The hemlock spar didn’t snap cleanly. It blew up under high-pressure squeezing with a bone-shaking underwater roar that felt like an iron fist striking the center of Tomas’s breastplate.
The twelve-inch timber shattered into a cloud of ragged white splinters, releasing thirty tons of trapped high-pressure suction in a single split second. The violent vortex spun Tomas around, dragging his lead-soled boots three feet across the granite doorstep before his hands found purchase on the edge of the guide-rail casing.
Inside the upright well, the four-ton cast-iron balance weight carriage dropped.
It fell only four inches before the leftover fouled cable snagged against the lower guide stop. But four inches of falling pig iron carries the driving force of a runaway locomotive.
The bottom corner of the iron balance weight frame slammed down onto the granite doorstep with a bone-shaking shock that cracked the cut stone coping.
And Sile Rook didn’t move.
Tomas scrambled through the swirling mud and splintered wood. Through his scratched quartz bull’s-eye, he saw Sile pinned against the inner wall of the shaft.
The corner of the four-ton iron balance weight had landed squarely across the toe and instep of Sile’s left lead-soled diving boot, pinning the foot flat against the granite doorstep. The lead sole had twisted under the crushing impact, mushrooming outward around the stone.
