Once we had to stop and batter away a wall with a scaffold pole; for the police declared it to be unsafe, and the sergeant would not let us work near it till it was down; and all the while I was raging like a madman at the check. But it was of no use, and the man was right. He was doing his duty, and not like me, searching for the little crushed form of my darling in the cruel ruins. The people made me worse, for they would talk and say what they thought, so that I could hear. One would say she might still be alive, another would shake his head, and so on; when I kept stopping, in spite of all I tried not, listening to what they said, and it all seemed so much lost time.
The engine-room was now cleared, and in spite of my trembling and horror, as every big piece was disturbed, nothing had been found; but all at once, as we were trying to clear behind the biler, and get down to the stoke-hole, one of the men gate a cry. I caught at the man nearest to me, and then lights, rubbish, the strange wild scene, all seemed to run round me, and I should have fallen only the man held me up, and some one brought me some brandy.
I was myself again directly, and stumbling over the bricks to where a knot of men had collected, and a policeman had his bulls-eye lantern open, and they were stooping to look at something that lay just under a beam they had raised to the left of where I expected she would
be found.
Smashed, I heard some one, with his back to me, say; and then some one else, Poor little thing, she must have run past here!
Then, with my throat dry and my eyes staring, I crept up and thrust two men aside, right and left, when the others made way for me without speaking, and, when I got close up, I covered my face with my hands, and softly knelt down.
The policeman said something, and some one else spoke cheerily; but I couldnt hear what they said, for my every thought was upon what I was going to see. And now, for the first time, the great, blinding tears came gushing from my eyes, so that when I slowly took down first one hand and then another, I was blinded, and could not see for a few moments; till, stooping a little lower, there, smashed and flattened, covered with mortar and dust, was my old red cotton handkercher tied round the basin and plate that held my dinner, dropped here by my little darling girl.
For a few moments I was, as it were, struck dumb it was so different a sight to what I had expected to see; and then I leaped up and laughed, and shouted, and danced the relief was so great.
Come on! I cried again; and then, for an hour or more, we were at it, working away till the light began to come in the east, and tell us that it was daybreak.
Late as it was, plenty of people had stopped all the time; for, somehow or another, hundreds had got to know the little bright, golden-haired thing that trotted backwards and forwards every day with my dinner basin. She was too little to do it, but then, bless you, that was our pride; for the wife combed and brushed and dressed her up on purpose. And fine and proud we used to be of the little thing, going and coming so old-fashioned. Why, lots of heads used to be thrust out to watch her; and seeing how pretty, and artless, and young she was, we used to feel that every one would try and protect her; and it was so. Time after time, that night, I saw motherly-looking women, that I did not know, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing and crying; and though I didnt notice it then, I remembered it well enough afterwards ah! and always shall; while the way in which some of the men worked well-to-do men, who would have thought themselves insulted if youd offered em five shillings for their nights job showed how my poor little darling had won the hearts of all around. Often and often since, too, I could have stopped this one, and shook hands with that one for their kindness; only theres always that shut-upness about an Englishman that seems to make him all heart at a time of sorrow, and a piece of solid bluntness at every other time.
Well, it was now just upon morning, and we were all worked up to a pitch of excitement that nothing could be like. We had been expecting to come upon the poor child all the afternoon and night, but now there could be no doubt of it. She must be here; for we were now down in the stoke-hole, working again with more vigour than had been shown for hours. Mens faces were flushed, and their teeth set. They didnt talk, only in Whispers; and the stuff went flying out as fast as others could take it away.
Easy, easy, the sergeant of police kept saying, as he and two of his men kept us well lit with the strong light of their lanterns.
But the men tore on, till at last the place was about cleared out, and we had got to a mass of brick wall sloping against one side, and a little woodwork on the other side, along with some rubbish.
And now was the exciting time, as we went, four of us, at the brick wall, and dragged at it, when some women up above shrieked out, and we stood trembling, for it had crumbled down and lay all of a heap where we had raised it from.