The fifteen-foot heart-oak timber had been salvaged ten minutes earlier from the repair slip at Lock Three. A six-hundred-pound squared baulk of seasoned white oak, heavy at the butt with a heavy cast-iron mooring shoe.
Six men carried it. Sile Rook on the right, Tomas Reed on the left. He was flanked by four broad-shouldered lightermen whose oilskin smocks were crusted with freezing sleet. They took the strain on their hips, their boot-heels digging into the icy cobblestones of the Sluice House bridge.
“One! Two! HEAVE!” Sile roared.
The iron shoe of the ram struck the seam between the double oak portal doors with a bone-shaking, bone-jarring CRACK that echoed across the canal basin. The heavy timber doors shuddered, the two-inch iron logging chain holding the outside handles screaming under the tension as the links stretched.
From inside the Sluice House came a sudden, wild shout. Muffled by the thunderous roar of the steam, but clear.
“Again!” Tomas yelled, his scarred left arm locked around the rough grain of the oak ram, his cart driver’s back driving into the timber. “HIT THE HASP!”
The ram surged forward a second time.
BOOOOM.
