“‘Then how are we to fasten our biler plates,’ says you, ‘if we don’t rivet ’em?’ How should I know? I ain’t a scientific man—I only stokes. That’s for you to find out. But you ain’t a-going to tell me, are you, that you scientific men and biler makers can’t find no other way to make bilers only by riveting them? Say you bends the plates’ edges over, and hooks one into the other like tin sarspan makers does their tin. They’d stand some strain that way, and you wouldn’t weaken your plates. I ain’t a biler maker or I should try that dodge, I think; but there, that’s only one way out of many as could be found by experiment.
“Seems to me, sir, as if we English people hates anything new, and always wants to keep to what our fathers and grandfathers had before us. They went along and made their footmarks, and we go along after ’em, putting our feet in just the same spots, thinking it must be right, come what will of it.
“Had to do with engines many years. Stoked locomotives and stationeries, agricultural and manufactories, and printing offices, and been down in the engine-rooms of steamers; and that last’s about the hottest and worst of all. Killing work, you know, for anybody, ’specially in a hot country, where every breath of air that comes down to you is already roasted, as it were, and don’t do you no good.
“Bustins? Well, no, only one, and that was quite enough; for though it didn’t hurt my body, it did hurt my heart, and if you happen to be a father you’ll understand what I mean.
“It was dinner-time at our works—a great place where the engine used to be going to pump water night and day, so that there was two of us; and one week I’d be on daywork, next week night work, and so on. Now it so happened that our water in that part was terribly hard—water that would cover the inside of a biler with thick fur in no time. But whether it was that or no, I can’t say; all I know is, that one dinner-time I went out into the yard to wash my hands and have a cooler, when I heard a strange, wild, rushing noise, and felt something hit me on the back of the head. Then turning round, I stood fixed to the spot, for the air was black with tiles, and bricks and laths and rafters, while the whole place seemed to be crumbling up together—just like as if you’d built up a tall card house, and then tapped it so that it fell, one card on top of another, till there was a little heap all lying close and snug; till out of a tall building there was nothing left but some smoking ruins.
“I knew it was not my fault; for I’d looked at the gauge just before, and the pressure of steam wasn’t heavy. I knew there was plenty of water in the biler and the safety valve was all right; so that all I could do was to be thankful for the accident happening at dinner-time, and also for my own wonderful escape. And then, though I wasn’t hurt, something seemed to come over me like a flash, and struck me to the ground in an instant.
“When I came to, I fell, horribly sick and deathly like, and looked about from face to face, wondering what was the matter; for I couldn’t make out why I should be lying on my back, with people round me in the yard—one holding up my head, and another sprinkling my face with water.
“Then it all came back at once, and I shuddered as I turned my head and looked at the ruined works; for I knew what it was struck me down to the earth. I said before it was like a flash, and it was—it was one quick thought which came across my brain, for I knew that, being dinner-time, my little golden-haired gal would have brought my ’lowance tied up in a basin; and something told me that she had gone into the stoke-hole to find me when I had gone into the yard.
“‘Let me get up,’ I says, and I ran towards the ruins and began tearing away at the heap of brick rubbish, while the crowd now gathered together, hearing that there was some one underneath, began tearing away at the rubbish like fury.
“By-and-by the police came, and some gentlemen, and something like order was got at, and the people worked well to get down to where the stoke-hole had been. I had said that there was someone there, but I couldn’t shape my month to say who it was; and some said it was one man, and some another; but whoever they named seemed to come directly, back from his dinner, or because he had heard the explosion. So, by-and-by, people began to look from one to another, and ask who it was.