Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II

Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Thomas
Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
… metus ille … Acheruntis … Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo
In two volumes
Vol. II.
Look out there! For God's sake, go to your places!
The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell apart—each peering into the crowd and the tumult.
Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them—waving his arm and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen—they saw the man who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just uncovered, blazed deserted on their truck close to him, and a multitude of men and boys were pushing past them, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to reach the neighbourhood of the furnace. The space between the ingots and some machinery near them was perilously narrow. At any moment, those rushing past might have been pushed against the death-bearing truck. Ah! another cry. A man's coat-sleeve has caught fire. He is pulled back—another coat is flung about him—the line of white faces turns towards him an instant—wavers—then the crowd flows on as before.
Another man in authority comes up also shouting. The man on the block dismounts, and the two hold rapid colloquy. Have they sent for Mr. Martin? Aye. Where's Mr. Barlow? He's no good! Have they stopped the mills? Aye—there's not a man'll touch a thing—you'd think they'd gone clean out of their minds. There'll be accidents all over the place if somebody can't quiet 'em.
Suddenly the buzzing groups behind the foreman parted, and a young broad-shouldered workman, grimed from head to foot, his blue eyes rolling in his black face, came staggering through.
Gie ma a drink, he said, clutching at the old woman; an let ma sit down!
He almost fell upon an iron barrow that lay face downwards on the path. Laura, sitting crouched and sick upon the ground, raised her head to look at him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug of cold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helped him drink it.