here? Local sand’s no good. Got too much iron in it. D’ye see any black specks in this here silica, which is by way o’ being just a fancy-like word for plain, everyday sand? This sand was brung, partly by overland ox haul, partly by boat, from the beds o’ the Berkshire and Maurice Rivers in Western Massachusetts. Oh, sometimes we’ve used sand from Plymouth shore for low-grade ware, but local sand — why, we wouldn’t use that in a paper weight!”
“But I thought ——”
“You thought that was why the Works was built here? Lots o’ folks do. No, siree. ’Twas built here — ye’ve got Mr. Jarves’s own say so — on account o’ the abundance o’ virgin timber for fuel. Twenty-two thousand acre he bought. Mostly pine ’n oak. There’s a sample on it.”
Not far from the sand a great archway, with iron doors at its back, had been constructed, and it was toward this that John Sprague pointed a thin finger. “That,” he said, “should give a notion how much wood is being burned Besides, ’tis that will be your job. A-dryin’ of it.”
Kit saw that piles of long strips, similar to those he had watched being fed into the furnace, had been thrown on a brick floor and were being heated, without being burned, by flames that leaped across above them. Unlike the other strips which were coffee-colored, these were green and unseasoned, except for a few which had evidently been drying for a longer time. Near at hand were heaped more strips to replace any that were removed.
So this was to be his job. Replenishing one stick of wood after another. It would not be hard work, but it would be very monotonous. And it certainly ought to give a fellow plenty of time to think, and to make plans for what he would do with a boat once he had bought it with the money paid him for doing such monotonous work.
He felt John Sprague’s hand on his shoulder. “Go back to your great-aunt’s — you do be staying with Thany Lapham, I take it? — and get on proper clothes. I’ll expect ye back in less ’n hour. Got to take over your job myself till ye get here.”
Kit was half way to town on a steady dog trot when he heard a shrill whistle which seemed to be meant for his ears. He stopped short.
Sitting on a high stone wall covered with woodbine was the very same young man he had seen coming in such a great hurry out of a superintendent’s office. He was holding a jack-knife in one hand, a piece of wood in the other, and was looking calmly at Kit, who wondered what he could possibly want with him.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what your name is,” said the young man, “and am not especially interested. Mine happens to be Andrew. Just Andrew. I can see you’ve taken on my job?”
Kit saw no use in evading an answer to words which had been put as a question rather than a statement. “Yes,” he admitted, “I have.”
“Don’t think I mind,” said the other. “Very boring job. I’ve been fired from it enough times to know. I just want to make a little suggestion.”
He paused to examine more closely the article — it seemed to be a boat — which he had been whittling, while Kit, anxious to be on his way, waited impatiently.
“Next time you’re over Danger Cove way,” went on the young man, presently, “look me up. Third sand dune on the right from the farther end.” Leaping agilely over the stone wall, he loped across the meadows in the direction of Danger Cove.
Chapter III
A FREE AFTERNOON
IT WAS not until Kit had been for several days an employee at the Glass Works that he picked up any further information about the young man who insisted his name was just plain Andrew, and then the source was not the Shop, but his great-aunt. He had not, for one thing, wanted to put direct questions to those he did not know, and John Sprague, the one person he might have queried, had, after establishing Kit at his post beside the Arch, disappeared into that part of the building where the finished glass articles were packed in salt hay for shipment, and Kit had not had a glimpse of him since.
For another thing, he had resolved that as soon as he could he would visit Danger Cove to investigate that strange address, “Third sand dune on the right from the farther end.” He hoped it would prove some sort of joke, not liking the idea of anyone really living in what he had believed a deserted spot, where he could roam as he willed.
Finally, he had found so much going on around him to watch that for hours at a time he forgot all about Danger Cove. It was true that his job had proved as monotonous in itself as he had foreseen, and that, except for brief periods when the shearers demanded fresh wheelbarrow loads of dry wood and Kit had to replace what was taken away, he had nothing to do but stand with folded arms. Nevertheless, he was constantly entertained.
Sometimes his attention was held by the pouring of the “metals” into the molds, there to be pressed into intricate shapes and designs by plungers. Again his eyes were glued to a delicate and lacy pattern of leaf or flower unfolding under the expert wheel of the engraver. Always, however, his glance returned to the blowers, and it was in connection with them, during the afternoon of his third day on the job, that something happened.
Kit noted an undercurrent of mild excitement soon after the lunch hour. Bits of conversation came to him. “I’m betting on the Frenchman!” — “Red Dexter will get my money!” — “You’re crazy, man! I’ll still go whole hog on Old Jim!” Old Jim, Kit had learned, was the oldest blower in the factory, having come with Deming Jarves in 1825 from the New England Glass Company in Boston to the Sandwich Manufacturing Company — a few months later to be incorporated as the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company — just founded by Mr. Jarves on the Cape. The blower was an old man then, and had grown no younger since, but, in spite of failing eyesight and a hand which sometimes shook, he was still top man when it came to turning out a rare specimen of fine glass at the end of a blowpipe.
And now, as work slowed down, and shearers and servitors, blacksmiths and toolmakers, mixers and founders, gathered in a ring around the three blowers and their assistants, and the superintendent himself came out of his office to stand with one hand lifted and the other holding his watch, it was Old Jim’s name which Kit heard oftenest.
What was it all about? Sam, standing near Kit, caught his bewildered look and enlightened him. “’Tis another practice blowing contest. Getting ready for the celebration for the Great Man.”
Kit was about to ask who the Great Man was when he saw the superintendent’s lifted hand cut the air and drop.
Instantly each blower picked up his gather from the nearest pot, rolled it rapidly, briefly on the “marver” — a low table with a polished metal slab for top — and, sitting down in his own special chair, began to blow, inflating only slightly at first the molten glass at the end of his pipe, then expanding it, while his assistant waited close at hand with battledore, tongs, shears, pucella, punty, and other tools which were sure to be needed in quick succession by him or the blower.
Under Kit’s very eyes, and at incredible speed, each of the three blowers shaped a pitcher from the gather, steadied it while his assistant attached it to the punty, whetted it from the blowpipe, trimmed the top with shears at a proper angle and lipped it, fastened and bent and tooled the handle, supported it with tongs while being knocked from the punty, and held it up completed — except for annealing — at exactly the same second as his two rivals.
The superintendent laughed and threw up both hands, while the spectators shrugged their shoulders and put their money back in their pockets.
“I
