"Do you mind the nights we laboured, boys, together, Spreadeagled at our travail on the joists, With the pulley-wheels a-turning and the naphtha lamps a-burning, And the mortar crawling upwards on the hoists, When our hammers clanked like blazes on the facing, When the trestles shook and staggered as we struck, When the derricks on their pivots strained and broke the crank-wheel rivets As the shattered jib sank heavy in the muck?"
The winter was at hand. When the night drew near, a great weariness came over the face of the sun as it sank down behind the hills which had seen a million sunsets. The autumn had been mild and gentle, its breezes soft, its showers light and cool. But now, slowly and surely, the great change was taking place; a strange stillness settled softly on the lonely places. Nature waited breathless on the threshold of some great event, holding her hundred winds suspended in a fragile leash. The heather bells hung motionless on their stems, the torrents dropped silently as smoke from the scarred edges of the desolate ravines, but in this silence there lay a menace; in its supreme poise was the threat of coming danger. The crash of our hammers was an outrage, and the exploding dynamite a sacrilege against tired nature.
A great weariness settled over us; our life lacked colour, we were afraid of the silence, the dulness of the surrounding mountains weighed heavily on our souls. The sound of labour was a comfort, the thunder of our hammers went up as a threat against the vague implacable portent of the wild.
Life to me had now become dull, expressionless, stupid. Only in drink was there contentment, only in a fight was there excitement. I hated the brown earth, the slushy muck and gritty rock, but in the end hatred died out and I was almost left without passion or longing. My life now had no happiness and no great sadness. My soul was proof against sorrow as it was against joy. Happiness and woe were of no account; life was a spread of brown muck, without any relieving splash of lighter or darker colours. For all that, I had no great desire (desire was almost dead even) to go down to the Lowlands and look for a newer job. So I stayed amidst the brown muck and existed.