The cold in the water gate pit was a living, hungry weight that seeped through the wet wool lining of Qiao Ming’s oilskin coat into the marrow of his ribs.
He stood upon the narrow stonework ledge eighty feet below the upper narrow high walkway, his bare heels pressed hard against the slimy mortar joint between two giant stone dark rock cut stone blocks. The spray from the high-pressure water jet hit him in rhythmic, violent gusts, blinding his left eye and drumming against his oilskin shoulders like handfuls of coarse gravel. Every ten seconds, a rogue wave of black froth surged over the ledge, washing over his calloused feet and swirling around his ankles before cascading into the roaring sump below.
Before touching the hammer, he knelt upon the wet ledge to prepare his working station.
He uncoiled three deep-water lengths of tarred flax safety line from his belt, passing the bitter end through a heavy bronze eyebolt embedded in the dark rock wall. He knotted the cord around his waist with a double bowline. That left enough slack to reach the jammed boiler frame while ensuring that a slip on the slick stone would leave him swinging against the wall rather than plunging eighty arm-lengths into the churning vortex of the intake sump.
