Master Garrow, a broad-chested smith with forty years of experience in the town foundries, dropped the iron ladder into the Third Gate vault carrying a long-handled cold scraper and a two-pound copper-headed mallet. He didn’t dive into the roaring water. He clipped his leather harness to the dry overhead service bracket, swung himself into the narrow nook behind the gear casing. Then he wedged his boots into two pre-cut stone niches.
“Hold that lantern steady, Will!” Garrow grunted, inserting the hardened chisel point of the scraper into the tight clearance between the fifth bronze gear tooth and the cast-iron guide-rail. “There’s a wedge of upland quartz in here big as a goose egg. Baked in with sulfur mud.”
With three sharp, precise taps of his copper mallet, Garrow struck the end of the scraper. The copper mallet head twisted slightly against the steel. It took in the dangerous rebound shock without throwing sparks in the damp air. On the third tap, a sharp ping echoed from the casing as the quartz pebble shattered into three pieces. Garrow scraped the fragments out with the hooked tip of his blade. That let the grit clatter down the drainage chute into the sump.
