Darius would not loose his belief in his floor. He hugged it in mute
fury. He would not climb on to the window sill, nor tell Big James to
do so, nor even Edwin. On the subject of the floor he was religious; he
was above the appeal of the intelligence. He had always held
passionately that the floor was immovable, and he always would. He had
finally convinced himself of its omnipotent strength by the long process
of assertion and reassertion. When a voice within him murmured that his
belief in the floor had no scientific basis, he strangled the voice. So
he remained, motionless, between the window and the machine.
No sound! No slightest sound! No tremor of the machine! But Darius's
breathing could be heard after a moment.
He guffawed sneeringly.
"And what next?" he defiantly asked, scowling. "What's amiss wi' ye
all?" He put his hands in his pockets. "Dun ye mean to tell me as--"
The younger apprentice entered from the engine-shed.
"Get back there!" rolled and thundered the voice of Big James. It was
the first word he had spoken, and he did not speak it in frantic,
hysteric command, but with a terrible and convincing mildness. The
phrase fell on the apprentice like a sandbag, and he vanished.
Darius said nothing. There was another cracking sound, louder, and
unmistakably beneath the bed of the machine. And at the same instant a
flake of grimy plaster detached itself from the opposite wall and
dropped into pale dust on the floor. And still Darius religiously did
not move, and Big James would not move. They might have been under a
spell. The journeyman jumped down incautiously into the yard.
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