One morning at a little before ten we went up into the Clock Tower in
the Rue de l'Horloge. This tower, together with the belfry of St
Sauveur, is the highest point of the ancient town that crowns Dinan's
rock. Up and up inside the turret we mounted, through lofts and empty
chambers and timbered garrets, till the stone gave way to slate and wood
and lead, and the soft tock-tocking of the clock itself began to sound.
The clock is in a room with a locked and glass-panelled door, a machine
of brass on an iron table, with a slow escapement, compensated
pendulums, and the white hemp ropes of the weights disappearing through
a hole in the floor to the stories below. On the iron table stood an
oilcan, and the small indicator-clock showed a few minutes to ten. A
circular piercing in the wall gave us light, and light also streamed
down through the opening where the wooden ladder rose to the upper
platform. We peered through the glass door, while "Tock-tock, tock-tock"
spoke the unhurrying clock....
Then on the verge of ten a large vane slipped and dissolved itself into
a mist, to the murmur of moving wheels. Four times on an open third
sounded the warning tenor bell overhead; and then the twin vane slipped
and dissolved. There was a clang that shook the timbers inside their
skin of lead....
"Come along, Jennie!" cried Derry, making a dash for the belfry, while
again the bell thundered out....
It was two short flights up, but Madge and I were after them in time to
hear the last two strokes. The structure still trembled with an enormous
humming. This lasted for minutes, wave succeeding wave, crests and
troughs of lingering sound, diminishing but seeming as if they would
never quite cease. Our eyes sought one another's eyes expectantly as we
waited for the last murmur of the hymning metal....
Then light voices floated up from the street again, and the noises of
the town could be heard once more.
"Just look at the view!" said Derry, hanging half over the rail.
But I wanted a rope round my waist before I approached that rail. A head
for heights is not one of the things of which I boast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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