CHAPTER XXIX I WRITE FOR THE PAPERS
"'Awful Railway Disaster,'
The newspapers chronicle,
The men in the street are buying.
My! don't the papers sell.
And the editors say in their usual way,
'The story is going well.'"
—From Songs of the Dead End.
Day after day passed and the autumn was waning. The work went on, shift after shift, and most of the money that I earned was spent on the gambling table or in the whisky store. Now and again I wrote home, and sent a few pounds to my people, but I never sent them my address. I did not want to be upbraided for my negligence in sending them so little. The answers to my letters would always be the same: "Send more money; send more money. You'll never have a day's luck if you do not help your parents!" I did not want answers like that, so I never sent my address.
One night towards the end of October I had lost all my money at the gambling school, although Moleskin had twice given me a stake to retrieve my fallen fortunes. I left the shack, went out into the darkness, a fire in my head and emptiness in my heart. Around me the stark mountain peaks rose raggedly against the pale horns of the anæmic moon. Outside the whisky store a crowd of men stood, dark looks on their faces, and the wild blood of mischief behind. Inside each shack a dozen or more gamblers sat cross-legged in circles on the ground, playing banker or brag, and the clink of money could be heard as it passed from hand to hand. Above them the naphtha lamps hissed and spluttered and smelt, the dim, sickly light showed the unwashed and unshaven faces beneath, and the eager eyes that sparkled brightly, seeing nothing but the movements of the game. Down in the cuttings men were labouring on the night-shift, gutting out the bowels of the mountain places, and forcing their way through the fastness steadily, slowly and surely. I could hear the dynamite exploding and shattering to pieces the rock in which it was lodged. The panting of weary hammermen was loud in the darkness, and the rude songs which enlivened the long hours of the night floated up to me from the trough of the hills.