Patience Wins Part 23

"Why, what brings you two here?" cried Uncle d.i.c.k. "What's the matter?"

"That's what we want to know. How long has the dog been uneasy?"

"For the past hour. I had gone to lie down; Bob was watchman. All at once Piter began barking furiously, and I got up directly."

"Let's have another look round," said Uncle Jack.

"Here, Piter!" I cried; "what's the matter, old fellow?"

The dog whined and laid his great jowl in my hand, blinking up at me and trying to make his savage grin seem to be a pleasant smile; but all at once he started away, threw up his head, and barked again angrily.

"What is it, old fellow?" I said. "Here, show us them. What is it?"

Piter looked at me, whined, and then barked again angrily as if there was something very wrong indeed; but he could only smell it in the air.

What it was or where it was he did not seem to know.

We had a good look round, searching everywhere, and not without a great deal of trepidation; for after the past night's experience with the powder it was impossible to help feeling nervous.

That's what Uncle Jack called it. I felt in a regular fright.

"Everything seems quite satisfactory," Uncle Jack was fain to say at last. And then, "Look here, boys," he cried, "Cob and I have been talking this matter over, and we say that the works must take care of themselves. You two have to come back with us."

"What! And leave the place to its fate?" said Uncle d.i.c.k.

"Yes. Better do that than any mishap should come to you."

"What do you say, Bob?"

"I've a very great objection to being blown up, knocked on the head, or burned," said Uncle Bob quietly. "It's just so with a soldier; he does not want to be shot, bayoneted, or sabred, but he has to take his chance. I'm going to take mine."

"So am I," said Uncle d.i.c.k.

"But, my dear boys--"

"There, it's of no use; is it, Bob?" cried Uncle d.i.c.k. "If we give way he'll always be bouncing over us about how he kept watch and we daren't."

"Nonsense!" cried Uncle Jack.

"Well, if you didn't," said Uncle Bob, "that c.o.c.ky consequential small man of a boy, Cob, will be always going about with his nose in the air and sneering. I shall stay."

"Then we will stay with you."

My uncles opposed this plan, but Uncle Jack declared that he could not sleep if he went back; so the others gave in and we stayed, taking two hours turns, and the night pa.s.sed slowly by.

Every now and then Piter had an uneasy fit, bursting out into a tremendous series of barks and howls, but there seemed to be no reason for the outcry.

He was worst during the watch kept by Uncle Jack and me after we had had a good sleep, and there was something very pathetic in the way the poor dog looked at us, as much as to say, "I wish I could speak and put you on your guard."

But the night pa.s.sed without any trouble; the men came in to their work, and with the darkness the fear seemed to have pa.s.sed away. For there in the warm suns.h.i.+ne the water of the dam was dancing and sparkling, the great wheel went round, and inside the works the grindstones were whizzing and the steel being ground was screeching. Bellows puffed, and fires roared, and there was the _clink clank_ of hammers sounding musically upon the anvils, as the men forged blades out of the improved steel my uncles were trying to perfect.

Business was increasing, and matters went so smoothly during the next fortnight that our troubles seemed to be at an end. In one week six fresh men were engaged, and after the sluggish times in London, where for a couple of years past business had been gradually dying off, everything seemed to be most encouraging.

Some of the men engaged were queer characters. One was a great swarthy giant with hardly any face visible for black hair, and to look at he seemed fit for a bandit, but to talk to he was one of the most gentle and amiable of men. He was a smith, and when he was at the anvil he used almost to startle me, he handled a heavy hammer so violently.

I often stood at the door watching him seize a piece of steel with the tongs, whisk it out of the forge with a flourish that sent the white-hot scintillations flying through the place, bang it down on the anvil, and then beat it savagely into the required shape.

Then he would thrust it into the fire again, begin blowing the bellows with one hand and stroke a kitten that he kept at the works with his unoccupied hand, talking to it all the time in a little squeaking voice like a boy's.

He was very fond of swinging the sparkling and sputtering steel about my head whenever I went in, but he was always civil, and the less I heeded his queer ways the more civil he became.

There was a grinder, too, taken on at the same time, a short round-looking man, with plump cheeks, and small eyes which were often mere slits in his face. He had a little soft nose, too, that looked like a plump thumb, and moved up and down and to right and left when he was intent upon his work. He was the best-tempered man in the works, and seemed to me as if he was always laughing and showing his two rows of firm white teeth.

I somehow quite struck up an acquaintance with these two men, for while the others looked askant at me and treated me as if I were my uncle's spy, sent into the works to see how the men kept on, Pannell the smith and Gentles the grinder were always ready to be civil.

My friendliness with Pannell began one morning when I had caught a mouse up in the office overlooking the dam, where I spent most of my time making drawings and models with Uncle Bob.

This mouse I took down as a _bonne bouche_ for Pannell's kitten, and as soon as he saw the little creature seize it and begin to spit and swear, he rested upon his hammer handle and stopped to watch it.

Next time I went into the smithy he did not flourish the white-hot steel round my head, but gave it a flourish in another direction, banged it down upon the anvil, and in a very short time had turned it into the blade of a small hand-bill.

"You couldn't do that," he said smiling, as he cooled the piece of steel and threw it down on the floor before taking out another.

"Not like that," I said. "I could do it roughly."

"Yah! Not you," he said. "Try."

I was only too eager, and seizing the pincers I took out one of the glowing pieces of steel lying ready, laid it upon the anvil and beat it into shape, forming a rough imitation of the work I had been watching, but with twice as many strokes, taking twice as long, and producing work not half so good.

When I had done he picked up the implement, turned it over and over, looked at me, threw it down, and then went and stroked his kitten, staring straight before him.

"Why, I couldn't ha' done a bit o' forging like that when I'd been at it fower year," he said in his high-pitched voice.

"But my uncles have often shown me how," I said.

"What! Can they forge?" he said, staring very hard at me.

"Oh, yes, as well as you can!"

He blew hard at the kitten and then shook his head in a dissatisfied way, after which it seemed as if I had offended him, for he seized his hammer and pincers and began working away very hard, finis.h.i.+ng a couple of the steel bill-hooks before he spoke again.

"Which on 'em 'vented this here contraps.h.i.+on?" he said, pointing to an iron bar, by touching which he could direct a blast of air into his fire without having the need of a man or boy to blow.

"Uncle John," I said.

"What! Him wi' the biggest head?"

I nodded.