Carstairs looked at the drawings and Darwen explained. They sat down together side by side on the bed; for half an hour longer they discussed technicalities, then Carstairs went out. He noticed two photographs on the mantelpiece as he passed, both of girls, both pretty. He noticed also that both of them were autographed across the corner. One of them he thought had "with love" written on it too. "Shouldn't have thought Darwen was the sort of ass to get engaged," he said to himself as he went into his own room and glanced round at the landlady's wishy-washy prints and cheap ornaments.
At the works Carstairs and Darwen were always on together, with Smith as charge engineer. On the night shift (that is, from midnight to eight in the morning), Smith spent most of his time in the drawing office reading novels or newspapers, and sleeping; he took periodical walks round to see that the others were awake, then he went back into the drawing office and reclined peacefully in a chair, his head thrown back against the wall (cushioned by a folded coat), and his feet supported by a small box. During the first two or three hours the two juniors spent their time tracing out connections behind the switchboard, making diagrams, and clambering about on the tops of engines or boilers; later on, they too, usually dozed off, sprawling over the switchboard desk, or stretched out on the floor somewhere out of sight. After about two o'clock a.m. the whole works, in fact, became a sort of temporary palace of sleep; the stoker dozed on his box in the boiler house, the engine driver made himself snug on the bed plate of an engine, the fires in the boilers died gradually down from a fierce white to a dull red glow, the steam pressure gauge dropped back twenty or thirty pounds, the engines hummed away merrily, with a rather soothing sort of buzz from the alternator, and a mild sort of grinding noise from the direct current dynamos, with a little intermittent sparking at the brushes. On the switchboard, the needles of all the instruments remained steady, the pressure showing perhaps a little drop. At irregular intervals the driver would get up and slowly oil round his engines, feeling the bearings at the same time; the stoker would arise and throw a few shovelfuls of coal on his fires, glance up at his water gauges and regulate the feed water, perhaps putting the pump on a little faster, or stopping it off a bit; a switchboard attendant would open one eye and glance sleepily at the big voltmeter swung on an arm at the end of the switchboard, note that the pressure was only a little way back, and close his eyes again in quiet unconcern.
One night Smith had been drinking a lot of strong tea and couldn't sleep; he strolled round at an unaccustomed hour and surveyed the sleeping beauties with a little smile of glee, for Smith was twenty-three years old, and to the healthy young man at that age many things appear humorous which a few years later take on a hue of tragedy.
Going through the boiler house, he carefully examined the steam and water gauges. Then he stood for some moments gazing interestedly at the recumbent stoker; he was rather a ferocious-looking man in ordinary wakeful moments, but thus, with his big jaw dropped to its full extent, his eyes closed, and every feature relaxed, he seemed singularly feeble. Smith took a shovel and threw it with a clatter down on the iron checker plates.
It was quite an appreciable number of seconds before the man moved, then he sprang bolt upright, with his eyes wide open, both arms extended above his head, and every expression of alarm on his countenance; he saw Smith standing there smiling, but it was some moments before his face resumed its normal expression; he looked at the shovel on the iron plates. "Did you drop that, sir?" he asked.
"Yes," Smith answered.
"I must a' dropped off," the man said, half apologetically, half humorously.
"I think you must have," Smith agreed, smiling broadly.
A joke loses more than half its zest if there's no one to share it with. "I'll have those chaps in the engine room now. Come in and see," Smith said, as he led the way to the engine room door. The heavy stoker followed; he was a man over forty, but he grinned like a boy of twelve.
"Half a minute," the engineer said, in a whisper. Leaving the expectant stoker at the door, he carefully surveyed the engine room and switchboard, then he returned with an oil bucket in his hand. "Shut the door, and when I switch the lights out, rattle that like blazes." He handed over the bucket and crossed the engine room again to the station-lighting switchboard, picking up two more buckets as he went. Then he switched off the main switch, putting the place in inky darkness; instantly the stoker rattled his bucket with great vigour. Smith bowled one of his along the iron checker plates on top of the pipe trench, and rattled the other vigorously in his hands.