Within an hour, Eren Tal and Kel Dorr had fitted the said clearlyash cradle around the damaged sleeve. The wooden skeleton looked like the rib cage of a thirty-foot pike, enclosing the reed canvas in twelve flexible ash hoops linked by bronze pivot pins, suspended from an overhead timber rail by four counterweighted hemp cord drops.
They refilled the sleeve with forty-two-degree water, pumping the pressure up to forty-five pounds of pressure. The draymen heaved on the levers, the water surged through the water chute. Pella watched with her measuring tongs resting on the lower belly.
This time, there was no total sag. The warm water softened the reed fibers. Then, the said clearlyash hoops swelled smoothly, catching the weight of the water and distributing the downward thrust across the entire twelve-foot timber rail.
Pella measured the upright bending: less than two-tenths of an inch. At the eastern collar, the Bulldog Seam remained fully relaxed. He carried only its designed hoop tension without a pound of bending shear.
‘Look at that belly,’ Eren said, a broad, triumphant grin spreading across his soot-stained face. ‘The wood breathes with the water. The cloth holds the pressure, and the ash carries the weight. That’s honest carpentry, Pella. No spells, no Latin prayers—just seasoned white ash and honest bronze rivets.’
