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The Master Emeritus Recalls Wellington
The reddish glow of enfeebled gas-light. The rhythmic, echoing clank and screech of the Brunel Tunneling Torpedo. Thirty-six cork-screw teeth of best Birmingham steel gnaw with relentless vigor into a reeking seam of ancient London clay. Master Sapper Joseph Pearson, at his ease at the mid-day meal, feeds himself a congealed wedge of gravy-thick meat-pie from a hinged tin box. “Aye, I met the great Mallory,” he says, voice echoing from arching whale-ribs of riveted cast-iron. “We warn’t exactly introduced, like, but he was Leviathan Mallory, right-enough, for I seen his phiz in the penny-papers. He stood as close to me as I am to you now, lad. ‘Lord Jefferies?’ the Leviathan says to me, all surprised and angry, ‘I know Jefferies! The fookin’ bastard should be censured for fraud!’ ” Master Pearson grins in triumph, red light glinting from a gold earring, a gold tooth. “And damme if that savant Jefferies didn’t catch every kind of hell, once the Stink had passed. Leviathan Mallory took a proper hand in that chastisement, sure enough. He’s one of Nature’s noblemen. Leviathan Mallory is.” “I seen that brontosaur,” says ‘Prentice David Waller, nodding, eyes bright. “That’s a fine thing!” “I myself was workin’ the shaft in ’54, when they dug up them elephant teeth.” Master Pearson, rubber-booted feet dangling from the second-story platform of the excavation-shaft, shifts on his damp-proofed mat of coir and burlap, and yanks a split of champagne from a pocket of his excavation-gear. “French fizz, Davey-lad. Your first time down; ye got to have a taste of this.” “That ain’t proper, is it, sir? ‘Gainst the book.” Pearson wrenches the cork loose, no pop, no gush of foam. He winks. “Hell, lad, it’s your first time down; won’t never be another first time.” Pearson tosses sugary dregs of strong tea from his tin cup, fills it to the brim with champagne. “It’s gone flat,” ‘Prentice Waller mourns. Pearson laughs, rubbing a burst vein in his fleshy nose. “It’s the pressure, lad. Wait till ye get topside. It goes off right inside yer. You’ll fart like an ox.” ‘Prentice Waller sips, with some caution. An iron bell rings, above them. “Chamber coming down,” Pearson says, hastily corking the bottle. He stuffs it back into a pocket, gulps the rest of the cup, wipes his mouth. A bullet-shaped cage descends, passing with cloacal slowness through a membrane of heavy waxed leather. There are hisses, creaks, as the cage touches bottom. Two men emerge. The Chief Foreman wears a helmet, digging-gear, and leather apron. With him, carrying a brass dark-lantern, is a tall, white-haired man in a black tailcoat and black satin cravat, a kerchief of black silk crepe about his polished top-hat. In the red light of the tunnel, a pigeon’s-egg diamond, or perhaps a ruby, glints at the old man’s throat. Like the Chief Foreman, his trousered legs are swathed in knee-high boots of india-rubber. “The Grand Master Miner Emeritus,” Pearson gasps in a single breath, and scrambles at once to his feet. Waller leaps up as well. The two of them stand at attention as the Grand Master strolls beneath them, up the tunnel toward the Torpedo’s massive digging-face. He does not glance up, takes no notice of them, but speaks with cool authority to the Foreman. He examines bolts, seams, and grouting with the stabbing beam of his bull’s-eye lantern. The lantern has no handle, for the Grand Master carries the hot brass caught in a sleek iron hook which protrudes from an empty sleeve. “But that’s a queer way to dress, ain’t it?” whispers young Waller. “He’s still in mourning,” Pearson whispers. “Ah,” says the ‘prentice. He watches the Grand Master walk on a bit. “Still?” “He knew Lord Byron dead-familiar like, the Grand Master did. Knew Lord Babbage too! In the Time o’ Troubles — when they was running from Wellington’s Tory police! They warn’t no Lordships then — not proper Rad Lords, anyway, just rebels and agitators, like, with a price on their heads. The Grand Master hid ’em out down a digging once — a reg’lar Party headquarters, it was. The Rad Lords never forgot the great favors he done for ’em. That’s why we’re the greatest of Radical unions.” “Ah.” “That’s a great man, Davey! Master of iron, a great master of blasting-powder . . . They don’t make ’em like him, today.” “So — he must be nigh eighty now, eh?” “Still hale and hearty.” “Could we get down, sir, d’ye think — could I see him up close, like? Maybe shake his famous hook!” “All right, lad — but on your dignity now. No bad words.” They climb down to the bare planks at the base of the tunnel. As they follow the Grand Master, the gnawing rumble of the Torpedo changes abruptly. The Torpedo’s crew leaps up, for such a change means trouble — quicksand, a vein of water, or worse. Pearson and his ‘prentice break into a shuffling run toward the digging-face. Shavings of soft black filth begin to pour from the sharp iron spirals of the thirty-six twisting teeth, falling in greasy clods to the flat-carts of the carriage-ramp. From within the black soil of the digging-face come little muffled pops of old embedded gas-pockets, weak as Pearson’s enfeebled champagne-cork. No deadly rush of water, though; no slurry of quicksand. They inch forward warily, gazing after the sharp white beam of the Grand Master’s lantern. Knobs of hardened yellow show amid greenish-black muck. “Bones, is it?” says a workman, wiping his nose at a smell of soured dust. “Fossils, like . . .” Bones pour forth in a broken torrent as the Torpedo’s hydraulics lurch in reaction, pressing it forward into the softening mass. Human bones. “A cemetery!” Pearson cries. “We’ve hit a churchyard!” But the tunnel is too deep for that, and there are too many bones, bones tangled thick as the branches of a fallen forest, in a deep promiscuous mass, and mixed of a sudden with a thin and deadly reek, of long-buried lime and sulphur. “Plague pit!” the Chief Foreman cries in terror, and the men fall back, stumbling. There is a lurch, and a hiss of steam as the Foreman shuts down the Torpedo. The Grand Master has not moved. He stands quietly, regarding the work of the teeth. He puts his lamp aside, and reaches into the heap of spoil. He dabbles in it with his shining hook, and has something up by one eyehole. A skull. “Ah, then,” he says, his deep voice ringing in the sudden utter silence, “ye poor damn’ bastard.”