But the Bazaars had not this golden harvest to themselves. They found competition, which they a little resented. Secular amusements more than held their own. Gigantic castings had begun to arrive for the Big Wheel; under the booth-awnings of Gardd Street (recently christened) penny articles could be had for a penny; and a long row of automatic machines--Wheels of Fortune, little iron men who kicked footballs, Sibyls of Fate and Try-your-Grip machines--had sprung up along the railings of the sea-front. A few stage-gipsies with green parrakeets had made the town their summer home. There was a rifle-range on the farther sandhills--you could hear the "plunk" of the bullets on the iron targets. Near it was a travelling Merry-go-Round. Photographers had their "pitches" on the sands, with humourous canvas flats with oval holes in them, through which you put your face, so that you could have your portrait taken as "_He Won't be Happy till He Gets It_" or in the act of embracing a two-dimensional young woman, whichever was to your liking. And there were niggers. These danced and sang and played the banjo on a raised platform, dressed in wide turned-down schoolboy collars and pink striped trousers; the concentric rings of green chairs about them resembled the spread of a large symmetrical thistle plant; and outside this ring one or other of the troupe constantly moved, shaking a sort of jellybag under your nose (as the Chapel-goers had shaken the collecting-boxes) and blinking the pink lids in his burnt-cork face. A little farther on was the men's bathing-place. They had wooden machines now, into which youths entered four at a time--no more the trim and private striped tents of the Laceys and the Raymond Briggses. The ladies' bathing-place was farther on still--a boat stood off between the two lest the sexes should not keep their distance. And a hundred yards past that, beyond a great scabrous groyne of loose stone, clay-coloured at the shore end but slimy with green as it ran down to the sea, with red flags and notice-boards along the top and a moveable rope-barrier at its base where two men walked on sentry-go, they were at work upon the Pier.