Gwyn looked round, to see that the people were crowding about the shaft where the great pump was to be set in motion and where work-people were busy still trying to get it ready. Hammers were clinking, spanners and screw wrenches rattling on nuts, and the work in progress was being patiently watched, the engine-house and boilers being for the time unnoticed.
“Perhaps he’s here, after all,” said Gwyn at last, with a gasp. “Shall we go in?”
Joe hesitated while you might have counted ten, and he looked despairingly round, as if in the hope of seeing something that would check him and render the venture unnecessary, for there was the sound as of a thousand snakes hissing wildly, and to one unused to the behaviour of engine boilers all this seemed preliminary to a terrible explosion, with possible death for those who went inside.
“Yes, we must go in,” said the boy at last; and as Gwyn made one effort to summon his courage, and dashed through the door, he followed.
The noise was now almost deafening, and at a glance they saw that the steam was escaping furiously from the two long boilers at the end farthest from where they stood, but the new bright engine, with its cylinders, pistons, rods, cranks, driving-wheel, governor, and eccentric, seemed to be perfectly safe.
“He has been in and driven a pickaxe into each of the boilers,” cried Joe. “They’ll blow up together. Shall we run?”
The boy’s words were almost drowned by the fierce hissing, which was now mingled with a deep bass formed by a loud humming, throbbing sound such as might be made by a Brobdingnagian tea-kettle, just upon ready for use. Then came loud cracking and spitting sounds, and the dull roar of big fires.
But the man of whom they were in search was invisible, and Gwyn walked quickly round to the other side of the engine and looked sharply down that side of the long building.
Joe followed.
It was darker here, and the steam which filled the open roof, and was passing out of a louvre, hung lower, so that the far end was seen through a mist. “Not here,” said Gwyn. “Think we could stop the steam escaping?”