While the burst sleeve was venting the last of the first flood surge into the basin, the immediate technical reality of the situation asserted itself. The North Flume was now unprotected. A second mountain wave was already visible rounding the cliffs of High Tor.
During the rehearsal four days earlier, the team had learned a bitter lesson about material logistics. They had stored their spare canvas in a lower cellar where the river damp had softened the flax fibers, reducing their pulling strength by thirty percent. Today, that mistake bore fruit of a different kind.
Young Tavi bounded down the wooden stairs of the Ferry Museum. He carried Sleeve Beta wrapped in three layers of heavy, waxed hemp cloth. The package was warm, bone-dry, and smelled of the cedar shavings in which it had been packed in the museum’s upper loft, twenty feet above the floodline. He ran across the newly cleated timber ramp, his cart driver boots finding solid purchase on the gravel. Then he delivered the bundle into Jo Saye’s waiting hands in three minutes and fifteen seconds.
“Good lad, Tavi!” Jo said, cutting the waxed twine with her pocket shears. She shook out the heavy canvas metal tube, testing the dryness of the weave with her cheek. The linen was stiff, crisp, and fully free of mold. “Look at this flax, Dima. Dry as a church kneeler. When we bolt this collar to the pipe rim, it will take eighty pounds of head without sweating a drop…
