Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/223

 cat-like along narrow steel ledges, mounting steep metal ladders guarded by hot hand rails, peering into oil boxes, "worrying" the vacuum pump, squatting and kneeling about iron floors where oil-pits pooled and pump-valves clacked and electric machines whirred and the antiphonal song of the mounting steam roared like music in the ears of the listening Blake, aching as he was for the first relieving throb of the screws. Stolidly and calmly the men about him worked, threatened by flailing steel, hissed at by venomously quiescent powers, beleaguered by mysteriously moving shafts, surrounded by countless valves and an inexplicable tangle of pipes, hemmed in by an incomprehensible labyrinth of copper wires, menaced by the very shimmering joints and rods over which they could run such carelessly affectionate fingers.

Blake could see the assistant engineers, with their eyes on the pointers that stood out against two white dials. He could see the Chief, the Chief whom he would so soon have to buy over and placate, moving about nervous