Like many other pretty stories, however, it might not bear too close a scrutiny. We believe the notion of making shot by letting lead fall from a height is older than the date when Watts flourished. In the Watts story, too, we can find no reference to the essential tub of water at the base to cool the pellets. If they fell on to the hard ground before they were cold, they would be bruised and spoilt. At the same time a much more likely story is even more difficult to verify. It is to be found in some curious old book somewhere, no doubt, but so far we have to confess to an inability to trace it. We have the story, however, on the authority of one who has long been interested in shot-making, though he cannot indicate the source of his information. In the old time wars, when one of the historic castles, which many of our readers will explore during their annual outing, was the scene of a last desperate struggle, the besieged trusted for security to the difficulty which the enemy would find in getting across the moat running round the walls. Well, let us for a moment give our imagination free play, as though we would dispute with Sir Walter Scott the right to the premiership in the field of romance. There stands the brave old castle—not quite so old in those days as in these; in the fields around are a determined host preparing to storm it; inside its walls are the equally determined defenders, who know by the disposition of the enemy that the crisis is at hand. A little later and the besiegers are actually scaling the walls. They are met and driven back with horrible torture by men armed with boiling lead, which falls, in probably hundreds of separate pieces, into the water hissing and spitting below. Then, in the time to come, when the moat is cleared out, a number of more or less perfect pellets, in a spherical form, are found at the bottom, and the idea of shot-making is secured. This account, at any rate, gives us the indispensable water into which the metal must fall if it is not to be injured.
London from the shot tower.
However all this may be, here is the man hard at work manufacturing shot in a way which a recent generation certainly did not invent. Having got all we want concerning him, we will go out on to the parapet which runs round the outside of the tower, on a level with this top floor. As we open the door a breath of deliciously fresh wind sweeps in. The height is a giddy one, so giddy, in fact, that some people have positively refused to go outside and walk round the tower. It requires more nerve than one is perhaps prepared to admit, especially when, unaccustomed to be thus elevated above our fellows as we are, we feel the tower give a distinct lurch, and conjure up visions of being flung like a lacrosse ball, far away across the river to the embankment on the other side.
On a clear day the sight from the Shot Tower is one of the best in London. But it seldom is really clear in this mighty Babylon of ours, and, though we have made several pilgrimages to its summit, we have never seen more than a mile or so through the smoke-haze that hangs over the capital. Still one gets a panorama of a not inconsiderable portion of London life. Looking away north one of the first things noted in the distance is the Tit-Bits sky-sign.
