Chapter Eleven.
My Scalded Patient.
“Thanky doctor. Eh? feel faint? not a bit. Why bless your heart, I could bear twice as much without winking. Scalding ain’t nice, though.”
My patient, a frank, open-faced fellow, smiled as if he liked it all the same.
“There’s something wrong with your boiler work, my man,” I said, “or we should not have so many explosions. How is it?”
“Can’t say, I’m sure, sir. Been used to bilers all my life; but working ’em’s different to making ’em. There’s something wrong, as you say, or they wouldn’t always be a-bustin’. ’Tain’t once, nor twice, nor now and then, for it’s a thing as is always a-happening; and though I’ve never had more than a scald or two myself, I’ve seen some strange sights; men all blown to pieces, so that they were picked up afterwards in baskets; men taken to the hospital with their flesh bulging to them in rags, and there they’d lie writhing and tearing at the wrappings in such agony, that—there, I ain’t above owning it—I’ve cried like a child to see my poor mates’ sufferings. And there they’d be day after day, till a sort of calm came over them and the pain went, when they’d quite smile if you spoke to ’em, they seemed so easy; and it would be because a gentle hand was laid upon ’em, and they were going into the long sleep.
“Some gets better, but not when they’re scalded badly; for it’s strange stuff, is steam. Well, no; I’m not afraid, and never do feel afraid. What’s the good? One’s got it to do, and there’s the mouths at home to feed, so one can’t afford it; and then the odds are precious long ones against it’s being one’s own bustin’. But now so many more steam engines are coming into use, day by day, it seems as if something ought to be done in the way of making bilers stronger. Cheapness is cheapness; but then a thing’s dear at any price that makes such ruin as I’ve seen sometimes; so why don’t they try some tougher metal than iron?—though certainly steam’s strong enough to tear up anything. But there seems to me to be some fresh plan wanted for making bilers. I didn’t work there, but I went and had a look d’reckly after that horrible accident at the Big Works last autumn. Well, there was about an acre of buildings—sheds and setrer—swept away as if you’d battered ’em all down: great fire bricks weighing a hundred and a half, pitched here and there like chaff; sheets of lead sent flying a hundred yards; tall chimneys powdered down; and the big busted biler itself jumped right out of its place; while as to the middle of it, that was torn off and crumpled up, and blown like a sheet of paper, to a distance. Plenty of life lost there, and plenty of escapes; but what I took most notice of was the plates torn off the biler—torn off as I said before, like so much paper; while these sheets or plates of iron, had given way at the rivets, and looked for all the world like postage stamps—torn off, of coarse, along the perforating.
“‘Now then,’ I says to myself, ‘that’s a thing as wants altering. You perforate the edges of your plates to admit rivets, and so takes half their strength off—p’r’aps more; then you puts, perhaps, hot rivets in, and they p’r’aps crystallises the iron’—only p’r’aps, mind, I don’t say so, only the raw edges of the biler looked crystally and brittle. ‘Well, then, some day comes a hextry pressure o’ steam, and up goes your biler—busted, and spreading ruin and death and misery around.’