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A. To pack the piston, take sixty common-sized white or untarred rope-yarns, and with them plait a gasket or flat rope as close and firm as possible, tapering for eighteen inches at each end, and long enough to go round the piston, and overlapped for that length; coil this rope the thin way as hard as possible, and beat it with a sledge hammer until its breadth answers the place; put it in and beat it down with a wooden drift and a hand mallet, pour some melted tallow all around, then pack in a layer of white oakum half an inch thick, so that the whole packing may have the depth of five to six inches, depending on the size of the engine; finally, screw down the junk ring.
Aloft were dingy gray spars, slack hemp rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight.
Since that time plain, untarred pipe has been specified, and subjected to the so-called kerosene test, which consists of swabbing out each pipe with kerosene or oil and then allowing it to stand for a few hours.
The barn in question was some distance from the house, on the side of the stables, and I had passed it on several of my journeyings to and fro wondering at its forlorn and untarred appearance under a régime where everything was so spick and span; but it had never once occurred to me as possible that I should come to spend a night under its roof with a comparative stranger, and undergo there an experience belonging to an order of things I had always rather ridiculed and despised.
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