascended for the pull, higher and higher as the coals got lower in the hold. The two baskets-full were the complement for one measure. The ‘measure’ was a black angular wooden box with its front placed close to the vessel’s side, just above a broad trough that slanted towards the lighter. Beside the measure stood the ‘meter,’ (an elderly personage with his head and jaws bound up in a bundle-handkerchief, to protect him from the draughts,) who had a piece of chalk in one hand, while with the other he was ready to raise a latch, and let all the coals burst out of the measure into the trough, by the fall of the front part of the box. The measure was suspended to one end of a balance, a weight being attached to the other, so that the weighing and measuring were performed by one process under the experienced, though rheumatic, eye of the meter.

The whippers continued at their laborious work all day; and as the coals were taken out of the hold, (the basket descending lower and lower as the depth increased,) the ‘whippers’ who hauled up, gave their weight to the pull, and all swung down from their ricketty rails with a leap upon the deck, as the basket ran up; ascending again to their position while the basket was being emptied into the trough.

The lighter had five compartments, called ‘rooms,’ each holding seven tons of coals; and when these were filled, the men sometimes heaped coals all over them from one end of the craft to the other, as high up as the combings, or side-ridges, would afford protection for the heap. By these means a lighter could carry forty-two tons, and upwards; and some of the craft having no separate ‘rooms,’ but an open hold, fore and aft, could carry between fifty and fifty-five tons.

A canal barge or monkey-boat (so called we presume from being very narrow in the loins) now came alongside, and having taken in her load of coals, the friendly cook of the ‘Nancy’ expressed an anxiety that Flashley should lose no opportunity of gaining all possible experience on the subject of coals, and the coal-trade generally, and therefore proposed to him a canal trip, having already spoken with the ‘captain of the barge’ on the subject. Before Flashley had time to object, or utter a demur, he was handed over the side, and pitched neatly on his legs on the after-part of the barge, close to a little crooked iron chimney, sticking blackly out of the deck, and sending forth a dense cloud of the dirtiest and most unsavoury smoke. The captain was standing on the ladder of the cabin, leaning on his great arms and elbows over the deck, and completely filling up the small square hatchway, so that all things being black alike, it seemed as if this brawny object were some live excrescence of the barge, or huge black mandrake whose roots were spread about beneath, and, perhaps, here and there, sending a speculative straggler through a chink into the water.

The mandrake’s eyes smiled, and he showed a very irregular set of large white and yellow teeth, as he scrunched down through the small square hole to enable the young passenger and tourist to descend.

Flashley, with a forlorn look up at the sky, and taking a good breath of fresh air to fortify him for what his nose already warned him he would have to encounter, managed to get down the four upright bars nailed close to the bulk-head, and called the ‘ladder.’

He found himself in a small aperture of no definite shape, and in which there was only room for one person to ‘turn’ at a time. Yet five living creatures were already there, and apparently enjoying themselves. There was the captain, and there was his wife, and there was a child in the wife’s right arm, and another of five years old packed against her left side, and there was the ‘crew’ of the barge, which consisted, for the present, of one boy of sixteen, of very stunted growth, and with one eye turning inwards to such a degree that sometimes the sight literally darted out, seeming to shoot beneath the bridge of his nose. They were all sitting, or rather hunched up, at ‘tea.’ The place had an overwhelming odour of coal-smoke, and tobacco smoke, and brown sugar, and onions, to say nothing of general ‘closeness,’ and the steam of a wet blanket-coat, which was lying in a heap to dry before the little iron stove. The door of this was open, and the fire shone brightly, and seemed to ‘wink’ at Flashley as he looked that way.

93‘Here we are!’ said a strange voice.

Flashley looked earnestly into the stove. He thought the voice came from the fire. The coals certainly looked very glowing, and shot out what a German or other imaginative author would call significant sparks.

‘Here we are!’ said the voice from another part of the cabin, and, turning in that direction, Flashley found that it proceeded from the ‘crew,’ who had contrived to stand up, and was endeavouring to give a close imitation of the ‘clown,’ on his first appearance after transformation. This, by the help of his odd eye, was very significant indeed.

And here they were, no doubt, and here they lived from day to day, and from night to night; and a pretty wretched, dirty, monotonous life it was. Having once got into a canal, with the horse at his long tug, the tediousness of the time was not easily to be surpassed. From canal to river, and from river to canal, there was scarcely any variety, except in the passage through the locks, the management of the rope in passing another barge-horse on the tow-path, and the means to be employed in taking the horse over a bridge. The duty of driving the horse along the tow-path, as may be conjectured, fell to the lot of our young tourist. Once or twice, ‘concealed by the murky shades of night,’ as a certain novelist would express it, he had ventured to mount the horse’s back; but the animal, not relishing this addition to his work, always took care, when they passed under a bridge, or near a wall, or hard embankment, to scrape his rider’s leg along the side, so that very little good was got in that way. And once, when Flashley had a ‘holiday,’ and was allowed to walk up and down the full length of the barge upon the top of the coals, a sudden bend in the river brought them close upon a very low wooden bridge, just when he was at the wrong end of the barge for making a dive to save his head. Flashley ran along the top as fast as he could, but the rascally horse seemed to quicken his pace, under the captain’s mischievous lash, so that finding the shadow of the bridge running at him before he could make his leap from the top of the coals, he was obliged to save himself from being violently knocked off, by jumping hastily into the canal, to the infinite amusement and delight of the captain, his wife, and the ‘crew.’ The horse being stopped, the captain came back and lugged him out of the bulrushes just as he had got thoroughly entangled, and immersed to the chin; knee-deep in mud, and with frogs and eels skeeling and striking out in all directions around him.

After a week or ten days passed in this delightful manner, Flashley found the barge was again on the Thames, no longer towed by a horse and rope, but by a little dirty steam-tug. They stopped on meeting a lighter on its way up with the tide, and Flashley being told to step on board, was received by his grim but good-natured companion and instructor, the cook of the ‘Nancy,’ now going up with a load to Bankside, and performing the feat of managing two black oars of enormous length and magnitude. They were worked in large grooves in each side of the lighter, one oar first receiving all the strength of this stupendous lighterman (late cook) with his feet firmly planted on a cross-beam in front, so as to add to the mighty pull of his arms, all the strength of his legs, as well as all the weight of his body. Having made this broad sweep and deep, he left the oar lying along the groove, and went to the one on the other side, with which he performed a similar sweep.

‘Here’s a brig with all sails set, close upon us!’ cried Flashley.

‘She’d best take care of herself;’ said our lighterman, as he went on deliberately to complete his long pull and strong.

Bump came the brig’s starboard bow against the lighter; and instantly heeling over with a lift and a lurch, the former reeled away to leeward, a row of alarmed but more enraged faces instantly appearing over the bulwarks—those ‘aft’ with eyes flashing on the lighterman, and those ‘for’ard,’ anxiously looking over to see if the bows had been stove in. A volley of anathemas followed our lighterman; who, however, continued slowly to rise and sink backward with his prodigious pull, apparently not hearing a word, or even aware of what had happened.

In this way they went up the river among sailing-vessels of all kinds, and between the merchants’ ‘forest of masts,’ like some huge antediluvian water-reptile deliberately winding its way up a broad river between the woods of a region unknown to man.

‘But here’s a steamer!’ shouted Flashley.—‘We shall be run down, or she’ll go slap over us!’

The man at the wheel, however, knew better. He had dealt with lightermen before to-day. He therefore turned off the sharp nose of the steamer, so as not merely to clear it, but dexterously to send the ‘swell’ in a long rolling swath up against the lighter, over which it completely ran, leaving the performer at the oars drenched up to the hips, and carrying Flashley clean overboard. He was swept away in the rolling wave, and might have been drowned, had not a coalheaver at one of the wharfs put off a skiff to his rescue.

So now behold Flashley at work among the wharfingers of Bankside.

Before the coals are put into the sack, they undergo a process called ‘screening.’ This consists in throwing them up against a slanting sieve of iron wire, through which the fine coal and coal-dust runs: all that falls on the outer side of the screen is then sacked. But many having found that the coals are often broken still more by this process, to 94their loss, (as few people will buy the small coal and dust, except at breweries and waterworks), they have adopted the plan of a round sieve held in the hand, and filled by a shovel. The delightful and lucrative appointment of holding the sieve was, of course, conferred upon Flashley. His shoulders and arms ached as though they would drop off long before his day’s work was done; but what he gained in especial, was the fine coal-dust which the wind carried into his face—often at one gust, filling his eyes, mouth, nostrils, and the windward ear.

In the condition to which this post soon brought his ‘personal appearance,’ Flashley was one morning called up at five to go with a waggon-load of coals a few miles into the country, in company with two coalheavers and a carman. Up he got. And off they went.

Flashley, having worked hard all the previous day, was in no sprightly condition on his early rising; so, by the time the waggon had got beyond the outskirts of London, and begun to labour slowly up hill with its heavy load, he was fain to ask in a humble voice of the head coalheaver, permission to lay hold of a rope which dangled behind, in order to help himself onwards. This being granted with a smile, the good-nature of which (and how seldom do we meet with a coalheaver who is not a good-natured fellow) shone even through his dust-begrimed visage, Flashley continued to follow the waggon till he had several times nearly gone to sleep; and was only reminded of the fact by a stumble which brought him with his nose very near the ground. The head coalheaver, observing this, took compassion on him; and being a gigantic man, laid hold of Flashley’s trowsers, and with one lift of his arm deposited the young man upon the top of the second tier of coal-sacks. There he at once resigned himself to a delicious repose.

The waggon meanwhile pursued its heavy journey, with an occasional pause for a slight moistening of the mouth of men and horses. At length the removal of one or two of the upper tier of sacks caused Flashley to raise his drowsy head, and look round him.

The waggon had pulled up close to a garden-gate, on the other side of which were a crowd of apple-trees. The ripe fruit loaded the branches till they hung in a vista, beneath which the sacks of coals had to be carried. All the horses had their nose-bags on, and were very busy. It was a bright autumn day; the sun was fast setting; a rich beam of crimson and gold cast its splendours over the garden, and lighted up the ripe apples to a most romantic degree.

The garden gates were thrown open; the passage of coal-sacks beneath the hanging boughs commenced.

Not an apple was knocked down, even by the tall figure of the leading coalheaver. Stooping and dodging, and gently humouring a special difficulty, he performed his walk of thirty yards, and more, till he turned the shrubbery corner, and thence made his way into the coal-cellar. His companion followed him, in turn, imitating his great example; and, if we make exception of three lemon-pippins and a codlin, with equal success. But where these accidental apples fell, there they remained; none were promoted to mouth or pocket.

It was now half-past four, and ‘the milk’ arriving at the gate, was deposited in its little tin can on a strawberry bed just beyond the gate-post. The head coalheaver’s turn with his load being next, he observed the milk as he approached, and bending his long legs, by judicious gradations, till he reached the little can with the fingers of his left hand, balancing the sack of coals at the same time, so that not a fragment tumbled out of the open mouth, he slowly rose again to his right position, holding out the can at arm’s length to prevent any coal-dust finding its way to the delicate surface within. In this fashion, with tenfold care bestowed on the ounce and a half in his left hand, to that which he gave to the two hundred weight of coals on his back (not reckoning the sack, which, being an old and patched one, weighed fifteen pounds more) the coalheaver made his way, stooping and sideling beneath the apple-boughs as before, all of which he passed without knocking a single apple down, and deposited the little can in the hands of an admiring maidservant, as he passed the kitchen window on his way to the coal-cellar.

After the sacks had all been shot in the cellar, and the hats of each man filled with apples by the applauding master of the house, the counting of the empty sacks commenced. Having been thrice exhorted to be present at this ceremony by a wise neighbour, who stood looking on anxiously, from the next garden, with his nostrils resting on the top of the wall, the owner of the apple garden went forth to the gate, and with a grave countenance beheld the sacks counted. Orders for beer being then given on the nearest country alehouse, the coalheavers carefully gathered up all the odd coals which had fallen here and there, then swept the paths, and with hot and smiling visages took their departure, slowly lounging after the waggon and stretching their brawny arms and backs after their herculean work.

As the men thus proceeded down the winding lane, crunching apples, and thinking of beer to follow, the carman was the first to speak.

‘How cute the chap was arter they sacks!’ said he with a grin, and half turning round to look back.

‘There’s a gennelman,’ said the head coalheaver, ‘as don’t ought to be wronged out of the vally of that!’ the amount in question being a pinch of coal-dust which the speaker took up from one side of the waggon, and sprinkled in the air.

‘He allus gives a ticket for beer,’ said the 95second coalheaver, ‘but last time the apples warn’t ripe.’

‘He counted the sacks nation sharp, howsever,’ pursued the carman with a very knowing look.

At this both the coalheavers laughed loudly.

‘Ah!’ said the second coalheaver; ‘people think that makes all sure. They don’t think of the ease of bringing an empty sack with us, after dropping a full one by the way. Not they. Nobody yet was ever wise enough to count the full sacks when they first come.’

On hearing this, the carman’s face presented a confounded and perplexed look of irritated stupidity, marked in such very hard lines, that the coalheavers laughed for the next five minutes with the recollection of it.

Towards dusk the waggon returned to the wharf, and next day Flashley resumed his usual duties.

One morning, after several hours’ work with the sieve in ‘screening,’ when his face and hands were, if possible, more hopelessly black than they had ever been before, Flashley was called to take a note to a merchant at the Coal Exchange. This merchant’s name seemed rather an unusual one to meet with in England—being no less a person than Haji Ali Camaralzaman and Co.

The merchant was a short, solid-built figure, and stood with a heavy immobility that gave the effect of a metallic image rather than a man. He was a Moor, though nearly black, and with very sparkling eyes. He was dressed in a long dark blouse, open at the breast, and displaying a black satin waistcoat, embroidered with golden sprigs and tendrils. It seemed to Flashley that he spoke a foreign language; and yet he understood him, though without having any idea what language it was. Something passed between them in a very earnest tone, almost a whisper, about Sinbad the Sailor, and a sort of confused discussion as to the geographical position of the Valley of Black Diamonds; also, if coals were ever burnt in the east; then a confused voice from within the hall called out loudly, ‘The North Star!’ to which a chorus of coal-merchants responded in a low chant, ‘What money does he owe the divan?’

‘Yes,’ said the great Camaralzaman, ‘and what lost time does he owe to nature and to knowledge? Let the North Star look to it.’

‘It does, great Sir!’ responded the chorus of coal-merchants, in the same low chant. ‘It shines directly over the shaft of the William Pitt mine.’

‘Enough,’ said Camaralzaman.

At this all the merchants fell softly into a heap of white ashes.

Then the Moor, turning to Flashley, said, ‘You must reflect a little on all these things. Coals are more valuable to the world than the riches of other mines—more important than gold and silver, and diamonds of the first water, because they are the means of advancing and extending the comforts and refinements of life—the industrial arts, the trades, the ornamental arts. Are not these great things? Behold, there are greater yet which are indebted to the coal-fires. For, may I not name Science, Agriculture (in the making of iron, and the steam-ploughs which are forthcoming), Commerce and Navigation. Moreover, do they not tend, by the generation of steam, to annihilate space and time, and are they not rapidly carrying knowledge and civilisation to the remotest corners of the habitable globe? By myriads of jets, in countless forms, they turn the dark night into the brightness of day. Their history commences from the infancy of the earth; they proceed through gradations of wonders; are no less wonderful in the varieties and magnitude of their utility, and do not cease to be of use to man, even when the bright fire is utterly extinguished, and its materials can no more be re-illumined, but are claimed for the garden and the brickfield, not by the dinging and tolling of the bell-man of your grandsires, but by the long-drawn wail of the queer-kneed dusky figure in the flap-hat, who wanders down your streets yowling ‘’Sto—e! o—e!’

‘And is it then all over? Verily, it doth appear when the coal fire is fairly burnt out to cinders and ashes, that it hath performed its complete circle, and is for ever ended. It is not so. The antediluvian forests absorbed the gases of the atmosphere; much of these have been drawn off; and appropriated, but some portions have remained locked up and hidden in the depths of the earth ever since. Lo! the coal fire is lighted!—flames, for the first time, ascend from it. Then, also for the first time, are liberated gases which are of the date of those primæval forests; they ascend into the atmosphere, and once more form a portion of those elements which are again to assist in the growth of forests. The Coal-Spirit has then performed his grand cycle—and recommences his journey through future cycles of formation.’

A great blaze of light now smote across the hall, in which everything vanished. Then passed a rushing panorama through Flashley’s brain, wherein he saw whirling by, the stage of a saloon theatre, with a lighted cigar and two tankards dancing a ridiculous reel, till the whole scene changed to a melancholy swamp, out of which arose, to solemn music, an antediluvian forest. The Elfin of the Coal-mine came and stood in the midst, and some one held an iron umbrella over Flashley’s head, which instantly caused him to sink deep through the earth, and he soon found himself crawling in a dark trench terminating in a chasm looking out upon the sea. He was immediately whisked across by a black eagle, and dropped in a bright-green field, where he met a tall dusky figure carrying a sack of coals and a ‘ha’p’orth’ of milk; but just as he was about to speak to him, a voice called 96out ‘Nancy!’ and all was darkness, while through the horrid gloom he saw the glaring eye-ball of a horse. ‘Camaralzaman!’ cried the voice again: ‘Have you been sleeping here all night in the arm chair?’ Then a vivid flame shot over Flashley’s eyelids—there was a great fire blazing before him, in the midst of which he saw the head of the Elfin, who gave him a nod full of meaning, and also like bidding farewell, and disappeared in the fire,—while at his side stood Margery with the carpet-broom.

It was six in the morning, and she had just lighted the parlour fire. Without replying to any of her interrogations of surprise, Flashley slowly rose, and went out to take a few turns round the garden; where he fell into a train of thought which, in all probability, will have a salutary influence on his future life.