"What does Charlie think on it?" a voice asked.
"Yes, let Charlie decide," they chorused.
"Well, mates," Charlie spoke up, "I thinks wot the bloke sez is fair. I'll do my best for you, mates."
Carstairs climbed out of the trap. "That's settled then," he said.
Bounce led the horse on to the green, and tied him up to a little tree. "Let's have a proper ring, and half a dozen stewards to see there ain't no crowding."
They selected a level spot in a little dell surrounded by miniature mountains. "'Cos then everybody can see without shoving," a navvy observed. The six stewards, with an air of very great seriousness, took off their coats and rolled up their shirt sleeves, exposing brawny, sunburnt arms to the daylight. They formed a circle and roughly measured with their eyes. "How's that, Charlie? How'll that do, sir?"
"Alright, mates," Charlie said.
"Very nicely, thanks," Carstairs replied.
They stepped inside the circle, and Bounce and Hiscocks assisted Carstairs to disrobe, while five hundred statuesque navvies crowded round the tiers of the natural theatre, five hundred hard, strong faces; high cheek-boned, square-jawed, steady-eyed. Many of them were exceedingly handsome, in a massive, rough-hewn sort of way; mahogany browned, ear-ringed, coarse skinned. They were gathered there for a brutal, coarse purpose, perhaps, but the dawning of a great truth was uppermost, resolute and steadfast, in the minds of most. They were going to see fair play, "fair play" with all it meant when all the passions of envy, hatred, fierce anger, and the lust of gain were aroused. They were sportsmen, these men, and the term always seems to me synonymous with gentlemen as understood in England. The germ of a desire to do right was firmly fixed in their hearts, and this absorbed through many generations from the force of the precept and example of their leaders, the aristocrats of England. They had no religion, these men, and no politics, but the spirit of the prize ring and the Queensberry rules was deeply implanted in their souls. Their fathers before them had imbibed these rules from constant practical demonstration. Those drunken, dissolute, Georgian noblemen had given these men a code of morals that they could understand, and firmly rooted it in their breasts by consistent example. And every day England reaps the fruit of that seed. Truly it seems to me that England owes more to the sportsman than to the statesman: and although the middle class swamp, by a vast majority, all other classes in the number of great men they have produced: yet the aristocracy, like the head boys of a school, are responsible for the "tone" of the nation, and the "tone" of England is surpassing good. What these men had started out to do that day was due to their mental limitation, not to their wilful vice. Woman, particularly that type of woman, was to them an inferior animal, as she is to most working men; yet the majority treat their female relations, and the women they consider worthy of it (and the working man is not easily deceived by fine clothes and fine manners), with astonishing respect, real and true respect, not superficial mannerisms. The big majority of English working men, in my experience, are sportsmen, and possessed of the instincts of gentlemen, ineradicably stamped into their hard, true natures. And you young men, the budding engineers, who are lost in the intricacies of elementary algebra, or unravelling those painful problems in strength of material; the Tensile stresses in the rims of flywheels, and the elastic limit of steel plates, etc.: it is yours to see that you also understand the elastic limit of human nature, the inherent instincts of the working man, and the durability of your own emotions; this is what you learn in the "shops": it is yours to solve the unemployed problem and see that the English workman gets a chance to develop the fine qualities that are in him; for this (unemployment) is an engineering problem; the reduction of a sine curve to a straight line, the modification of a wave, the control of a tide: it is yours to know that the working man does not want a mouth in Parliament, but a fair show at his work. Watch what he does, and not what he says, as he will watch what you do, and not what you say; then you will see that he is (mostly) a sportsman, and you will learn to understand that it is better that the accent should be on the "man" than on the "gentle"—yet do not forget that a clean mind is the basis of all true force of character, and is inherently respected by every Englishman, foul-mouthed though he be. And you, fond Mammas, who desire your dear boys to be engineers, see to it that their biceps are good, for this is the underlying principle of all work; and when dear Willie comes home from the "shops" with his face punched into a many-hued polyhedron, be not alarmed, this is no doubt the result of scientific research into the specific resistance of the fitter's mate; it is also conceivable that occasions may arise when it is good that Willie should stand in the police court dock, charged with breaking a man's head with a hammer. All these things must come to pass before the steel enters thoroughly into Willie's soul; then he will take a very high polish and be very reliable, yet he will be very flexible and very keen; for this is the age of steel—hard, keen, true steel.
Carstairs stripped to the waist and tied his trousers round with a scarf that Bounce lent him. He stepped into the middle of the ring and looked at his opponent: slightly shorter, but more massive than himself, his face was remarkably hard looking, with a short, clipped moustache, and light china blue eyes with a roving, happy-go-lucky look in them; even now, as Carstairs faced him, there was an element of a grin on his face. (It is written somewhere in the Book of Fate that the British navvy shall fear no man on this earth.) His neck was like the trunk of an oak tree and sloped grandly on to his massive shoulders; in his hands, Carstairs observed, Nature had endowed him with a pair of very formidable weapons, the knuckles were enormous. Altogether Jack Carstairs recognised that he was up against one of the stiffest propositions he had ever tackled in his life.