ity,
where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of
white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big
skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs
apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless"
tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the
latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been
laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper.
After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more
sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.

At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern,
touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose without
comment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then the
little band filed silently down river under the stars.

Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing white
steam-clouds at regular intervals from his "meerschaum" pipe. After
twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of Canal
Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their
leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning
them to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed,
swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his
march at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the fact
that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night
silence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end of
the power-dam.

The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and
inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars.
Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet
rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels
caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at
the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him
a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the
liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic
a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for
it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another.
More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out
from the shoul