So the transformation became accomplished and the millions of linen and cotton fibres scooped on to the mould ran into a thin mat or wad, which was a piece of paper. Why all these fragile and microscopic atoms should become so inter-twisted and mingled that they produce an integral fabric, it is difficult to understand; but this was the result of the former processes; and those to come would change the slab of wet, newly created stuff—now no more than a piece of soaked blotting-paper—to the perfected sheet.
His stroke accomplished and the sediment levelled on the mould, Kellock brought his mould to the “stay”—a brass-bound ledge on his left hand. He lifted the deckle from it as he did so and the full mould was drawn up the stay to the “asp,” where his coucher stood. Then Kellock clasped the deckle on to his second mould, now returned from the coucher, and dipped again, while his assistant, taking the full mould from the asp, turned it over on to the accumulating pile of sheets rising on his plank. Then he ran the empty mould back along the bridge to Kellock’s hand and drew to himself the next full mould now waiting for him on the stay.
So the process was endlessly repeated, and when the coucher’s pile of paper, with woollen welts between each new sheet, had grown large enough, it was removed, drawn away on a little trolley, which ran upon rails down the centre of the vat house, and taken to a press. Here the mass under a steady strain showed that the new sheets were still half water, for a fountain poured and spurted away on every side as the lever was turned.
From this initial pressing each pile came back to the place of its creation and the layer, the third worker in the trinity at each vat, separated the paper from the woollens between the sheets and handed the felts back to the coucher as he needed them for his own task. The three men worked together like a machine with rhythmic action and wonderful swiftness. Then came the interval; the din of the machinery ceased for a while and the vatmen washed their hands.
Each manual craft leaves its own marks, by which one skilled may tell a worker’s business, and the paper maker’s hands are deeply corned and calloused along the palms and joints. They are his stock in trade and he takes the utmost care of them, for a bleeding corn, or cut, or any wound instantly disables him and he cannot tend the vat until they are sound again.
At this moment Robert Life was out of action, with a sore on his thumb, and employed for the time at other labour; but he joined the men in the dinner hour and shared a discussion concerning the supreme disaster which may fall to the vatman’s lot.
“Did you ever lose your stroke?” asked Life of Mr. Knox. “I’ve heard of men that did—and never got it back no more.”
“May it never happen to you, Robert,” answered the elder, “for anything more dreadful and shattering you can’t imagine. Yes, I lost my stroke eight years ago; and I can remember every item of the tragedy as if it was yesterday.”
“Along of illness?” asked Life, “or your own fault?”
“As I’m among friends,” replied Philander, “I’ll confess that it was my own fault. I tell you these things as a warning to you younger men. It was whiskey. I’d go on the burst sometimes, though never what you’d call a drinker. But I held an opinion it was better to have a fair wallow in it now and again with teetotal intervals, than to be always drinking, you see; and once I overdid it and lost my stroke. I came to the vat and dipped, but the touch was gone. I tried and failed and washed off again and again; but I couldn’t make paper. They came round me and said hopeful things, and I stood like a stuck pig among ’em and the sweat poured down my face. Then I dropped the mould and sneaked away and felt as if the end of the world had come. For I knew bitter well that often and often the stroke once lost is never got back.”