The Engine Works

The Engine Works stand beside the Marble Works, the landward half of the Industrial District, and they are the loud heart of the island's craft. Here the wrights turn brass and bronze on water-driven lathes, raise the steam-hammers, run the long gear-cutting engines, and pour metal in the glowing casting-houses; overhead, a forest of drive-shafts and leather belts carries the power of the tide-mills to every bench.

From these floors come the machines that hold the island together: the tide-engines that keep the rings clear, the gearing of the elevators and the bridge-machinery, and — most prized of the Works' commissions — the ribbed frames, the brass-and-teak gondolas, and the lift-engines of the airships, which leave finished by barge and crane for the Airship Docks to be made into ships.

The Works are a knot of guilds, each with its hall and its jealously-kept methods; the greatest of the wrights, Hekaton, keeps a workshop here still, and the apprentices of every guild count it an honour to fetch and carry for him. Visitors are welcome in the long public galleries above the engine-floor, where the rhythm of the hammers and the slow turning of the great wheels is, by long report, strangely restful.