“I couldn’t put up with him, and that’s the square truth,” Charlesworth frankly acknowledged. “If he’d come to me and said, ‘I was knocked silly, and I’ve lost a couple of weeks; I know I’d no business to be where I was, and I deserved all I got, but can you do anything for me?’—then I don’t say but what I might have turned to and helped him out; that’s talking. But when he swaggers up and says, ‘Show us the colour of your money and be hanged to you, else I’ll make you,’ why, then I tell him that he’s at liberty to go to Hades if he likes, but not a red cent shall he get from me. I don’t know whether that’s your way of doing business, sir, but I guess it’s mine.”
“My dear fellow, I’d not have you back down, don’t think it! I’ve a preference myself for fighting things out. When was this?”
Farquhar’s words were exemplary, but his face was less discreet; it was manifest that he did prefer to fight things out, and Charlesworth, who laid no claim to the Christian grace of meekness, hailed a spirit akin.
“This evening, after pay-time. I came right round to you.”
“What’s the next move to be?”
“Well,” said Charlesworth, deliberately: “I guess it’s me they’ve got a down on now; but when the time comes they won’t stop to sort us out. They’re pretty sick about your newfangled machinery for one thing, and then there’s the business about the Britishers: taking one thing with another, and this compensation racket on the top, you may bet they’re sure-enough mad. And I’ve no use for a funeral at present. So before we go any further, sir, I’d ask you to come round to the works; for there’s a job there I’d like you to see.”
He would not explain any further, and the trio walked on past the gold-litten windows of the hotel towards the quarry. All was silent there and dark save for the signal-lamp of the watchman, sparkling on the brow of the pit among the constellations high in the dark sky, like a topaz among diamonds. Picking their way among the truck lines, which converged like so many silver cords from all directions towards the mouth of the quarry, they came up to the splendid block of granite marked out by Charlesworth for their first serious essay in carving. Its rich, even colour and fine-grained texture made it very valuable. A pillar hewn from it, overrun by curly-tailed dragons and roses of strange design, was assigned to stand in a temple of the Flowery Land. Another part was to misrepresent the king in the market-place of a country town; and they had accepted other orders as well, for the whole mass weighed some thousands of tons. Upon the fulfilment of these conditions the future of the quarry depended. For three weeks past they had been hard at work loosening the granite from its bed and getting it free from the other blocks which wedged it in: an operation involving nice calculation and accurate obedience. Under Charlesworth’s directions, shot-holes three feet deep and six inches apart were bored along the line of cleavage, cleaned out, charged with a cartridge, and filled up or tamped with clay. With each cartridge a length of slow fuse was connected, the different strands being gathered together in a metal case called the igniter, so that the cartridges could be fired simultaneously. Some use electricity to explode the charge, Charlesworth did not. The operator, generally himself, had to betake himself nimbly out of the way while the fuse burned on at three feet per minute till it came to the cartridge and finished its work. Already several small blasts had taken place, preparatory to the large final explosion which was to dissever the whole block from its bed.
“I guess that’s what they’ve got their eye on,” said Charlesworth, coming to a stand in front of the cliff.
Farquhar thrust his hands into his pockets and said nothing.
“Dmitri Dmitriyevitch vows to be avenged of his enemies,” suggested Lucian at his ear.