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Nor is it possible for me to describe in this place the mechanical marvels of the institution the huge underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers; the electrician's room, clean and bright as a new dollar, with its "purring dynamos" and its immense switch-board; the tunnel through which books are delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the Capitol, within eight minutes of the time they are applied for; and, most wonderful of all, the endless chain, with its series of baskets, whereby books are not only brought down to the reading room, but re-delivered, at the mere touch of a button on whatever "deck" of the nine-storied "book-stacks" they happen to belong to.
But my pupils proved apt and industrious, and by the time I left they had mastered our tongue very effectively, as the many letters they sent me, before leaving Ruhleben, striving to thank me for what I had done, testify. Camp life was not without its humour. Around the boiler-house stretched a large wooden hoarding which served as a notice-board.
'Where it'd been for half the shift, the billy hanging in a dark drive where any man below might 'a 'got at it. 'They found gold in a little box-place made in the heel of one of his workin' boots. 'A boot that was always left in the boiler-house when he was off work. 'He had sold coarse water-worn gold to a Jew at Yarraman. 'Yes, I know, I know.
The demand being more regular, there is no need for the expensive circular arrangement of stables for this class of engines. In a large boiler-house, boiling water and red-hot coke are kept ready night and day, so that on the occasion of any sudden demand no time need be lost in getting up steam.
I cross the boiler-house, myself in the grip of the thronging, echoing peal which has set it free. From among the dark and hurrying crowd, which increases in the corridors and rolls down the stairways like a cloud, some passing voices cry to me, "Good-night, Monsieur Simon," or, with less familiarity, "Good-night, Monsieur Paulin."
Our hostess declared that it was impossible for a woman to manage a sugar estate, as she could not always be about amongst the canes and in the boiler-house, and her sons were not yet old enough to help her. No one who has not experienced it can picture the heat of a Jamaican sugar-factory; I should imagine the temperature to be about 120 degrees.
He was what is styled, in a well-known game, "getting warm." "Let us visit the boiler-house," he said. Again, for the nonce, he became an engineer. Like Paul, he was all things to all men. He was very affable to the genial stoker, who was quite communicative about the boilers.
The waterworks are situated very near the springs, from which they are only separated by a road, under which the collecting pipes run. There are two circular collecting tanks of brickwork, two pumping wells, engine-house, boiler-house, chimney stack, and engine-driver's dwelling-house, all inclosed by a wall.
Out on the doorstep they paused to look down the cañon, now shorn of ugliness and rendered beautiful by the purple twilight. The faint haze of smoke from the banked fires, rising above the steel chimney of the boiler-house, was the only stirring, living spectacle visible; save one. "What does that mean?" Bill drawled, as if speaking to himself.
As if in ironical answer came a great crashing at the verandah door, and the twanging of chords cruelly mishandled. The grand piano was suffering internally from the assaults of the boiler-house ladder. "Wull I gie them a shot?" was McGuffog's hoarse inquiry. "Action stations," Alexis ordered, for the command seemed to have shifted to him from Dougal. "The windows are the danger.
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