From the breakers the pulpy mass left the engine house for a time, and sojourned in the bleaching tanks beneath. It flowed down through pipes to a subterranean chamber, where the air was sharp with the smell of chemicals, and twelve great, gaping wells ranged round a narrow passage way. Here came the “half stuff” to repose on beds of Delabole slate, and endure the operations of the bleach for half a day or more. Then the liquid was drained off, the snow-white, solid masses forked out on to little trolleys, and so returned to Ned Dingle in the engine house. Again it revolved until the bleach was thoroughly washed out of it, for it is a principle of great paper making that the less chemicals, the better the pulp; and now perfected, washed, broken and bleached, the material came to the beater for final dissection. The beaters’ engines were oval in form and resembled the breakers. They stood upon the lower floor of the engine house, and each communicated directly with the breaker above it, and the vat room far beneath. From final washing, the pulp flowed directly to Mr. Dingle, and, as before, revolved, and was churned by a paddle-wheel set with fine knives. Ned controlled it, and on his judgment depended the quality of the pulp that would presently flow down to Kellock, Knox, and the other vatmen. He was explaining the process to a young man, who had just been promoted to his assistant from the breakers above. “It’s got to meet every test that experience can bring against it, Jacob,” he said. “And if it did not, I should mighty soon hear of it.” He regulated the churning wheel with a footplate, and presently, satisfied that the mass, which was now like fine cream after revolving in the beating tank for many hours, had reached perfection, Ned took a test to satisfy himself. Two hand-bowls, or dippers, he lifted, scooped up a few ounces of the pulp, then mixed it with pure water, and flung the liquid backwards from one dipper to the other, pouring off and adding fresh water until what was left in his bowl resembled water barely stained with soap. The pulp was now so diluted that it needed sharp eyes to see anything in the water at all; but Dingle, taking it to the window, set it slowly dribbling away over the edge of the bowl, and as it flowed, the liquid revealed tiny fragments and filaments all separate, and as fine as spider’s thread. The spectacle of these attenuated fibres of cotton told the beaterman that his engine was ready and the pulp sufficiently fine. The masses of rag, once linen and lace, and every sort of textile fabric woven of cotton, had become reduced to its limit of tenuity, and was now far finer stuff than in the cotton pod of its creation. It had been beaten into countless millions of fibrils, long and short, and all so fine as to need sharpest scrutiny of human eye to distinguish them.