Success
warn’t no more worth gettin’, with no by your leave and notifyin’ the
town surveyor or dustman or anybody else. You never know when you’re
over a pit some parts—till you’re in it, and not often then. I mean,
the chances are you won’t get in, if you’re on one; it’s just bad luck
if you do, and the damn settlin’ of the ground which happens now and
then, the Lord knows why, and no ’un can allow for.”
He gave the teapot a final shake as he explained these points of local
interest, and then announced that tea was ready.
It was very black indeed, almost as black as the teapot and saucepan,
and it was drunk with tinned milk and brown sugar, and the bread and
stringy ham was eaten with pocket-knives; there was nothing else. But
Michael did not notice, he was absorbed again in the work, and thinking
of that only. He had speedily forgotten the difficulties of the
council’s head engineer, the state of their chimney, and the opinions
of Billy on pits and by-laws; none of them had really interested him.
He was occupied solely with devising a means to enable Milligen’s
winding machines to wind long lengths of warp instead of short.
Through the slow-closing spring evening he gave himself up to the
problem. The patient Billy attending, puzzled and half fascinated
by this new phenomenon among masters and workmen; this courteous
person who always spoke politely, almost diffidently; who looked at
things doubtfully, as if he hardly understood them, and touched them
tentatively, as if he were afraid of breaking them. And, by some magic
unexplained, brought forth more ideas of worth and simple yet perfect
devices in these hours than all others had brought forth in all the
years of the little man’s experience. Darkness closed in, and the
neighbouring power station supplied light to the works and all the
town. No one, not even the two in the warp dyer’s, gave a thought to
the supply, or to the anxious engineer even now waiting, grim-faced,
for his manager.
Michael was standing by the largest winding machine, a big tank of blue
dye below and the warp threads, to be passed through it on Monday, in
great balls beside. From a more distant part of the building came the
sound of hammering on metal, Billy busy with some fitting of his own
contrivance or Michael’s. Nearer at hand there was only the regular
but muffled noise of the engines in the power station beyond the party
wall. Michael had just leaned across the corner of the dye-tank to
place, in imagination, some modification on the machine when there
was a terrific crash. A deafening noise, as if the whole structure
were coming about his ears, a shock that shook the building to its
foundations; then a roar as of a cascade of falling masonry, a very
chaos of sound, and then darkness. Dye sprang from the tanks and fell
again like rain, with bricks and dust and broken timbers; the air was
choked with refuse and vibrant with the noise of displaced machinery;
this for a minute, then the whole pandemonium was swallowed in one
tremendous roar.
“Boilers!” The thought leapt up in Michael’s mind, and he fled.
Through the darkness, stumbling among bricks and broken roofing,
avoiding by a miracle the still falling masonry; making by instinct,
more than knowledge, for the nearest way out and the power station.
There is a workman who still tells how a dyed man came to the power
station that night. Through choking dust and smoke and steam he came:
out of darkness, now beginning to be lit with fire-gleams, and chaos
and deafening turmoil. He came straight and swift, halting for nothing,
seeing nothing it seemed, speeding for the centre of the catastrophe as
others sped from it. He went past the bedazed man without even seeing
him, running at top speed to the dynamo-room.
There was a range of six dynamos down the centre of the building,
the switch-board at one end. Across that end, right across the
switch-board, cutting all connection and destroying all control, the
sagging chimney had fallen. Tons of brickwork lay there: under them,
somewhere under, buried in the ruin, was the head engineer and with
him the manager he had insisted on calling to council, neither the
one nor the other ever to give counsel again. Others may have been
buried in the overthrow; if so, they had never a chance, for, to add
to the general confusion, fire was breaking out at the spot. Michael
did not stop for that, he went by as a man who has one idea only. He
had one, to shut off steam from the dynamos. He knew that they must
be shut off; he knew it to the exclusion of everything else; it was
the one essential. Because it was, and because he knew it, and knew
it even when the first roar of the bursting boilers shook the air,
he took control. He saw no one to help him, he thought of no one, he
only thought of the dynamos and the one thing to be done. Swiftly he
seized the wheel by the first, screwing it down hard and shutting off
steam—then the next, and the next. It was not to be done in a moment:
done as quickly as might be, in an incredibly short time as time really
is, it was not possible to shut off all. The end ones were bound to
fuse before he was through with the others, even if their proximity to
the fire, now beginning to get a hold, had not by then prevented any
approach to them.
With the shutting off of the first dynamo the deafening sound of
escaping steam was added to the other confusion. By the time three were
done the uproar was such that nothing could have been heard above it;
when one would have the attention of another he must touch him. One
did touch Michael, a dazed workman, with blood running down his face.
Michael did not notice the blood, he merely saw an assistant. He gave
him an order, somehow conveyed it by dumb show or force of will. It was
to draw the fires.
The fires were drawn, and though it seemed impossible to add more smoke
and fume to the already nearly unbreathable air, it grew yet thicker in
consequence.
By this time the fire at the end of the building was the most pressing
danger: the last of the dynamos, probably by this time fused as well
as beyond reach, was left, and all attention given to getting the fire
under control. It was useless to think of the fire brigade, there
was no way left of communicating with them except by foot-messenger;
and even were a message got to them, they, but too surely, would be
more wanted elsewhere. There must be more fires than this in the town
by now, many fuses would have gone when the accident happened with
disastrous results somewhere; the sudden darkness, which had fallen
when the chimney fell, would by now be lit by as many fires as the
brigade could deal with. Michael had out the hydrants belonging to the
station and organised what men were at hand. By this time there were
more to obey orders; not the full night-shift: one or two had run for
their lives, one or two, no doubt, were killed, blown to pieces by the
bursting boilers, or crushed under masonry and wreckage. But enough
were left to carry out orders, and they carried them out, never asking
who it was that gave them.
Mr. William Heath, clerk of the council, did not ask either; it did
not occur to him at first, and afterwards it was too late. He was the
first person from outside who appeared on the scene. Those who at this
hour were near enough to have come sooner, had not. There were not
many of them, and they were not of the sort to come; they had made off
in the opposite direction as hard as they could, feeling, no doubt,
that the accident was no affair of theirs and the safety of their
lives, for which they had not unreasonable fears, was. But Mr. Heath
came. He came in a borrowed car when he realised that it was from the
power station had arisen the accident which had plunged the town in
darkness, stayed the trams in progress, held up cranes late loading by
the river, stopped alike the electric theatre and the doctors’ work,
turning the busy Saturday night town into a nightmare of arrested life.
It had taken time to realise this, such a reversal of all ordinary
experience arrests more than the actual physical thing it controls,
mental processes are arrested too. On the whole, Mr. Heath felt, he
recovered himself and recognised the seat of trouble in a creditably
short time. When he realised it, and when afterwards he perceived by
obvious demonstration, that it was a trouble which was not going to
immediately right itself, he set off for the power station. Someone in
authority should be there, he felt, and there at once.
Others were making for the station besides himself by this time, the
wives of those employed among them, for the news of the catastrophe
was abroad by now. Through these people, at rather reckless pace, the
borrowed car went, outdistancing them and reaching the scene first.
Mr. Heath meant well; indeed, he had done well; the council afterwards
congratulated him on the promptness, decision, and courage he had shown
in the emergency. That he did not take command when he arrived on the
scene was not his fault; he would have done so had it been possible;
he was, no doubt, prepared to do so. But there was another man already
there: a slight, youngish man, with nothing conspicuous or individual
about him, except, perhaps, a greater share of dirt and grime than
anyone else. Mr. Heath had no idea who he was; he had never seen him
before, and, as has been said, it did not occur to him to ask when he
first saw him giving orders and dealing with the situation. Afterwards
when it did occur to him it was too late.
It occurred when the man gave him orders. This he did when Mr. Heath
came in his way.
Mr. Heath, stumbling over pipes, and hydrants, and fallen brickwork,
much distressed for the woeful destruction of council property,
hastened here and there on the outskirts of the fire. He was shrill
with excitement: asking what was being done, who was doing it, and
where was the engineer, whom he held responsible. “What has become of
Brassey?” he demanded. “Why is he not here?”
“He’s dead,” one of the men answered briefly.
“—No, we haven’t got him out yet, but he’s dead sure enough, the
chimney’s on him.”
He shook himself free, Mr. Heath had grasped him by the arm to pour out
incoherent questions, and went on with his work.
“Dead!” Mr. Heath said, grasping his handkerchief and gazing about in
horror. “This is awful—awful!”
He made an effort and mastered himself. “Something must be done,” he
said energetically. “The work of rescue must be undertaken!”
He hurried to another point, and tripped over a hydrant, jerking it
from the grasp of the man who held it—to his own detriment and the
confusion of several.
“I must have volunteers!” he said authoritatively. “We must turn our
attention to saving life.” He took hold of the nearest man. “Where
are the fire brigade?” he asked. “They should be doing this, you are
wanted elsewhere. Why were they not called in? Why is this in the hands
of amateurs?” He chanced to turn to Michael himself now. “The council——”
“Do you represent the council? Go and see about having the road up.”
Mr. Heath stared.
“Have it up just outside here,” Michael said, unaware even of his
astonishment, “and waste no time about it. We must take up the electric
mains, and we can’t do it from inside; the pit where they are will be
full of water—even if it weren’t impossible to get at it for the fire.
We must get at them from the outside. Have the road up where they come
in. As quick as possible, please; I can’t spare any men to do it, but
there are plenty outside by this time, set them on it, and tell them to
work like the devil!”
Mr. Heath swallowed something; but he went. Afterwards he took some
pains to explain to himself and others how it happened in the confusion