The sulfur steam from pit number four drifted across the staging ground, smelling of boiled matches.
Across the Ashen Basin, the morning fog clung low to the freezing muck. Giles Croft stood on the upper timber overhead frame, his woolen work coat buttoned against the biting wind.
He wiped yellow coal dust from his glasses with the hem of his handkerchief.
Below him, anchored to six-foot heavy concrete foundation pads, sat eighty feet of riveted hard dark metal steel. The machine looked like a fallen siege tower laid horizontally across heavy cast-iron pivot pin rollers.
It was sixteen feet in width, slightly inclined at a five-degree downward fall toward the southern discharge canal.
Beside the central drive sprocket, Master Borin Bronze-Lung wiped his blackened thumb along a copper grease cup.
His copper-braided beard was tucked securely into the bib of his heavy leather apron to keep it clear of the external spur gears.
“She’s a monster, Giles,” Borin shouted over the steady hiss of the steam boilers. “Sixty tons of deadweight steel sitting on four bronze trunnions.
