Lanterns with reds and greens a-glisten wave the way and the head-light glares, The back-bent laborers glance and listen and out through the night the tail-light flares-- Deep in the mills like a tipping cradle the huge converter turns on its wheel And sizzling spills in the ten-ton ladle a golden water of molten steel. Yet screwed with toil his low face searches shadow-edged fires and whited pits, Gripping his levers his body lurches, grappling his irons he prods and hits, And deaf with the roll and clangor and rattle with its sharp escaping staccato of steam, And blind with flame and worn with battle, into his tonnage he turns his dream. The world he has builded rises around us, our wonder-cities and weaving rails, Over his wires a marvel has found us, a glory rides in our wheeled mails, For the Earth grows small with strong Steel woven, and they come together who plotted apart-- But he who has wrought this thing in his oven knows only toil and the tired heart. The Navvy[A] [A] By permission of E. P. Dutton & Co. (_From "Children of the Dead End"_) BY PATRICK MACGILL (See page 32) At that time there were thousands of navvies working at Kinlochleven waterworks. We spoke of waterworks, but only the contractors knew what the work was intended for. We did not know, and we did not care. We never asked questions concerning the ultimate issue of our labors, and we were not supposed to ask questions. If a man throws red muck over a wall today and throws it back again tomorrow, what the devil is it to him if he keeps throwing that same muck over the wall for the rest of his life, knowing not why nor wherefore, provided he gets paid sixpence an hour for his labor? There were so many tons of earth to be lifted and thrown somewhere else; we lifted them and threw them somewhere else; so many cubic yards of iron-hard rocks to be blasted and carried away; we blasted and carried them away, but never asked questions and never knew what results we were laboring to bring about. We turned the Highlands into a cinder-heap, and were as wise at the beginning as at the end of the task. Only when we completed the job, and returned to the town, did we learn from the newspapers that we had been employed on the construction of the biggest aluminium factory in the kingdom. All that we knew was that we had gutted whole mountains and hills in the operations.... Above and over all, the mystery of the night and the desert places hovered inscrutable and implacable. All around the ancient mountains sat like brooding witches, dreaming on their own story of which they knew neither the beginning nor the end. Naked to the four winds of heaven and all the rains of the world, they had stood there for countless ages in all their sinister strength, undefied and unconquered, until man, with puny hands and little tools of labor, came to break the spirit of their ancient mightiness.