Patience Wins: War in the Works

by George Manville Fenn

The walls were dripping and green, and they echoed and seemed to whisper back to the great wheel as it turned and splashed and swung down its long arms, each doubling itself on the wall by making a moving shadow.

The place had such a fascination for me that I stood with one hand upon the door and a foot inside looking down at the faintly seen black water, listening to the echoes, and then watching the wheel as it turned, one pale spot on the rim catching my eye especially. As I watched it I saw it go down into the darkness with a tremendous sweep, with a great deal of splashing and falling of water; then after being out of sight for a few moments it came into view again, was whirled round, and dashed down.

I don’t know how it was, but I felt myself thinking that suppose anyone fell into the horrible pit below me, he would swim round by the slimy walls trying to find a place to cling to, and finding none he would be swept round to the wheel, to which in his despair he would cling. Then he would be dragged out of the water, swung round, and—

“Do you hear, Cob?” cried Uncle Jack. “What is there to attract you, my lad? Come along.”

I seemed to be roused out of a dream, and starting back, the door was closed, and I followed the others as they went to the far end of the great ground-floor to a door opening upon a stone staircase.

We had to pass the men, who were standing about close to their grindstones, beside which were little piles of the articles they were grinding—common knives, sickles, and scythe blades, ugly weapons if the men rose against us as they seemed disposed to do.

They muttered and talked to themselves, but they did not seem inclined to make any farther attack; while as we reached the stairs I heard the harsh shrieking of blades that were being held upon the stones, and I knew that some men must have begun work.

The upper floor was of the same size as the lower, but divided into four rooms by partitions, and here too were shafts and wheels turning from their connection with the great water-wheel. Over that a small room had been built supported by an arch stretching from the works to a stone wall, and as we looked out of the narrow iron-barred window down upon the deep dam, Uncle Bob said laughingly:

“What a place for you, Cob! You could drop a line out of the window, and catch fish like fun.”

I laughed, and we all had a good look round before examining the side buildings, where there were forges and furnaces, and a tall chimney-shaft ran up quite a hundred feet.