Undercover - Steam Power - Book 5

Part 8 - Dark effulgent aethers

We walked through a maze of large baskets, filled with lumps of coal, stacked in front of the building before we reached a small door. Mr Watt rapped on the door several time before pushing it open.  We walked onto a wooden deck in a dark, hot, steam-filled room half filled by a round brick oven topped by a large metal cylinder. A heavy chain rose vertically from the top of the cylinder to the other end of the beam we had seen projecting through the hole in the wall . As we watched, there was a clatter of sound and the chain descended into the cylinder, pulling with it the arc shaped end of the beam high above our heads. The beam was pivoted, where it disappeared through the hole in the wall, like a giant teeter-totter - Mr Watt described it as a rocker beam, like a child's "sea-saw" - so we could imagine the other end pulling up on a piston pump rod deep down in the sump at the bottom of the mine.

Below us, a man shovelled a heap of coal toward an opening in the base of the oven and on a wooden deck above us, a thickset man with a bushy black beard bellowed, 'BLOW THE FIRE, POMERY . . . SNIFT BENJY . . . AND WHO THE DEVIL MIGHT YE BE?' 

 The last remark was addressed to us.

'James Watt and friends. And, who might ye be?'

'Ah! Y' came at last.  Mr Hornblower said he expected y' yesterday. That's why we've fired the boiler trying to make this contraption work . . . I'm John Budge, millwright to the tin mine adventurers . . . I put this pile of junk together.' He didn't offer to shake hands. 

 Jets of steam sprayed out of the pipe work as Denny climbed up to inspected the cylinder. It was much taller than he was and about a metre and a half in diameter. 

'Ouch!' Denny yelped as he leaped away from the cylinder. 'It's hot.'

'Ahm glad to meet ye Mr Budge,' Mr Watt said grimly. 'I take it, ye are not impressed with ma fire engine.'

John Budge grinned contemptuously revealing several blackened teeth. He spat. 

 'Ye could say that. It leaks steam like a colander and works hardly at all. Pomery's been stoking that boiler for nigh on four hour and all we got for the effort was a foot of stroke and a barrel of water out of the mine. Jabez Hornblower has been pumping water out of mines all his life and he knows a bad fire engine when he sees one.' 

 'What seems to be the problem?' Mr Watt asked.

'Problem? I'll tell y' what the problem is. Y' have no spray to cool the effulgences inside the cylinder, like our good old common engine.' He glared at Mr Watt. 'That's why it doesn't work.'

 'Man, that spray wastes steam,' Mr Watt retorted. 'In ma engine, the cylinder is always hot. Steam is drawn into the condenser by the vacuum created when the steam is condensed.'

 'Vacuum? What's that? Nothing?' John Budge said contemptuously. 'How can nothing go over there to nothing. And, anyway, the thing is full of wind . . . just like the inventor.'

Mr Watt contained his anger with an effort. He turned abruptly to the engine and carefully examined each part of the cylinder, the pipes, control rods and valves. He twisted a valve open and the beam above our heads started to move down very slowly accompanied by a loud creaking and groaning. It moved only a few centimetres and then stopped.

'Y' see,' John Budge said, with evident delight, 'it won't budge.'

'I can see that,' Mr Watt said as he took his coat off and hung it on a peg near the door. 'It's wind logged. We must get the air out of the cylinder first.' He wrapped a rag around his hand, closed the steam valve between the top of the boiler and the bottom of the cylinder and opened another valve in the pipe leading to the condenser. 

 After a short delay, the beam above our heads creaked down a few centimetres and stopped. He closed the condenser valve and opened the steam valve again. Very slowly the beam groaned back up again. Mr Watt scratched his head. 'This engine wears a very gloomy aspect and moves sluggishly. I think a thorough inspection is in order.'

John Budge sucked on his clay pipe. 'Y'see. Useless! This might be good enough for the coal mines up in Newcastle but here in Cornwall the air is full of dark effulgent aethers. This engine will never work unless y' fit a water spray in the cylinder. See if I'm right . . .'

'Dark effulgent aethers,' Denny said with incredulity dripping from each syllable. 'That's nonsense, man.'

'I know of what I say,' John Budge snapped. 'Ye, I judge by yur accent, are a colonial know nothing.' 

 'Listen, you quaint rustic 'twit . . .' Denny started to say but he was interrupted by Mr Watt.