Tales of the Ridings

by F. W. Moorman

The power of fear has of late been forcibly impressed on my mind by hearing from his own lips the story of my friend, Job Hesketh. Six months ago I should have said that Job was entirely unconscious of fear. I have never known a man so good-humouredly indifferent to public opinion. "Say what thou thinks and do what thou says" was the golden rule upon which he acted, and which he commended to others. Superstition, in its myriad forms, was for him a lifelong jest. Thirteen people at table had never been known to take the keen edge off his Yorkshire appetite, and he liked to make fun of his friends' dread of ghosts, witches and "gabbleratchets." Nothing pleased him better than to stroll of an evening round the nearest cemetery, and he had often been heard to declare: "I'd as sooin eat my supper off a tombstone as off wer kitchen table."

He faced danger with reckless unconcern every day of his life. He was employed as a "vessel-man" at the Leeds Steel Works, working on a twelve-hours' shift, and his duty was to attend to the huge "vessels" or crucibles in which the molten pig-iron is converted by the Bessemer process into steel. The operation is one of enthralling interest and beauty, and Job Hesketh's soul was in his work. The molten iron from the blast furnaces flows along its channel into huge "ladles" or cauldrons, and from there it is conveyed into a still larger reservoir or "mixer," where the greater part of the slag—which floats as a scum on the surface—is drawn off. Then the purified metal passes into other cauldrons, which are borne along by hydraulic machinery and their contents gently tipped into the crucibles, which lower their gaping mouths to receive the daffodil stream of molten iron. When their maws are full, the crucibles are once more brought into an erect position, and the process of converting iron into steel begins. A blast of air is driven through the liquid metal, and the "vessels" are at once changed into fountains of fire. A gigantic spray of flame and sparks rises from their gaping mouths and ascends to a height of twenty feet, changing its colour from green to gold and from gold to violet and blue as the impure gases of sulphur and phosphorus are purged by the blast. For twenty minutes this continues, and then the roar of the blast and the fiery spray die down. What entered the crucible as iron is now ready to be poured forth as steel. Once more the "vessels" are lowered and made to discharge their contents. First comes a molten cascade of basic slag which is borne away to cool, then to be ground to finest powder, before its quickening power is given to pasture and cornfield, imparting a deeper purple to the clover and a mellower gold to the rippling ears of wheat. When all the slag has been drawn off, there is a moment's pause, and then a new cascade begins. The steel is beginning to flow, not in a daffodil stream like the slag, but in a cascade of exquisite turquoise blue, melting away at the sides into iridescent opal. Sometimes a great cloud of steam from the pit below passes across the mouth of the crucible, and then the torrent of molten steel takes on all the colours of the rainbow, and the great shed, with its alert, swiftly moving figures, is suffused with a radiance of unearthly beauty.

When the vessels have discharged all their precious liquid, the cauldron into which the metal has been poured is swung in mid-air by that unseen, effortless power which we know as hydraulic pressure, through the arc of a wide circle, until it reaches the point where the great ingot-moulds stand ready to receive the molten steel. Then the cauldron is tapped, and once more the stream of turquoise flows forth, until the ladle is empty and the moulds are filled to the brim with liquid fire. Such was the work in which Job Hesketh was engaged, and it absorbed him body and soul from year's end to year's end.

Job was a giant in stature and strength. Born on a farm in the very heart of the Yorkshire wolds, he had drifted, as a boy of sixteen, to Leeds, and had found the life and activities of the forge as congenial as those of the farmstead. He had reached the age of fifty without knowing a day's illness, and he would have been the first to admit that fortune had smiled on him. His home life had been smooth, his wages had been sufficient for his simple needs, and the good health that he enjoyed was shared by his wife and five children. It is true that, in spite of his long years of service, he had never risen to be a foreman; but that, he knew quite well, was his own fault. During the summer months his conduct at the forge was exemplary, but as soon as November set in it was another matter. Fox-hunting was the passion of his life, and with the fall of the leaf in the last days of October, Job grew restless. He would eagerly scan the papers for news of the doings of the Bramham Moor Hunt, and from the opening of the season to its close he would play truant on at least one day a week. He knew every cover for leagues around, and thought nothing of tramping six or eight miles to be ready for the meet before following the hounds and huntsman all day on foot across the stubble fields. In vain did foremen and works-managers remonstrate with him; he promised to reform, but never kept his word. The blood of many generations of wold farmers ran in his veins, and everyone of them had been a keen sportsman. The cry of the hounds rang in his dreams of a night, and when Mary Hesketh, lying by her husband's side, heard him muttering in his sleep: "Tally-ho! Hark to Rover! Stown away!" she knew that, when the hooter sounded at half-past five, it would summon him, not to work, but to a day with the hounds. He would return home between four and five, mud-stained from head to foot, triumphant at heart, but with an amusingly cowed expression on his face, as of a dog that expects a whipping.

The only whipping that Mary Hesketh could administer to her repentant Job was that of the tongue. In her early matrimonial life she had wielded this like a flail, and Job had winced before the blows which she delivered. But in course of time she had come to realise that her husband's passion for the chase was incurable, and, like a wise woman, she accepted it as part of her destiny. "Thou's bin laikin' agean, thou gert good-for-nowt," was her usual greeting for Job on these occasions.

"Ay, ay, lass," he would reply; "I've addled nowt all t' day. But thou promised, when we wed, to tak me for better or worse; an' if t' worse wasn't t' hounds, it would happen be hosses or drink. Sithee, Mally, I've browt thee a two-three snowdrops; thou can wear 'em o' Sunday."

Such was the Job Hesketh that I had known and loved for many years, and I saw no reason why his genial temper and buoyant heart should not remain with him to the end of his life. Yet within six months the man changed completely. He grew suddenly old and shrunken; the great blithe laugh that pealed through the house was silenced, the look of suave contentment with himself and with the world about him vanished from his face, and in its place I saw a nervous, troubled glance as of one who suspects a lurking foe ready to spring at his throat. The change which came over Job was like that which sometimes comes over a city sky in autumn. The morning breaks fair, and the sun rises from out a cloudless, frosty sky, promising a day of sunshine. But then, with the lighting of a hundred thousand fires, a change takes place. The smoke cannot escape in the windless air, but hangs like a pall over the houses. The sun grows chill, coppery and rayless, and soon a fog, creeping along the river, silently encloses each particle of smoke within a watery shroud, and a mantle of murky gloom invests the city.

What was it that wrought this sudden change in the mind of Job Hesketh? The story is soon told. For a long time there had been no serious accident at the Leeds Steel Works, and the workmen, almost without being aware of it, had grown somewhat reckless of the dangers which they had to face. They knew quite well that in many of the operations which the metal undergoes in its passage from crude ore to ingots of steel, a false step meant instant death. But they had known this so long that the knowledge had lost its terrors.

There are many moments of enforced idleness for the vesselmen as they stand on their raised platform in front of the crucibles; but, even during these moments of inactivity, alertness of mind is required. One morning their minds were not alert, and one of the workmen, Abe Verity by name, seated on the railing which separates the platform from the pit in which stand the ingot-moulds, had snatched the cap from the head of one of his fellows. The latter, in response to this, had raised his crowbar, as if he meant to strike Abe on the head, and Abe, lurching backward on the railing in order to avoid the blow, had lost his balance and fallen backwards. Under ordinary circumstances this would have meant nothing worse than a drop into the pit below, but, as ill-luck would have it, one of the cauldrons of molten steel was being swung along the arc of the pit by a hydraulic crane, and, at the very moment when Abe lost his balance, it had reached the point beneath which he was sitting. There was an agonised cry from the vesselmen on their platform, a hissing splash with great gouts of liquid fire flying in all directions, a sickening smell, and then, a few minutes later, a clergyman, hastily summoned from the adjoining church, was reciting the burial service over the calcined body of Abe Verity.

Blank terror gleamed in the eyes of the men who had been witnesses of this grim holocaust. All work was suspended for the day, and Job Hesketh was led home, dazed and trembling in every joint, by his two eldest sons, who worked in another part of the forge. Huddled together in his chair by the kitchen fire, perspiration streamed from his face. He was in a state bordering on delirium, and the answers which he gave to the questions put to him were wildly incoherent.