The disaster began not at the Sluice Crown on the High Terrace, but two miles downstream at Miller Tom’s four-story timber flour mill on Lowbank Creek. It was quarter to six in the evening. The evening shift was preparing to shut down the stones for the night. Outside, the rain had turned into a steady, driving downpour that beat against the cedar weatherboards like handfuls of dried peas.
Miller Tom stood on the meal floor. He wiped flour dust from his glasses with the corner of his hemp apron. Below his feet, through the open hatch that looked into the wheel pit, came a sound that made his stomach drop into his boots. A deep, rhythmic screech that sounded like an iron plough being dragged over granite boulders. It was with a sharp, shaking shudder that made the three-ton French buhrstones hop on their oak beds.
‘Orson!’ Miller Tom shouted down the hatch, leaning over the timber coaming. ‘Drop the head race gate! Drop it now!’
From the dark, dripping pit below came the frightened voice of his senior apprentice, nineteen-year-old Orson. ‘The gate is down, Master! It was dropped ten minutes ago! There isn’t an inch of water coming over the water chute!’
