"You call it doing nothing to eat your heart out leaning up against the dock wall. Well, I'd rather do the hardest shift they could put me to than have to do that," said Brown with his mouth full of bread. Chaplin was hungry too, after being out in the keen morning air, but he did not like to eat anything, for his journey had brought no profit, and so he grudged eating until Brown insisted that he should have some bread and coffee at least. When the meal was over, Chaplin trudged out to another and more distant dock, and Brown laid himself on the bed for an hour's sleep, that he too might go and look for another job before the day was over. His good luck this morning had quite heartened him, and he chuckled to himself over the idea of going partners with the man who was almost worn-out. "Do what I may, though, I can never do half as much for them as that little lass has done for my Annie," was his last thought before he went to sleep. CHAPTER VII. THE STRIKE. THINGS went on outwardly the same for the next week or two, and then one morning about the middle of August, news flew from dock to dock that at one, three hundred labourers had come out refusing to work unless some other plan was adopted than that at present in vogue. What the men asked was, that they should have the money they earned by their labour, and the contract system abolished. To the men themselves it seemed a very reasonable demand, and one that would surely soon be granted. It was not all they asked, for they also wanted sixpence an hour to be paid to them out of the eightpence paid for their labour by the merchants and shippers. There was likewise another thing, and that was that when they were called into the docks, they should be employed at least four hours, and not be discharged after two hours' labour, which often prevented them getting a longer job at another place because they were too late. These were the reforms that were demanded, but the dock officials did not see their way clear to making any alteration in the system upon which they had worked so long, and declined to do anything. But the gentlemen who spoke in this way, found that the men had begun to think for themselves to some purpose at last. The next day, the men came out of the other docks, or refused to go in, and the stevedores—the skilled packers who alone knew how to stow a ship's cargo properly—followed the labourers, declaring they would not work until the poor dockers' demands were granted. "We shall win now, mother, in less than a week," said Chaplin running home to his wife with the news of this piece of self-denial on the part of men who were well able to help themselves. Winny clasped her hands and tears of joy stood in her eyes as she said, "We shall win, I know we shall, daddy; only we must be patient." "Yes, we're likely to need plenty of that before this strike comes to an end," said Mrs. Chaplin with a sob.