When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations only a
rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the
light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two
men on the summit. They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that
is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the
sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the
other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting
and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on
the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of
the day. Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely
visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve--a
timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining--
the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a
despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.
A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black,
with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve.
The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which
radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much
daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the primum
mobile of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless
being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance,
with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man. The
isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a
creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness
of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had
nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.
What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of
it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served
vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine
from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam
threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in
a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon
himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes
around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly
necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom
compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his
Plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of
his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line
between agriculture and him.