text: The turning point in Davies's life came after a week of rambling in London. He spotted a newspaper story about the riches to be made in the Klondike and set off to make his fortune in Canada. Attempting with a fellow tramp, Three-fingered Jack, to jump a freight train at Renfrew, Ontario on 20 March 1899, he lost his footing and his right foot was crushed under the wheels of the train. The leg was amputated below the knee and he wore a pegleg thereafter. Davies' biographers agree the accident was crucial, although Davies played down the story. Moult begins his biography with the incident, and his biographer Richard J. Stonesifer suggested this event, more than any other, led Davies to become a professional poet. Davies writes, "I bore this accident with an outward fortitude that was far from the true state of my feelings. Thinking of my present helplessness caused me many a bitter moment, but I managed to impress all comers with a false indifference.... I was soon home again, away less than four months; but all the wildness was taken out of me, and my adventures after this were not of my seeking, but the result of circumstances." Davies took an ambivalent view of his disability. In his poem "The Fog", published in the 1913 Foliage, a blind man leads the poet through the fog, showing the reader how someone impaired in one domain may have a big advantage in another.
  Poet
  Davies returned to Britain, to a rough life largely in London shelters and doss-houses, including a Salvation Army hostel in Southwark known as "The Ark", which he grew to despise. Fearing the reaction of his fellow tramps to his writings, Davies would pretend to sleep, while composing his poems in his head, for later transcription in private. At one point, he borrowed money to print some, which he attempted to sell door-to-door. The effort was not successful and Davies burned all of the printed sheets.