The clockmaker’s test

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

For three months, Elias had climbed the tower before sunrise, carrying his tools through the sleeping streets. At noon, with the square crowded below, he set the pendulum free. The mechanism gave only a dry click, no louder than a seed striking glass. Elias held one palm beneath the great brass wheel, as if the whole machine might fall into it.

Then the teeth caught. A shiver passed through the wooden case. Tick. Tick. The silence withdrew to the rafters.

When the hammer began to rise, Elias turned his face away from the bell. The first note struck, and dust jumped from the beams. A cheer climbed the stairwell. His assistant seized his sleeve, but Elias bent over the mechanism and tightened a screw that did not need tightening. Only when the clock began its second minute did he step to the window. The people below were waving their hats. Elias lifted his blackened hands, stared at them as though they belonged to another man, and laughed.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to show Elias’s reaction as the tower clock is tested. Support your answer with references to the passage.