Carstairs and Darwen were on the same shift together, that is to say,
they put in the same eight hours of the day at the works, day,
evening, or night; and they shared diggings. They were about the
same height and the same weight, they were both extremely interested
in their work, both came from the south of England, and consequently
both felt like strangers in a strange land. The first evening they
were off, Darwen showed Carstairs round the town.
"That's the theatre," he said, with a smile, pointing to a
dingy-looking building in a dingy-looking street. He watched
Carstairs' face curiously as he spoke.
"I thought it was the prison," Carstairs answered, with his sober
smile.
Darwen laughed outright. "This is the last place God made," he said.
They walked round the dingy main streets with their surging crowd of
factory girls and factory men, flashily dressed in their evening
attire, of poor physique and unhealthy looking.
"Is it possible," Carstairs asked, "to get out into the country?"
"Oh, yes!" Darwen answered. "Can you walk?"
"Pretty fair."
"Come on then. I'll show you a field."
Carstairs looked pained. "The landlady," he remarked, "described
that acre or so of bare earth opposite our window, as a field."
"I know, but this is a real field with grass and all that."
"Come on then," Carstairs said, briskly.
Darwen stopped and looked at him impressively. "Mind, I promise
nothing! But last time I was there, there were three cows in it."
He suddenly relaxed into a sunny smile. "Come on," he said, and
started off briskly.
They walked about five miles, past endless rows of symmetrical,
dingy, box-like, red brick houses. It was getting dark when they
reached the field, but the cows were there--three sorry specimens,
grazing on the smoke-grimed, subdued-looking grass. The young
engineers sat on the gate and looked at them in amused pity.
"We've come through one town, and we're on the borders of another,"
Darwen remarked. "It's hard to say just what town you're in at any
given moment, about here."
"It seems very bracing although it's so smoky," Carstairs said. "I
wonder why any one lives here who could live anywhere else."
"Lord! Don't tell 'em that. I nearly got mobbed for making a
similar remark last week. They think these places are very fine
towns. When they've made their pile they still stay here."
"How long have you been here?"
"A month."
"How long are you going to stay?"
"Oh, I shall start applying when I've put in four months. Might get
away at the end of six, then."
"That's my idea, too. They've got some good plant here, though."
So they lapsed into technicalities; and as they strolled back, the
dingy houses and the smoke and grime were all forgotten. Community
of interest was drawing these two young men very close together.
They sat up late into the night smoking and comparing notes of what
they had seen and wished to see in the engineering world. As they
went to bed, Carstairs passed Darwen's door.
"Oh! if you come in half a minute, I'll show you those drawings," he
said.
He went in, and while Darwen rummaged about in a big trunk, Carstairs
glanced round his bedroom. The walls were hung with framed
photographs of football teams and cricket teams, school teams and
town teams; Darwen's handsome features and sturdy limbs were
prominent in all. Carstairs examined them with keen interest.
"You're a rugger man, I see," he said, with great appreciation.
"Yes, are you?"
"Oh, yes. I play, but I haven't got an international cap, or--"
Carstairs mentioned the name of one of the teams on the wall. Darwen
stood up with a roll of engineering drawings in his hand. He flushed
slightly with pleasure. "I only played for them one season," he
explained, "left the town at the end of it."
Carstairs looked at the drawings and Darwen explained. They sat down
together side by side on the bed; for half an hour longer they
discussed technicalities, then Carstairs went out. He noticed two
photographs on the mantelpiece as he passed, both of girls, both
pretty. He noticed also that both of them were autographed across
the corner. One of them he thought had "with love" written on it
too. "Shouldn't have thought Darwen was the sort of ass to get
engaged," he said to himself as he went into his own room and glanced
round at the landlady's wishy-washy prints and cheap ornaments.
At the works Carstairs and Darwen were always on together, with Smith
as charge engineer. On the night shift (that is, from midnight to
eight in the morning), Smith spent most of his time in the drawing
office reading novels or newspapers, and sleeping; he took periodical
walks round to see that the others were awake, then he went back into
the drawing office and reclined peacefully in a chair, his head
thrown back against the wall (cushioned by a folded coat), and his
feet supported by a small box. During the first two or three hours
the two juniors spent their time tracing out connections behind the
switchboard, making diagrams, and clambering about on the tops of
engines or boilers; later on, they too, usually dozed off, sprawling
over the switchboard desk, or stretched out on the floor somewhere
out of sight. After about two o'clock a.m. the whole works, in fact,
became a sort of temporary palace of sleep; the stoker dozed on his
box in the boiler house, the engine driver made himself snug on the
bed plate of an engine, the fires in the boilers died gradually down
from a fierce white to a dull red glow, the steam pressure gauge
dropped back twenty or thirty pounds, the engines hummed away
merrily, with a rather soothing sort of buzz from the alternator, and
a mild sort of grinding noise from the direct current dynamos, with a
little intermittent sparking at the brushes. On the switchboard, the
needles of all the instruments remained steady, the pressure showing
perhaps a little drop. At irregular intervals the driver would get
up and slowly oil round his engines, feeling the bearings at the same
time; the stoker would arise and throw a few shovelfuls of coal on
his fires, glance up at his water gauges and regulate the feed water,
perhaps putting the pump on a little faster, or stopping it off a
bit; a switchboard attendant would open one eye and glance sleepily
at the big voltmeter swung on an arm at the end of the switchboard,
note that the pressure was only a little way back, and close his eyes
again in quiet unconcern.
One night Smith had been drinking a lot of strong tea and couldn't
sleep; he strolled round at an unaccustomed hour and surveyed the
sleeping beauties with a little smile of glee, for Smith was
twenty-three years old, and to the healthy young man at that age many
things appear humorous which a few years later take on a hue of
tragedy.
Going through the boiler house, he carefully examined the steam and
water gauges. Then he stood for some moments gazing interestedly at
the recumbent stoker; he was rather a ferocious-looking man in
ordinary wakeful moments, but thus, with his big jaw dropped to its
full extent, his eyes closed, and every feature relaxed, he seemed
singularly feeble. Smith took a shovel and threw it with a clatter
down on the iron checker plates.
It was quite an appreciable number of seconds before the man moved,
then he sprang bolt upright, with his eyes wide open, both arms
extended above his head, and every expression of alarm on his
countenance; he saw Smith standing there smiling, but it was some
moments before his face resumed its normal expression; he looked at
the shovel on the iron plates. "Did you drop that, sir?" he asked.
"Yes," Smith answered.
"I must a' dropped off," the man said, half apologetically, half
humorously.
"I think you must have," Smith agreed, smiling broadly.
A joke loses more than half its zest if there's no one to share it
with. "I'll have those chaps in the engine room now. Come in and
see," Smith said, as he led the way to the engine room door. The
heavy stoker followed; he was a man over forty, but he grinned like a
boy of twelve.
"Half a minute," the engineer said, in a whisper. Leaving the
expectant stoker at the door, he carefully surveyed the engine room
and switchboard, then he returned with an oil bucket in his hand.
"Shut the door, and when I switch the lights out, rattle that like
blazes." He handed over the bucket and crossed the engine room again
to the station-lighting switchboard, picking up two more buckets as
he went. Then he switched off the main switch, putting the place in
inky darkness; instantly the stoker rattled his bucket with great
vigour. Smith bowled one of his along the iron checker plates on top
of the pipe trench, and rattled the other vigorously in his hands.
From the security of their corners they heard voices shouting in the
darkness, and the sounds of men in anger swearing.
"What the hell's up?"
"Stand by your engine, Jones!"
"Got a match? Let's have a look at the blooming volts."
Smith heard a bump above his head on the switchboard gallery as
though some one had fallen, a match was struck down in the engine
room and another on the switchboard, then he heard Darwen's voice
say, "Good God! Smith! Hullo! Smith!"
He switched on the lights and ran up the switchboard steps.
Carstairs was lying limp and helpless on his back with Darwen bending
over him. Smith turned as white as a ghost.
"What's up?" he asked, in an agitated voice.
"I don't know. Got a shock, I think. Look at his hands, got across
the contacts in the dark somehow."
They stretched him out on his back with a folded coat underneath him,
and put him through the motions for artificial respiration. The
driver and stoker waived ceremony and mounted the switchboard steps
to see what was wrong; they stood leaning over the prostrate form
watching the anxious efforts of Smith and Darwen in silent,
interested sympathy. "Shall I have a spell, sir?" the brawny stoker
asked, as the agitated Smith paused for a moment in his efforts.
No one present was ever able to say precisely how long they worked at
Carstairs, probably not many minutes before his chest began to heave
in a natural breathing motion. They carried him out into the yard,
and the fresh air so revived him that in half an hour he walked
through the engine room unaided, and lay down on the floor of the
drawing office, made comfortable with coats and newspapers, and dozed
off into a sleep. When he woke up, and had had a wash, he seemed
quite normal again.
Smith was profuse in his apologies. "I'm beastly sorry. I never
dreamt of anything of that sort, etc."
"Oh, it's alright," Carstairs answered, with a sincere desire to let
the matter drop. "I ought to have stood still, went shoving my hands
out, knew I was somewhere near the machine switch, too. Got right
past the guards and touched the bare metal first go off, wouldn't
happen once in a thousand times. Not your fault at all."
So the incident passed, and remained a secret in the bosoms of those
five men till years later, when, Carstairs and Darwen were dim and
distant memories at those works, a driver or a stoker would sometimes
tell wondering pupils a tale of how a man was nearly killed on the
night run through the Shift Engineer "skylarking."
Things went very smoothly for a bit. Darwen and Carstairs got more
chummy than ever. They were leaning over the switchboard rail
together, it was not quite a week since Carstairs had got the shock.
"I rather wanted to see a chap get a shock, not killed, you know,"
Darwen was saying.
"I was rather curious on the point myself, too."
"What was it like? Just a two hundred shock magnified?"
"Very much magnified. It was devilish."
They drifted off. "I've never seen an alternator burn out yet, have
you?"
"No! Wish number three would go now."
They separated to take reading; it was half-past nine in the evening;
Carstairs stood looking at an ammeter which was set some way above
his head. The divisions on the scale were small and indistinctly
figured; Carstairs stood very close in, on tip-toe, straining his
neck upwards; the high tension fuses were at the bottom of the board,
about level with his knees (carefully calculated as the most awkward
possible position), they were seven inches long and enclosed in
porcelain pots, which invariably shattered when a fuse blew. As
Carstairs stood there taking feeder reading, with what he afterwards
learnt was unnecessary accuracy, the needle of the instrument he was
looking at gave a sudden violent plunge, the fuse pot, almost
touching his trousers, was shattered into a hundred pieces with a
report like a miniature cannon, and a vivid arc blazed away under his
eyes with a rattling, screaming roar. Carstairs jumped back in an
instant, to the furthest limit that the width of the gallery would
allow.
Darwen came along from the low tension switchboard; he was all
eagerness, his eyes were bright. He stopped and looked at his new
friend in amazement. Carstairs cowered against the handrail,
gripping his scribbling block and pencil, palpitating, useless.
For two or three seconds Darwen gazed at him in astonishment. Then
he fetched the long, insulated crook kept for that purpose, and
himself pulled out the feeder switch.
"Bring down your volts, Carstairs," he said, in a kindly, soothing
voice, avoiding his eyes.
With a deep, gasping sigh Carstairs pulled himself together, and with
an unsteady hand adjusted the rheostat.
They looked down into the engine room and saw Thompson, the chief
assistant, looking up, watching them. He came up the steps and
looked at the shattered fuse pot and burnt slate; he expressed no
surprise, nor even anger; in those early days sparks and blinding
flashes were the daily fare of the electrical engineer, very much
more than they are now. Thompson picked up one or two of the pieces
of partially fused porcelain and examined them with interest, then he
glanced at Carstairs with a great wonder in his eyes, but he spoke to
Darwen.
That night, as they walked home together, Carstairs was more than
usually silent, and the remarks of Darwen were choppy and abrupt.
They ate their supper almost in silence, then they lit their pipes
and smoked, in easy chairs, one on each side of the fireplace. They
puffed in silence for some time, then Carstairs spoke.
"I'm going to start applying," he said.
"Why? You haven't been here three months yet!"
"No! Quite so! But I'm going to look out for a nice, quiet little
job in the country with two low tension machines, where the wheels
are very small, and fuses never blow."
"My dear chap, you'll get over that; the first one I saw go knocked
me all in a heap."
Carstairs appreciated Darwen's sympathetic lying, but it cut him more
than all. "Don't give me silly lies, for God's sake," he said,
letting his temper get the better of him. "I have found out that I
am a skunk with no nerve, not a ha'porth, so I drop behind, into my
place, the place of the cur. And the bottom is knocked out of my
universe." He puffed vigorously at his pipe, blowing great clouds of
smoke.
Darwen was silent, too, for some time, then he spoke slowly,
thoughtfully, punctuating his remarks by blowing softly at the
wreaths of smoke about him. "I must say (puff), honestly (puff), I
was never more surprised in my life (puff). You're such a
deliberate, cool sort of chap (puff). Thought earthquakes wouldn't
upset you."
"Damn it! I thought so too."
Darwen proceeded: "Surely must be something abnormal (puff). I mean
to say, a fuse going is startling, and all that--but (puff), damn it!
(puff) you haven't got over that shock, you know, that's what it is."
He sat upright with a sudden vigour and a light in his expressive
eyes. "That's it, man. You want to go slow for a bit. Dash it! two
thousand volts, that usually 'corpses' a chap, you know."
Carstairs brightened somewhat. "Yes," he said, "I'm convinced that's
it, too, but how long will it take to get over it? If ever?" He
stood up excitedly; it was obvious he was not himself even then. His
hand was unsteady as he held his pipe outwards, pointing with the
stem at Darwen. "That shock was devilish, Darwen. A nightmare.
Devilish. I could feel you chaps working at me, for hours it seemed
to me, working so damn slowly. And I wanted to tell you to get on,
to keep it up, to go faster, and I couldn't, couldn't budge, couldn't
get out a word. Did I sweat? You didn't notice if I sweated. Think
I must have. There was a sensation of something fluttering round me,
something like a damn great moth in the dark. I could hear it, and I
was frightened of the thing, frightened as hell. I wanted to put my
arm up to shield my eyes, to beat the thing off, to lash out in sheer
terror, and I couldn't budge. God! It was awful! I had no idea
terror was so really terrible. Wonder what the moth thing was?"
Darwen looked at him steadily with bright eyes, a world of sympathy
in them, sympathy and interest. "Your face was very drawn, I noticed
that. You looked terror-stricken."
"I was. And when that fuse went to-night, the bang and the flash and
roar brought it all back. I lost control of myself. I wanted to be
steady, but I couldn't, I shook like a leaf; you saw it, and Thompson
saw it. You'd hardly believe how angry I was, how I was cursing
myself." He broke off suddenly and shook his clenched fist in the
air. "Curse that blasted silly Smith and his blasted monkey tricks."
It was almost a scream.
"Sit down, old chap. You want a rest, that's what it is--shock to
the system and that sort of thing, you know. I'll go round with you
in the morning and see a doctor."
Carstairs sat down, he seemed almost himself again; calm, discerning,
calculating. "Can't do that! What am I to say? Sure to get old
Smith into a row. These bally doctors and councillors they're all
mixed up, you know, sure to get round."
"My dear chap, damn Smith! You have yourself to consider."
"He'd get the sack; it would wreck him. His people are not very well
off; he told me once that before he came here he was getting a quid a
week in London--and living on it."
Darwen spread out his hands with an almost continental gesture. "My
dear chap, you're following quite an erroneous line of reasoning,
it's rather a pet theory of mine, as an engineer. However, tell the
doctor you had an accident in the execution of your duty, etc., etc.
No need for it to get round at all. He'll forget all about you as
soon as you've paid him his fee."
Carstairs was thoughtful, he puffed his pipe in silence for some
minutes, then he stood up. "Alright, let's go to two while we're
about it, then we can check 'em one on the other. I'm going to bed."