“For all that, I am simply one of the unemployed,” said Carthew, seating himself beside his new acquaintance, as he had sat (since this experience began) beside so many dozen others.

“I’m out of a plyce myself,” said Hemstead.

“You beat me all the way and back,” says Carthew.  “My trouble is that I have never been in one.”

“I suppose you’ve no tryde?” asked Hemstead.

“I know how to spend money,” replied Carthew, “and I really do know something of horses and something of the sea.  But the unions head me off; if it weren’t for them, I might have had a dozen berths.”

“My word!” cried the sympathetic listener.  “Ever try the mounted police?” he inquired.

“I did, and was bowled out,” was the reply; “couldn’t pass the doctors.”

“Well, what do you think of the ryleways, then?” asked Hemstead.

“What do YOU think of them, if you come to that?” asked Carthew.

“O, I don’t think of them; I don’t go in for manual labour,” said the little man proudly.  “But if a man don’t mind that, he’s pretty sure of a job there.”

“By George, you tell me where to go!” cried Carthew, rising.

The heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods; the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent advertised; but “the unemployed” preferred the resources of charity and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the market.  The same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains to pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind South Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour.

For weeks the rain scarce relented.  The whole front of the mountain slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay, rock, and uprooted forest spewed over the cliffs and fell upon the beach or in the breakers.  Houses were carried bodily away and smashed like nuts; others were menaced and deserted, the door locked, the chimney cold, the dwellers fled elsewhere for safety.  Night and day the fire blazed in the encampment; night and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his rounds with words of encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to his men.  Night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with disastrous news and anxious inquiry.  Along the terraced line of rail, rare trains came creeping and signalling; and paused at the threatened corner, like living things conscious of peril.  The commandant of the post would hastily review his labours, make (with a dry throat) the signal to advance; and the whole squad line the way and look on in a choking silence, or burst into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine between squalls, perhaps with blinking lamps into the gathering, rainy twilight.