They separated to take reading; it was half-past nine in the evening; Carstairs stood looking at an ammeter which was set some way above his head. The divisions on the scale were small and indistinctly figured; Carstairs stood very close in, on tip-toe, straining his neck upwards; the high tension fuses were at the bottom of the board, about level with his knees (carefully calculated as the most awkward possible position), they were seven inches long and enclosed in porcelain pots, which invariably shattered when a fuse blew. As Carstairs stood there taking feeder reading, with what he afterwards learnt was unnecessary accuracy, the needle of the instrument he was looking at gave a sudden violent plunge, the fuse pot, almost touching his trousers, was shattered into a hundred pieces with a report like a miniature cannon, and a vivid arc blazed away under his eyes with a rattling, screaming roar. Carstairs jumped back in an instant, to the furthest limit that the width of the gallery would allow.
Darwen came along from the low tension switchboard; he was all eagerness, his eyes were bright. He stopped and looked at his new friend in amazement. Carstairs cowered against the handrail, gripping his scribbling block and pencil, palpitating, useless.
For two or three seconds Darwen gazed at him in astonishment. Then he fetched the long, insulated crook kept for that purpose, and himself pulled out the feeder switch.
"Bring down your volts, Carstairs," he said, in a kindly, soothing voice, avoiding his eyes.
With a deep, gasping sigh Carstairs pulled himself together, and with an unsteady hand adjusted the rheostat.
They looked down into the engine room and saw Thompson, the chief assistant, looking up, watching them. He came up the steps and looked at the shattered fuse pot and burnt slate; he expressed no surprise, nor even anger; in those early days sparks and blinding flashes were the daily fare of the electrical engineer, very much more than they are now. Thompson picked up one or two of the pieces of partially fused porcelain and examined them with interest, then he glanced at Carstairs with a great wonder in his eyes, but he spoke to Darwen.
That night, as they walked home together, Carstairs was more than usually silent, and the remarks of Darwen were choppy and abrupt. They ate their supper almost in silence, then they lit their pipes and smoked, in easy chairs, one on each side of the fireplace. They puffed in silence for some time, then Carstairs spoke.
"I'm going to start applying," he said.
"Why? You haven't been here three months yet!"
"No! Quite so! But I'm going to look out for a nice, quiet little job in the country with two low tension machines, where the wheels are very small, and fuses never blow."