The Night Watchman | pencil outlines
but in the dark of the night, the other watchmen liked Toby more than anything else…
The dull houses stooped and leaned against each-other, so that from the end of the cobbled streets it seemed as if all was rising and falling and rising and falling in a unity of breath. It was hard to see between the twisted splashes of all the walls and the shadows of jagged pipes stretching and stretching to the very edge of the circle of light.
Watchman Toby trotted along in that grimy darkness. From time to time he paused under an empty streetlamp, and, fumbling for his wooden rod, lifted his firelight into that little wrought-iron compartment and saw his flames dart about in an ecstatic frenzy, before another cheery lamp joined his own. Pulsing, shining was that newborn goddess of light — with her gentle hands she traced the walls and ran across the windowsills and the curtains and the chimneys in a sudden burst of warmth and brightness. Toby beamed, eyes gleaming with a childish sort of delight.
Trotty Toby, the other watchmen called him, for his strange and awkward little steps. But in the dark of the night, the other watchmen liked Toby more than anything else: it was his unyielding, confident trot which seemed to ward off all the bad things in the dark. They bunched about him at times when the rain fell in sheets, or when thunder lit up the stones and drew grotesque masks on the plastered walls, or when the mist veiled even the ground, so it gave the impression that they were wading in a phantom tide.
For the watchers were humble shades in the night: cloaked in heavy woollen garments to ward of any type of natural adversary, and each betrothed with a lantern which never went out. They travelled in pairs and triplets, across the city to light the lamps and hurry the darkness away into their beds — the cracks of the sewers or the buttresses of the church — where they could do mischief unto nobody, and sleep till the sun rose.
At such late times like this, though, the rest of the watchmen were asleep as well. Tucked in warm sheets with little fires in their humble hearths, a mug of milk or tea in their hands. Not Toby, though. Never Toby.
Toby could not bear the idea that somewhere out there, a strain of darkness was still out and romping about. He could not bear the idea that that cheeky darkness would play alone for the entire night — no, it is improper for such things to happen in a civilised city! All the darkness must be tucked into bed as well!
And so on Toby trotted, a lantern held high above his head, and a rod in his other hand — a steady comet blazing across a slumbering sky.
