Unknown - Heartsease

The girls trudged up beside the dock, straining sideways under the twenty-pound weight of the petrol cans. The wind bit at the backs of their necks and fingered icily through their clothes in spite of the exercise.

“Fine breeze for a bonfire,” whispered Lucy.

Margaret did most of the timber hauling, but she didn’t mind because Lucy seemed happy to handle the petrol. It was hard work, but quick once she’d found a stack of planks light enough for her to run out across the

quay in a single movement. At the back of the shed the road and railway ran side by side, making a forty-foot gap before the further sheds. The girls toiled away, one on each side of the road, hauling out planks to make a barrier of fire, until Margaret saw that they were going about the job in an un-Jonathan-like way.

“That’s enough,” she said. “We’ll never be able to pull out so much that there’s fire right across the road. But if the sheds really catch it’ll be too hot to get through.”

“Right,” said Lucy. “Shall I start this end, then? Wind’s going round a bit, I fancy. Ugh! Wicked stuff, this petrol. You stand back, Miss Margaret, while I see what I can do with it.”

She soaked several rags, scattered half of one can all over Margaret’s pile and the wood beside it in the stack, then the other half over her own. In the shelter of the stacks the harsh wind eddied, blowing the weird reek about them. Lucy tied a stone into a soaked rag so clumsily that Margaret was sure it would fall out. She lit it and threw.

Half a second’s hesitation, and with a bellowing sigh the spread petrol exploded. In ten seconds the pile was blazing like a hay-rick, huge sparks spiraling upwards in the draft. One of these must have fallen into the second pile, for it exploded while Lucy was still tying another stone into a rag. Margaret picked up the other can and ran between the stacked planks to the quayside. Already they could hear the coarse roar of fire eating into the piled hills of old pine, dry with five summers, sheltered by the shed roofs from five winters. By the dock Lucy

splashed the petrol about as though she were watering a greenhouse. The wind, still shifting round towards the northeast, smothered them with an eddy of smoke from the first fire, and in the gap that followed it Margaret thought she saw through her choking tears a movement far up the canal — a troop of men marching down the towpath; but the same booming whoosh of fire blotted out land and water.

The flames at the far end of the shed were already higher than the roof. Smoke piled skywards like a storm cloud. Timber stacks which they hadn’t even touched were alight in a dozen places. Heat poured towards them on the wind, like a flatiron held close to the cheek. They ran back to the lock. The gates at the top were open.

“I thought I saw men coming down the towpath,” gasped Margaret.

“Me too,” said Lucy. “Nigh on a score of them.”

“They won’t get through that lot,” said Jonathan, nodding towards the inferno of the timber yard. “Lucy, will you go and be engineer while we get her into the lock? Marge, as soon as she’s in will you make Scrub haul on that capstan-bar to close the gate? Otto and Tim might as well wait here.”

As the tug nosed through the narrow gap left by the single gate being opened, Margaret studied her next job. The capstan was really a large iron cogwheel in a hole in the ground, protected by an iron lid which Jonathan had opened; below it lay inexplicable machinery; from the cog a stout wooden bar about seven feet long stuck out sideways, shaped so that it rose

just clear of the rim of the hole. Scrub was harnessed on awkwardly short traces to the end of this pole: if he pulled hard enough, the cog would turn.

Margaret patted his neck and said, “Come on, boy.” He hated horsecollars but was sensible enough to know that he had to endure them sometimes, so he leaned into the collar, hesitated when he found that the weight behind him was more than he was used to, then flung himself forward. With tiny, labored steps he moved over the cobbles; the moment the gate began to move, its slow momentum made the strain less; Margaret led him round and round, talking to him, telling him how strong and clever he was, but looking all the time over her shoulder to make sure they were pulling at right angles to the capstan-bar.

At last Otto gave a shout, and she eased the pony off and untied the rope from the capstan. Jonathan was already down the sluice hole, hauling at a clacking chain which ran over the double pulley. Margaret leaned over and saw the lower hook gradually inching upwards, but she still didn’t understand how it worked.

“Strong hoss,” said Otto, as she led Scrub towards the lower capstan.

“I don’t know if he can do two more,” said Margaret. “It’s a horrid strain, and he always gets bored with that sort of thing rather quickly.”

“Only one more, I hope,” said Otto. “The gates out into the river, on the other side of the basin, they float open as the tide comes in. They’re open now, see?”

And they were, too. That made the escape seem easier. Jonathan scurried past with his chains and pulleys, and Tim followed with the squat baulk of timber from which the pulleys were to hang. Davey came last of all, grabbing frivolously at Tim’s heels. The flames gnawed into the timber with a noise like surf among reefs, and a rattling crackle told them that another stack had caught. In the shifting wind long orange tongues of fire flowed clean across the dock, reflected dully by the dull water. Jonathan worked his magic with the block and tackle and the lower sluice. Heartsease disappeared down into the lock, until only the top half of the funnel, the windows of the wheelhouse and a few feet of stubby mast were showing. Then she stopped — the lock water w Tas level with the basin.

But this time Scrub couldn’t move the capstan, for all Margaret’s praise and coaxing. Lucy came up from the engine room to watch; then Jonathan said “Rest him a moment” and ran across the quay to a low office building, on whose side were arranged three shaped pieces of wood, each on its separate pair of hooks. He came back with them and fitted their square ends into the holes in the top of the capstan: they were the other capstan-bars, by which the locks had been worked before the Changes if ever the power failed. He led Tim up to one bar, and showed him how to push. He and Lucy strained their backs against the other two, and Margaret led Scrub forward, watching the group round the capstan over her shoulder. Nothing moved.

“Come on, Tim,” gasped Jonathan. “Push, Tim. Push hard. Like this.”

Tim gazed at him, slack-jawed, bubbling. Then he leaned his broad shoulders against the bar and heaved, and they all fell to the ground together as the capstan turned. Jonathan was on his feet in a moment, but Lucy lay where she was, rubbing her head and looking sulkily across to where Otto lay laughing on the quayside.

“It’s all right for some/’ she hissed, but Otto only laughed the more, while Scrub and Margaret circled slowly round, easing the gate open.

On the other side of the dock a petrol dump exploded like a bomb. Then the wind shifted right round to the true northeast and they were all coughing and weeping in the reeking smoke, dodging desperately towards what looked like clear patches but were only thinner areas of smoke where you still couldn’t breathe, and then another onset of fume and darkness rushed down and overwhelmed them. In the middle of it all Scrub, still harnessed to the capstan, panicked. He pranced about the quay trying to rush away from the choking enemy and always being halted with a tearing jerk at the end of the short rope. He was too crazed to notice where his hoofs were landing.