The torrent that burst through the Third Gate bypass was not clean water. It was an explosive battering ram of brown peat slurry, high-pressure foam, and mountain shale that slammed into Jo Saye’s experimental canvas sleeve with the moving impact of a speeding freight wagon.
The double-layered reed and linen metal tube, twenty feet long and four feet in width, snapped rigid with a sound like a ship’s mainsail catching a hurricane gale: WHAP-CRACK.
The entire timber platform shuddered. Spray hissed from every needle hole along the seams in blinding white jets that rose fifteen feet into the freezing air. That created a dense, rainbow-bright fog that tasted of sulfur and crushed pine needles. Inside the greased ash cradle, the four-ply canvas swelled outward against the smooth pine staves, belling to four and a half feet in width under the huge water-pressure thrust.
Jo Saye stood behind the heavy triple-ply oak shield frame, her knitted tam-o’-shanter soaked with spray, her sharp gray eyes fixed on the line of crimson running stitches that marked the tuned offering seam. Beside her, Dima Fen held an iron safety line, his knuckles white as the entire platform trembled beneath the thundering discharge.
“Look at the stitches, Dima!” Jo called out, her voice calm, clear, and fully empty of fear. “The flax is holding the main collar! The red thread along the center spine is beginning to sing! That’s eighty pounds... Ninety pounds... One hundred pounds!”
