When Bindery's apprentice stepped across the hoist shaft, he was
suddenly gripped with shock by the sheer height, staring down that
forty-something foot drop from the print room floor level.
“Okay,
down there?” Binderey's foreman shouted into the street. The compositor
apprentice stood below, seized the loose end of the rope, his face taut
and the picture of uncertainty.
They eased the machine forward into the empty void of the hoist shaft.
The
print machine instantly began to swing. The lad in the street tightened
his grip as the bindery apprentice dug his heels into the wood-panelled
flooring.
Sharp detonation!
-Same sound an old war cannon might make at close range:
CRACK!
-WHOOSH!
Hook and chain parted company! Also, the letterpress printing machine dangling beneath...
No longer quietly suspended, but a vertically earthwards plunging apparatus.
The
Bindery's apprentice felt the rope become alive, snake between his
hands, looping and wriggling then whip-lashing, torn away from his grasp
by unseen forces!
For a horrendous second, he thought his foreman
was caught up in this dreadful incident and dragged by a trailing rope
-his rope, over the edge and into the void...
THUD!
CRASH!
SCREECH!
Gruesome terrible sounds echoed, heard by the swivelling heads and fearful faces at the works office windows!
Compositor apprentice is ashen and in a state of collapse...
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