CHAPTER XVIII THE DRAINER
"Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining shovel is rude:
Man by the ages of wrong subdued, marred, misshapen, misunderstood,
Such is the Drainer."
—From Songs of a Navvy.
Late in the September of the same year I got a job at digging sheep drains on a moor in Argyllshire. I worked with a man named Sandy, and I never knew his second name. I believe he had almost forgotten it himself. He had a little hut in the centre of the moor, and I lived with him there. The hut was built of piles shoved into the ground, and the cracks between were filled with moss to keep out the cold. In the wet weather the water came through the floor and put out the fire, what time we required it most.
One night when taking supper a beetle dropped from the roof into my tea-can.
"The first leevin' thing I've seen here for mony a day, barrin' oursel's," Sandy remarked. "The verra worms keep awa' frae the place."
We started work at seven o'clock in the morning. Each of us dug a sod six inches deep and nine inches wide, and threw it as far as we could from the place where it was lifted. All day long we kept doing the same thing, just as Sandy had been doing it for thirty years. We hardly ever spoke to one another, there was nothing to speak about. The moor spread out on all sides, and little could be seen save the brown rank grass, the crawling bogbine, and the dirty sluggish water. We had to drink this water. The nearest tree was two miles distant, and the nearest public-house a good two hours' walk away. Sandy got drunk twice a week.
"Just tae put the taste o' the feelthy water oot o' my mooth," he explained in apologetic tones when he got sober. I do not know why he troubled to make excuses for his drunkenness. It mattered very little to me, although I was now teetotal myself. I was even glad when the man got drunk, for intoxicated he gave a touch of the ridiculous to the scene that was so killingly sombre when he was sober. In the end I became almost as soulless and stupid as the sods I turned up, and in the long run I debated whether I should take to drink or the road in order to enliven my life. I had some money in my pocket, and my thoughts turned to Norah Ryan. Perhaps if I went to Glasgow I would find her. I took it in my head to leave; I told Sandy and asked him to come.