Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/226

 ‘Attention!’ he called out.

The brake left the cylinder with a click, the men cried: ‘Ready.’

The chief engineer set the lever in motion, the engine purred like a spindle, and broke into a roar like a waterfall, to finish the last ten thousand copies. Not until much later, when the paper stream was again rushing past, did Kuba dare to look at his knuckles. He had grazed the skin of all four of them. In the darkness and unspeakable excitement he had missed the handle and dashed his hand with his full strength against a piece of metal which had taken the skin off his knuckles and made his hand bleed. His over-wrought senses and unfettered imagination, combined with the rushing of the blood in his temples, had misled him into thinking that he had really set the engine in motion under cover of darkness.

The last few hundred copies had long been sent into the neighbouring office whence came the sound of thuds with which the stamps were affixed to the postal copies. Somebody was preparing a shakedown on which to spend the night till sunrise; the printing-press, covered with paper dust, and