Author's note: An updated edition of this book has been republished in three books UNDERCOVER - DARK FIRE DATA, CURIOUSERS and STEAM POWER.
It's Christmas and the school's time machine malfunctions, sending us to 1778 CE where we are press-gan...
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One of the steam engine buildings in Cornwall today.
We walked through a maze of large baskets filled with lumps of coal stacked in front of the building before we reached a small door. Mr Watt rapped on the door several time before pushing it open and we walked onto a wooden deck in a dark, hot, steam-filled room half filled by a round brick oven topped by a large metal cylinder. A heavy chain rose vertically from the top of the cylinder to the other end of the beam we had seen projecting through the hole in the wall . As we watched, there was a roar of sound and the chain descended into the cylinder, pulling with it the arc shaped end of the beam high above our heads. The beam was pivoted, where it disappeared through the hole in the wall, like a giant teeter-totter - Mr Watt described it as a rocker beam, like a child's sea-saw - so we could imagine the other end pulling up on a piston pump rod deep down at the sump in the bottom of the mine.
Below us, a man shovelled a heap of coal toward an opening in the base of the oven and on a wooden deck above us, a thickset man with a bushy black beard bellowed, 'BLOW THE FIRE, POMERY . . . SNIFT BENJY . . . AND WHO THE DEVIL MIGHT YE BE?' The last remark was addressed to us.
'James Watt and friends. And, who might ye be?'
'Ah! Y' came at last. Mr Hornblower said he expected y' yesterday. That's why we've fired the boiler trying to make this contraption work . . . I'm John Budge, millwright to the tin mine adventurers . . . I put this pile of junk together.' He didn't offer to shake hands.
Jets of steam sprayed out of the pipe work as Denny climbed up to inspected the cylinder. It was much taller than he was and about a metres and a half in diameter. 'Ouch!' Denny yelped as he leaped away from the cylinder. 'It's hot.'
'Pleased to meet ye Mr Budge,' Mr Watt said grimly. 'I take it, ye are not impressed with ma fire engine.'
John Budge grinned contemptuously revealing several blackened teeth. He spat. 'Ye could say that. It leaks steam like a colander and works hardly at all. Pomery's been stoking that boiler for nigh on four hour and all we got for the effort was a foot of stroke and a barrel of water out of the mine. Jabez Hornblower has been pumping water out of mines all his life and he knows a bad fire engine when he sees one.'
'What seems to be the problem?' Mr Watt asked.
'Problem? I'll tell y' what the problem is. Y' have no spray to cool the effulgences inside the cylinder, like our good old common engine.' He glared at Mr Watt. 'That's why it doesn't work.'
'Man, that spray wastes steam,' Mr Watt retorted. 'In ma engine, the cylinder is always hot. Steam is drawn into the condenser by the vacuum created when the steam is condensed.'
'Vacuum? What's that? Nothing?' John Budge said contemptuously. 'How can nothing go over there to nothing. And, anyway, the thing is full of wind . . . just like the inventor.'
