The steady beat of the waves lulled us as if we were still in the train...
AT THE MACHINE
'Here's a new mate for you, Naumenko!' said Fedorko, the shift foreman, leading me over to an elderly worker who was busy adjusting two moulding machines.
The worker turned round. He was over fifty. Tall and grey, wearing a rough homespun shirt with short sleeves, he looked in surprise at Fedorko.
'Show him the ropes,' the foreman said, nodding at me. 'You'll get the average while you're instructing.'
'Now look here, Alexei Grigorievich! Put him with someone else!' the old man protested.
But the foreman interrupted him, waving his arms:
'You've got to do it, Naumenko! You're an old operator and it's your duty to teach the youngsters.'
And the foreman vanished behind a wall of empty iron mould-boxes.
We were left alone. Naumenko eyed me sourly. Evidently it would have suited him far better to mould alone, than to bother with a pupil and have to answer for his work.
When the foreman was gone, my teacher spat deliberately at the ground and said to the moulders working behind the barrier opposite: 'Just my luck! First they give me a drunkard to put right, now I've got to teach milksops!'
The men laughed. One of them, tall and thin, with close-cropped hair and dark prominent cheek-bones, looked like a Mongol. The other, with sharp, prickly eyes, was short. He went on packing his mould and said: 'Not half, Uncle Vasya, you certainly do pick 'em!'
'But I mean it!' My teacher complained to his neighbours. 'Things were going fine today, I thought I'd have fifty moulds ready by dinner-time, and now I'll have to start again from scratch.' And turning to me he asked gruffly: 'What are you looking down in then mouth for? What's your name?'
'Vasily Mandzhura.'
'Hey, what are you moaning about, Uncle Vasya, you've got a namesake! You'll be able to celebrate your name-day together, think how much you'll save!' shouted the nimble little man with sharp eyes, working fast at his mould.
'Ever worked 'em?' Naumenko asked, nodding towards the machines.
'Never seen one before. I always used to work on the moulding floor, I didn't have anything to do with machines.'
'Oho, Uncle Vasya, you've got an expert on artistic casting!' cried the sharp-eyed worker. 'He'll soon be teaching you to cast sculptures in your old age!'
'Where was it you worked on a moulding floor I wonder?' Naumenko asked with evident curiosity.
I realized that hand moulding was valued much more highly here than machine-work. I had to relate how I had come to be in this town.
Naumenko heard me out patiently.
'All right, we've done enough chin-wagging,' he said at last. 'Get to your place!' And he nodded to the left- hand machine.
I had to make my way to the machine along a narrow passage past a tall stove, nearly the height of a man, which stood between the two machines. Also between the two machines stood a deep box of special moulding sand, which the men here called 'mixture.' On my left and on Uncle Vasya's right towered a wall of empty iron mould-boxes piled one on top of the other.
My feet sinking in the dry sand I went up to the machine. There was a babbitt model of some kind of bush fitted to it.
'You take the bottom, understand?' Naumenko called to me. 'These bushes are called 'sausages.' You'll pack the bottom and I'll do the top. Watch and see how it's done.'
At first I could not take my eyes off the machine. I pulled the mysterious iron bars sticking out at the corners and touched the two gleaming slippery conical bolts soldered to the model.
'Hi, youngster, look this way!' Naumenko shouted angrily.
With a swift heave he planted a gleaming iron frame with wing-nuts at the sides on similarly gleaming pins, then without looking round, he took a mould-box off the back row, placed it in the frame and deftly tightened the screws. When the screws held the box firmly in the frame, Uncle Vasya took a bag off a shelf and shook it over the model. The babbitt 'sausages' were powdered with an even coating of sand. Still without looking round, my instructor dipped his hand in the box and, taking a handful of the mixture, sprinkled it over the model.
The next moment Naumenko had a shovel in his hands. He plunged it into the heap of sand that lay between us and began tossing the sand into the mould. Steam rose from the scattered heap. Apparently the sand had not yet cooled from yesterday's casting.
I watched him closely, trying to remember every movement.
Naumenko smoothed the damp, hot sand with his gnarled but supple hands, picked up a short tamper and started ramming the sand down.
The muscles rippled in Naumenko's rugged old arms. The sharp wooden wedge on the end of the tamper plunged into the sand with such violence it seemed Naumenko wanted to smash the machine, or at least drive it through the floor.
The tamper crushed and forced the sand into the grooves of the model. More and more sand went into the mould-box, until it was hard as a cart-track. Naumenko went over the uneven surface of the mould with a square tamper, removed the tin top and levelled off the mould with an iron ruler. Then with a long vent wire he pricked the ventilation holes. After tapping the bottom of the mould with a mallet to loosen the model in its sandy casing, Naumenko with a deft swing gently raised the packed mould with its iron frame on the four corner bars. For about a minute, my instructor changed from energetic pounding to gentle, cautious, almost delicate movements, while he took the model out of the sand.
The rounded babbitt bushes of the model had done their work, leaving a clean nest for the future casting in the tightly-packed sand.
With a' hook Naumenko made a groove in the sand for the pouring lip. Before I noticed where he had taken it from, a rubber hose-pipe with a brass nozzle, like the nozzle of a soda siphon, appeared in my instructor's hands. Naumenko pressed the lever on the nozzle and a stream of compressed air hissed over the mould. After cleaning the frame, he tossed the hose away behind the machine.
'Now we'll set it. Follow me,' he said.
With an effort he lifted the rather heavy mould-box in its frame off the machine. Holding it in front of him, he ran quickly to the moulding floor.
Four moulds that Uncle Vasya had packed before I came already stood on the dry sand of the moulding floor, behind our machines. The lower half of a fifth mould lay like a pillow on the soft sand. In it there were four cores that would form the holes in the iron 'sausages.'
Treading gently, Naumenko walked to the fifth mould and covered it with the moulded top half that II had just seen him make on the machine. The smooth, black-leaded pins of the upper frame fitted tightly into the holes of the lower frame, so that the upper mould rested exactly over the lower mould, joining the channels along which the iron would flow, and the edges of the future castings.
Although everything I had just seen was new to me, the experience I had already gained helped me to imagine how the dry cores were neatly encased in the grooves of the upper mould, and how the finished iron 'sausages' would slip out of the mould after casting. And II pictured at once those important parts of a machine which at harvest-time would ply to and fro over the broad fields of our country. And again I felt glad that I had chosen such an interesting and skilled trade.
Meanwhile, Uncle Vasya, making sure not to shift the mould, carefully unscrewed the frame, lifted it, took it apart and threw me the bottom half.
'Catch!' he shouted.
The rather heavy iron frame was hard to catch without practice. Using both hands, I managed to grab it just
