The Great Adventure
THE GREAT ADVENTURE A Play of Fancy in Four Acts by ARNOLD BENNETT 1913 CHARACTERS ILAM CARVE An illustrious Painter ALBERT SHAWN Ilam's Valet
Chaplain of Colechurch, who began the Stone Bridge at London:" and it
still boasted an edifice (though now in rather a tumbledown condition)
which had once vied with a palace,--we mean Nonesuch House. The other
buildings stood close together in rows; and so valuable was every inch
of room accounted, that, in many cases, cellars, and even habitable
apartments, were constructed in the solid masonry of the piers.
Old London Bridge (the grandsire of the present erection) was supported
on nineteen arches, each of which
Would a Rialto make for depth and height!
The arches stood upon enormous piers; the piers on starlings, or
jetties, built far out into the river to break the force of the tide.
Roused by Ben's warning, the carpenter looked up and could just perceive
the dusky outline of the bridge looming through the darkness, and
rendered indistinctly visible by the many lights that twinkled from the
windows of the lofty houses. As he gazed at these lights, they suddenly
seemed to disappear, and a tremendous shock was felt throughout the
frame of the boat. Wood started to his feet. He found that the skiff had
been dashed against one of the buttresses of the bridge.
"Jump!" cried Ben, in a voice of thunder.
Wood obeyed. His fears supplied him with unwonted vigour. Though the
THE GREAT ADVENTURE A Play of Fancy in Four Acts by ARNOLD BENNETT 1913 CHARACTERS ILAM CARVE An illustrious Painter ALBERT SHAWN Ilam's Valet