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Updated: May 5, 2025
On the other side of the shaft an arrangement of beams and partially broken boards formed the traversing "ways" or tube, up which were drawn the kibbles these last being large iron buckets used for lifting ore to the surface. Between the pump-rod and the kibble-way there was just room for the ladders upon which Captain Dan, followed by Oliver, now stepped.
As he advanced, Oliver began to take note of the places he had passed on the way down, and so much had he seen and thought during his sojourn underground, that, when he reached the level where he first came upon the noisy kibbles, and made acquaintance with the labouring pump-rod, he almost hailed the spot as an old familiar landmark of other days!
The former sighs from time to time as the oil plunger rises and falls half an inch. The latter, cased and guarded like the U-tube aft, exhibits another Fleury Ray, but inverted and more green than violet. Its function is to shunt the lift out of the gas, and this it will do without watching. That is all! A tiny pump-rod wheezing and whining to itself beside a sputtering green lamp.
"What's that?" exclaimed Oliver. "It's only the kibbles," replied Captain Dan. Before the captain could explain what kibbles were, these reckless buckets met, with a bang, close to Oliver's cheek, and rebounded on the beams that protected him from their fury. Naturally the young man shrank a little from a noise so loud and so near. He was at once scraped down on the other side by the pump-rod!
The piston-rod is attached to one end of a lever, whilst the pump-rod works in connexion with the other,—the hydraulic action employed to raise the water being exactly similar to that of a common sucking-pump. The working of a Newcomen engine was a clumsy and apparently a very painful process, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of wheezing, sighing, creaking, and bumping.
But I wanted to sound the well; so, securing the pump-rod, which, for convenience, was hung in beckets in the companion, I watched my opportunity, and, rushing forward, succeeded in dropping the rod down the well and getting a firm grip upon the fall of the main halliard before the next sea broke aboard.
"Go on," said Oliver, pursing his lips with a grim smile, as he followed his leader across the narrow bridge. Captain Dan continued his progress until he reached the pump-shaft, the proximity of which was audibly announced by the slow ascent and descent of a great wooden beam, which was styled the "pump-rod."
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