In a minute or two the men were working like a great machine, the pails being dipped and running, or rather being swung, from hand to hand till they reached Uncle Dick, who dashed the water over the windows, and here and there, while the empty buckets ran back to Uncle Jack.
The men thoroughly enjoyed it, and Pannell shouted that this would be the way to put out a fire. But my uncles did not take up the idea, working steadily on, and shifting the line till the whole of the glazed windows had been sluiced, and a lot of the grit and rubbish washed away from the sills and places, after which the buckets were again slung in a row and the men had their beer, said “Good-night!” quite cheerily, and went away.
“There,” said Uncle Dick, “I call that business. How well the lads worked!”
“Yes,” said Uncle Jack with a sigh of content as he wiped his streaming brow; “we could not have got on with them like that three months ago.”
“No,” said Uncle Bob, who had been looking on with me, and keeping dry; “the medicine is working faster and faster; they are beginning to find us out.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Dick. “I think we may say it is peace now.”
“Don’t be in too great a hurry, my boys,” said Uncle Jack. “There is a good deal more to do yet.”
It is one of the terrible misfortunes of a town like Arrowfield that accidents among the work-people are so common. There was an excellent hospital there, and it was too often called into use by some horror or another.
It would be a terrible tale to tell of the mishaps that we heard of from week to week: men burned by hot twining rods; by the falling of masses of iron or steel that were being forged; by blows of hammers; and above all in the casting-shops, when glowing fluid metal was poured into some mould which had not been examined to see whether it was free from water.
Do you know what happens then? Some perhaps do not. The fluid metal runs into the mould, and in an instant the water is turned into steam, by whose mighty power the metal is sent flying like a shower, the mould rent to pieces, and all who are within range are horribly burned.