49
The looters and rioters were busy elsewhere. The pall of smoke overhead was growing bigger by the minute. Whoops and yells and war cries were getting closer. Soon a human wave of destruction would wash over this area, the same as had washed over everywhere else in the city. I had to complete my task before it reached me.
Grabbing the crank-handle, which resembled a giant cartwheel, I bent myself grimly to my work.
Turning that wheel was tough. It was a job for two men. My limbs were coated with sweat after only a few minutes of this hard labour. I used my full weight to drag the spoke-handles of the wheel down towards the canal towpath and repeated this several times. The sluice gate gave only millimetrically at first. After fifteen minutes I’d got the sluice gate fractionally open a
