Kit got to work and the revolving grindstone bit the steel. Bill set the blower going and its rhythmic throb shook the iron walls. Blue flames danced about the forge, and the iron bedded in the coal began to shine. Bill, leaning down, turned the glowing lump and the reflections touched his face. The lines were deep and Kit remarked the white hair on his knitted brows. His large mouth was firm and his look was grim. In the background smoke and dust floated about.
Bill pulled the iron from the fire and the gloom was banished. The heavy hammer crashed and dazzling sparks leaped up. To steady the lump and use the hammer was awkward, but Kit stayed at the grindstone. Bill was not the man to whom one rashly offered help.
After a time he gave Kit a bar, marked by a punch where holes must be made, and Kit clamped the iron on the machine-drill table. The wrench he used was worn and slipped on the nuts, and Bill gave him a sliding-jaw spanner.
“When you’re through, put her in the box,” he said.
Kit saw the spanner was a well-made, accurate tool. At the back of the jaw he noted two small holes, and he smiled.
“To know your tools is useful,” he remarked.
“Sure,” said Bill. “Anyhow, the spanner’s a daisy, and I don’t want her left about. When the slobs at the bridge drop their truck overboard they come for mine.”
Kit drilled the holes and thought Bill was satisfied. In the afternoon the forge was hot, but all he did interested him and he had sweated by shipyard fires. For two or three days nothing disturbed him; and then a man from the bridge arrived one morning and threw down some tools.
“You’ll grind them before you stop,” he said, and put a bar on the anvil. “Eye’s broke. We want her welded up. I’ll wait.”
“That’s so,” said Bill dryly and resumed his hammering.