The next morning the smoke rolled up once more from the furnace chimney. The great wheel turned and plashed as it shed showers of silver from its broad paddles and spokes; blackened men bore baskets of soft dogwood charcoal to be ground, and others shovelled up the pale yellow sulphur and the crystals of potash for mixing into powder once again. Two heavy tumbrils jolted and blundered down the cinder-made lane to fetch great loads of ironstone from the pits in the woods whence it was dug, and then fierce furnaces were charged with layers of ore and charcoal ready for smelting, while the horses tugged at their loads in answer to the uncouth cries of the men. It was as if the people of Roehurst had awakened from sleep, and all were rejoicing in the gladsome feeling of being once more at work after their enforced idleness, the change acting like a spur. There was shouting over the various works, and now and then some one burst forth into a song, some doleful love-ditty about a sweet young maiden, sung in a minor key.
Tom Croftly was in his element once more, and after seeing the furnaces started and the men preparing the next batch of powder, he anxiously set his colliers to work to get him more coal.
It was no sending down a set of blackened miners with their Davy lamps crowding a cage that dropped slowly into the gas and choke-damp charged bowels of the earth, but the superintending of couples of men who attacked some cords of wood—long, low stackings of the loppings of the trees cut down the previous winter—and, clearing out a circular space, throwing out the earth all round, they set up a pole in the centre. Then picking the branches that were some four feet long, they carefully began to build them round the centre pole, standing all on end, and going on round and round till a low circular stack was built, when the stout central pole was taken away, the space it occupied being filled with light brushwood, which was then set alight ready to communicate with the wood around, while the air running in through spaces left at the sides soon made a swift fire. This, however, was not allowed to burn fiercely, for old charcoal powder mixed with dry earth lay ready, and, after the stack had been covered with a litter of weeds, dry grass, and thin twigs from the fallen trees sufficient to keep it from falling through, the earth was shovelled on all over the stack wherever there was a sign of flame or thin smoke breaking forth, till at last the flames were stifled and the thick smoke rose only from the centre.
“More loam on,” cried Tom Croftly, who, spade in hand, danced excitedly round the charcoal pile like a grim black demon busy over some fiery task, and the men worked and watched, smothering the flames with more earth and water till not a gleam was seen, though all the while the fire was glowing fiercely and burning out the watery gases of the wood.
And this went on night and day, the colliers having a shelter rigged up to keep off the night-air when they needed rest, this being called turn and turn, for, should there be no one ready to throw on shovels-full of loam when the fire began to work a way through, the burning would be spoiled.
But there were no burnings spoiled with Tom Croftly, who, had the men been disposed to fail, would have been there to catch them lapsing and take the shovel in hand himself. So the charcoal burned its time, glowing slowly in the well-closed heat till by gentle testing here and there it was declared to be quite fit, when the earth was cleared away, water used liberally for quenching, and the erst flaming heap allowed to cool, the effect being that the branches of rough wood were turned into black clinking metallic-sounding charcoal, hard and brittle to the touch, and ready to fuse the ironstone or turn into potent powder in the mill.
Then by slow degrees the traces of the explosion were softened down, and a new bridge took the place of that which had been swept away. A fresh fence, too, was made of riven oak, and surrounded the ruined garden, so that Master Peasegood had hopes that the founder had re-considered his words.
But he had not. The fence was there to protect the ruins from the feet of straying cattle. It was not needed to keep off the people of the little place, for they gazed upon it with awe, and whispered that it was haunted by the dead. And, when Master Peasegood asked thereof, the founder said his words stood firm. But this was when weeks had glided by, and Gil Carr’s ship was tossing far away upon the sea.