Carstairs went away, leaving the engine room empty.
There were three or four men on the scaffold, all working with their faces to the wall, only one man was out further than the rest. Darwen walked along the planking, balancing easily and gracefully; the men bustled ahead with their work as they saw him coming. He stopped at the man who was furthest out, the man who had dropped the bar.
"My friend," Darwen asked, quietly, "have you anything to say?"
The man looked up with a piteous appeal. He was a sickly white and as sober as a judge, he trembled in every limb.
Darwen watched him in silence for some minutes as his quivering lips moved inarticulately. He was a tough-looking citizen with a low, unintelligent forehead, and strong, brutal jaw; his imagination was so dull that cruelty had to be brought very near home before his sluggish mind began to move. A sort of instinct, apparently, seemed to warn him that he was in danger; he seemed fascinated by Darwen's eyes, he gazed hopelessly and fixedly into them. He made a movement to edge away.
Darwen was gripping a tie rod over his head and standing very close to the man, who was sitting on the plank. He glanced round, no one was looking. "Fortune favours the bold," he said. Next minute his foot shot out, and the man was off the plank.
"Oh, Christ!" he screamed, as he fell through the air.
Darwen shouted for help and clung to his tie rod with both hands. "That man's killed," he said. "He was drunk. He'd got no business to be on a scaffolding in that condition. Where's the foreman?"
They went below. A little crowd gathered and looked at the man; he was quite still, his head had struck the iron bar and his brains were scattered over the new concrete engine bed.
Carstairs stood by in solemn silence, looking at the thing which had been a man. "That's the chap that dropped the bar, isn't it?" he asked, at length.