Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/469

 ets, in another heavy Government shells. The composition with which the firework is charged is first mixed in one shed, and brought along in a barrel carefully covered up.

The workers sit before three small receptacles containing the different coloured compositions needed. One man has a small block, on which is placed the case to be filled. He rams the composition into a case with a heavy wooden rod, and then gives it a strong tap with a box-wood mallet to make the ingredients tight. It is then placed on one side ready to have the finishing touch put to it.

The services of young girls are mostly called into requisition for the making of crackers and Catherine wheels. In the trade the manufacture of a cracker is considered the most simple of any class of fireworks. Little paper cylinders about the same size as the stem of a tobacco pipe are filled with fine-grain gunpowder, which is then run through a press. A girl then bends the flattened paper cylinder in a zigzag fashion, it is passed on to another worker who ties it together, and finally a little piece of blue paper is placed on the tip, and the cracker is completed.

Here they are making the halfpenny Catherine wheels. This, too, is a very simple process. The paper is taken in hand, in the top of which is placed a funnel. The composition is poured in, and, as fast as they are filled, away they go to another shed to be wound round a wooden disc and fastened by sealing-wax. A blue paper band pasted round the article brings about its completion.

The manufacture of a Roman candle is, perhaps, a trifle more elaborate. Those glorious coloured stars which suddenly burst out upon us are little square pieces of composition. When a worker has taken a Roman candle case in hand he first puts a layer of powder in, then a coloured ball, or rather, square, followed by a fuse for slow burning until another layer of powder comes, and another ball, and so on to the end. The requisite amount of powder needed to throw these balls many feet into the air is infinitesimally small—just a tiny