I was about to ask him to explain this when I noticed a dark shape scurrying quickly out of the light of the lanthorn. Then there was another. And another. I realized with horror what they must be, though they seemed too large.
Seeing me shudder my companion said: “Aye, rats.”
“But so big!” I gasped.
“Brown rats. They ain’t the same as the house-rats.”
“Aren’t they dangerous?” I exclaimed.
He laughed: “You don’t want to get bit by ’em. They’re p’isonous. But they don’t as a rule go for a man unless he’s bleeding a’ready. Seems the smell of blood drives ’em to it.”
I swallowed hard to fight down the panic I felt rising within me at the thought of those knife-like, envenomed teeth. But if Joey had been able to endure these horrors, then I was determined to show myself no less courageous.
We went on and now I could tell that we were making our way consistently downhill. I discovered that the deepest tunnels were generally the most ancient and the most foul smelling and treacherous, for the brick-work of the narrow ledges along the sides was often crumbling so that it would suddenly give way beneath your weight, and the surface was pitted with deep ruts on which one could easily trip. And to miss your footing here, where the water was deep and the current swift, was to face a certain and very horrible death.
Gradually I began to sense another odour distinguishable from the acrid, sulphurous stench that I had already grown somewhat inured to, and eventually I realized that it was that of the river: a deep, ancient smell like the stagnant ponds that I had found so fascinating as a small boy. Now the different sewers broadened out into wide, flatter basons rather as a river widens at its mouth, so that the water ran down the middle leaving banks of deep mud exposed at the sides. Instead of being cast back at us from the dank wall, the lume of the lanthorn was lost in the gloom that opened around us.
“You can only stay down here when the tide is at low-water,” Mr Digweed explained. “And that’s not long.”
So that explained the hours he worked!
“As the tide rises the low-lying tunnels back up,” he explained. “Very sudden sometimes. There’s many as has been caught that way, by not keeping a reckoning of the time. And the spring and neap tides can be devilish tricky, too.”
Now we set to work and I understood why two of us were needed, for the shore-hunters’ technique was quite different, in these vast stinking sumps where Thames and sewer came together, from that used higher up. Instead of coins being trapped in the crevices where the angle of descent was steep enough so that the mud and filth were washed away by the running fluid, here the effluvium was left behind by the retreating tide whose action, as it went out, formed a kind of vast sieve, leaving the mud and its contents to sink to the floor. And it was upon this expanse of crumbling brickwork covered in layers of thick mud or worse — on which it was easy to lose one’s footing — that we had to work in the absolute darkness and as quickly as possible.
Now Mr Digweed showed me my duties which involved holding the lanthorn for him while he raked through the mud and filth that accumulated in smooth heaps like the sand left along the foreshore of a beach. He now brought the trowel and sieve into play, sifting through the mud and occasionally finding a coin. Or he would start prodding with the rake at a particular shoal of foetor while I had to direct the lanthorn as he indicated. Sometimes he would detect something — a lump of rusted metal, an iron baccy box, a spoon — and hook it back with the rake. I was amazed by the way in which he saw coins and other objects that were invisible to me in the mud, and I realized that although it looked easy enough, he had a knack of spotting them when I would not have noticed them — even though I had the advantage of two eyes.
It was very hard and unpleasant work. We had water swirling about our feet while we laboured on the mud-banks at the edges, and when we crossed from one side to another the water in the centre of the ditch frequently came up to our knees and often dead cats, dogs, and rats as well as all manner of beastliness, were swept up against us. The tunnels were very cold and damp and the cramped position that was required was uncomfortable and even painful. Above all, of course, the stench was appalling.
Because I began to realize that Mr Digweed was much sharper at spotting coins and other things buried in the mud than I, I was pleased with myself when I noticed a metal object that he appeared to have missed several feet away protruding from the mud. I pointed it out to him and he nodded and smiled as if to indicate that he had seen it, but when I suggested retrieving it he shook his head.
“Mud’s too deep,” he said.
I expressed surprise for it looked to be no deeper than elsewhere. I made to go forward but he held out his hook to stop me.
“That wasn’t like that a-fore,” he said. He leaned forward and probed with the rake. To my surprise it sank several feet.
He smiled at me: “The brick-work’s given way there. See, it’s as rotten as gingerbread. There’s shallow vaults beneath here. Then the mud goes through and fills it up so as it looks solid.”
I shuddered to think how easily I might have ventured across it.
“Aye,” Mr Digweed added reflectively. “It’s allus different down here every time.”
He went on to explain that even on the very lowest levels, the ground was cracking and giving way, for the whole network of sewers was sinking slowly into the soft London clay. So even here when I thought I had reached the very bottom, I found that there was nothing firm beneath my feet.
After some time I became aware that as well as being cold and exhausted, I was also extremely hungry. I had no idea whether we had been down there for a few hours or for the whole night, but we had taken nothing to eat and I understood why, for the very idea of consuming food in those conditions made my gorge rise.
Mr Digweed must have guessed what was in my mind for he said: “The tide ain’t turned yet but I see you’re tired so we’ll come up now.”
I was delighted to hear him say this and so we retraced our steps, making our way towards the upper tunnels. But suddenly, just when we had turned into the mouth of a new one, the flames of our lanthorns sank down and spluttered as if gasping for air.
Mr Digweed who was in front of me turned and said calmly: “Gas. We’ll have to go back.”
I looked at him in dismay, for everything that I had heard or read about coal-mines came flooding into my mind: “Can it explode?”
“No, this is choke-damp. But it can drown a man if he don’t know it’s there.”
I felt a blind terror. To die in that darkness! To be stifled! To lose your very body to the malignant tides!
“It can come down a tunnel on you very sudden. Breathe it and you’re finished.”
“How can you avoid it?”
“Why, you jist has to watch for it.”
We continued along the main tunnel we had been in before, but after a few yards the lanthorns began spluttering again and the flames guttered low.
My companion stopped and said: “We’ll have to turn back. You have to watch that it don’t put the lanthorn out for it’s hard to strike a light in this damp.”
As we turned back, it came to me how terrifying it would be to lose one’s light down there. I knew how impossible it would be to grope my way back to the surface, and wondered if it could be done even if one knew the labyrinthine system as well as my companion. I shuddered as I imagined trying to pick my way along the slippery edge of a deep water-filled ditch.
The lanthorns guttered several times as we made our way, to my surprise, back to the lowest level again, but we reached there without further danger. Now we proceeded down a broad ditch which sloped very gradually, and I grew increasingly alarmed at the idea that we were going deeper and deeper into the system. However, as smaller tunnels fed into it, the bore of our tunnel grew larger until it was more than twice the height of a man. After some time I discerned a slight mitigation of the absolute darkness ahead of us, and at last I saw a
great circle of faint light.
When we reached it I realized that we had arrived at the mouth of one of the great sewers where it disgorged into the river. At that time many of the grids intended to prevent people from getting into the tunnels were so far rusted away as to present no obstacle. And since there were no tide-gates as there are now, it was very easy to lower ourselves down the brickwork to the muddy foreshore where the tide was encroaching, then walk along until we reached the water-stairs at the end of Northumberland-street — oddly enough, I reflected, very near my grandfather’s house.
It was strange to come to the surface and find that we were in quite another part of the metropolis and that the dawn was streaking the sky with pale light. As we made our way home and then conducted the ritual of stripping off the oil-skins and pumping ourselves down in the yard, I was too tired to ask the many questions that I wanted to.
When we entered the house Mrs Digweed smiled at me anxiously and said: “Well, how did you find it?”
I was so exhausted that I could not respond and merely nodded and tried to muster a smile.
“He done prime,” Mr Digweed said.
Feeling proud at this accolade, I went upstairs and lay down beside the sleeping Joey. Within seconds I too was profoundly asleep.
The next day I succeeded in making Mr Digweed talk about the work and as we sat over a late breakfast, I found him more eloquent than I had ever known him.
“Folks don’t know as there’s nigh on two hundred miles of main shores,” he enthused, “with near the same number of outlets into the river. But then there’s another fifteen hundred miles of district and private tunnels as you can get into. Though some on ’em — the two-footers — is tighteners.”
“What about the smell?” I asked.
“Why, you hardly notice it. There’s even some as reckon it’s healthy, for they say the toshers live to a great age. But there’s some things that ain’t too nice, like the blood-tunnels beneath Newport-market and Smiffle. Though they ain’t so bad as the b’iling-shores where there’s sugar-manyfact’rers, for the sugar is drove into the shores by steam.” He grimaced. “And then you’ve to watch out for the soap and tallow manyfact’ries, too. And you don’t go near the lead-works at all if you can help it.”
He told me about the other hazards: the falling of rooves (which is how Joey had been injured), the collapse of floors where one sewer was constructed over another, and the sudden rise in the water-level because of a heavy downpour.
“And then there’s the tide,” he added; “for it can back up in the most surprising ways. And it has a reach of more nor twenty foot.”
I was determined not to be deterred. And so we went down again the next day — or, rather, the next night. And while Joey convalesced during the following three weeks, I accompanied his father regularly on his underground expeditions.
As I acquired more and more experience of the “shores” I began to wonder how I had ever imagined that it was an easy way to make a living. It was my second week when I first encountered direct evidence of the dangers. In a sloping side-tunnel somewhere under Blackfriars we saw a large shape rising up from a thick deposit of mud.
My companion grimaced: “Reckon that’s a used ’un, like they used to say in the army.”
When we got close enough he employed his rake to pull it a little towards us and we saw that it was indeed the body of a man.
“Poor devil,” my companion said. “I have to see if I know his face. If he has one.”
He managed to pull the body over and held the lanthorn down to the pale face: “No,” he said. “He ain’t one of us.”
“Do we leave him here?” I asked.
“We have to. It’s a long job to get one up. We only do it for one of the S’iety. There’s some as takes what they find and even strips the togs off ’em, but I don’t.”
“What will happen to it?”
“This tunnel leads into one where there ain’t no grid across the mouth, so it’ll be washed into the river. That’s to say, what the rats leave.”
I felt my stomach heave at these words, but Mr Digweed continued without noticing: “Then, most likely, one of the river-scavengers will find it. Anything he finds on it will be his reward, which is another reason for leaving what’s on it, or it’s robbing another of his trade.”
“How do you think it got here?”
“He might have come down without someone that knowed his way around. Or he could have fell in, or he might have been bellowsed and throwed into a culvert, in course. There’s many and many a way.”
Isbister’s warning about dropping me in the Fleet-ditch came back to me and I asked: “Do you find them often?”
“Now and then,” he answered. “Not so much full-growed, but a mort o’ babbies.”
As we were returning to the surface we came to a place where there was a grating above our heads every few yards through which I saw dim lights. I thought I heard the noise of horses and carts, but dismissed it as a trick of the running water until I realized that the gratings were those at the side of the street and that I could indeed hear and even see the traffic and foot-passengers. How strange it was that, just a few feet beneath the everyday world, here we were in the darkness and stench of a dangerous underground realm.
At that moment I heard a strange noise — a hollow but rhythmical banging.
“A storm!” my companion explained. “Lucky we’re near the top.”
We hastily made our way to the surface and once out of the system, he explained to me that when there was a downpour, the gong-fermors — as the men who were employed by the parishes to clean the sewers are known — warn their fellows who might be below ground by raising and dropping the metal covers of the manholes.
Mr Digweed had told me that there was ill-feeling between the toshers and the gong-fermors who regarded us as interlopers who were poaching on their domain — although we went into shores that they shunned as too dangerous — in order to take the rewards of their own work. And he had warned me that they would sometimes attack us if they encountered us below. But there was a great deal of fellowship amongst the toshers — the most experienced of whom jealously controlled entry to their Society.
I had proof of this a few days later for suddenly, as we were proceeding along a tunnel where there was a long straight stretch ahead of us, we saw lights approaching. As we drew near Mr Digweed reassured me that it was another party of shore-hunters. We halted and exchanged greetings.
“There’s bad gas beneath Fetter-lane at the Fleet-street end,” one of them reported.
“How’s the roof under Chancery-lane?” Mr Digweed asked.
“Dunno. I ain’t been up that way for a few weeks. After what happened to Jem I’ve kept clear of there.”
We continued on our way.
During these weeks I realized that the secret of successful shore-hunting was to cover as much distance as possible in the most promising of the upper tunnels, to venture into the lower sewers as soon as the tide rendered it safe, and to stay down there as long as caution allowed. For the whole art lay in knowing when it was safe to enter different parts of the system and how long it was prudent to remain, and in guessing which parts would be most profitable in view of a range of factors: the tide, the recent weather, and the time of the year. There was a competitive element involved for it was desirable to beat other hunters to the best grounds, though at the same time (as I have said) there was a generous spirit of mutuality among the shore-hunters. Interlopers, however, would receive no assistance, and the fact that it was so dangerous unless one had expert knowledge, meant that the craft had descended from father to son in some cases for many generations. Mr Digweed explained to me that he had been taught it by an old man, Bart, to whom he had done a favour once many years before. From him he had learned how to scrutinize the ground as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and had acquired his knowledge of the tunnel-system and the ability to “read” changes in it upon which not merely profit but li
fe itself depended, for as I had already seen the system could be as unpredictable and as dangerous as the sea.
Proud though he was of his knowledge, he lamented often — particularly when he had just returned from the public-house — that to work the shores was a waste of his skills for a craftsman who had served his time.
When, after three weeks, it became clear that Joey was almost fully recovered, I wondered whether his father would still want me to accompany him underground. Although the thought of doing this work indefinitely repelled me, I could see no other way of earning my living for I had very little education and without capital or friends had no chance of establishing myself in a gentlemanly profession. Yet soon, I reflected, whoever it was who had been paying the Digweeds to rescue and foster me would surely reveal themselves — for good or ill — and until then I could accept this work as a temporary expedient. And it had its attractions, for while I shrank from the filth and degradation of the shores, I was strangely drawn by the idea of working beneath the surface, setting my hours by the mysterious movements of the tides, often labouring at night and sleeping by day, and dwelling here in the haunts of the most wretched and impoverished. Although it was partly because I felt I was safe from my enemies in a secret underworld and, moreover, fending for myself and surviving, there was some further appeal that was stronger even than these and that I was only vaguely aware of at the time.
One evening in the middle of May, Joey announced that he was determined to go under again the next day and, despite Mrs Digweed’s protests, his father agreed.
“Does that mean you don’t need me?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you want to?” Mr Digweed asked.
I hesitated for a moment and Joey saw this.
“I suppose it ain’t good enough for you?” he said.
“Now hold your tongue,” his mother ordered.
“For the time being at least,” I said, “I’d like to.”
Mr Digweed nodded approvingly: “Three’s much safer than two.”
“On’y,” said Mrs Digweed cautiously, “it don’t hardly seem right for someone like you to earn his living that way.”