"Here's yer cement," muttered the scowling Dan Jaggers, passing a rough
ball of the stuff to young Benson.

"Is this the best you have?" asked Jack, eyeing the cement with disfavor.

"Yes," growled Dan, "and it's plenty good enough."

"I'd call it too dry," replied Jack, quietly.

"Are you bossing this job all the way through?" demanded Joshua Owen,
angrily, stepping forward. "Mr. Farnum, Mr. Pollard, if these boys are
to have charge of this work, I may as well stop."

"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Farnum, coining forward.

"This younker is grumbling about the red lead cement," snapped the
irate foreman.

"What's the complaint, Benson?" asked the boatyard owner.

"No complaint, Mr. Farnum," Jack answered, quickly. "Only, I've got to
make the joint fast with red lead cement, and it seemed to me that this
stuff is too dry. If I use it, it won't fill out smoothly enough. It's
dry and crumbly, and I'm afraid the joint would be very defective."

"Nothing of the sort!" snapped Joshua Owen. "Boy, you've no business
trying to do a man's work, anyway. Give me that cement, and I'll make
the joint fast myself."

"All right," nodded Benson, stepping back. He started to pass the
chunk of cement to the foreman, but Mr. Farnum quickly took it from
him, then cast a look upward. Asa Partridge, the yard superintendent,
a man past fifty, stood on the platform deck, looking down through
the open manhole.

"Come down here, Mr. Partridge," hailed the yard's owner, while Joshua
Owen's scowl became deeper than ever. "Mr. Partridge, Benson says
this cement is too dry to make a joint tight with. Owen says it isn't.
Who wins the bet?" the owner finished, laughingly.

Asa Partridge, a man of long experience in steam-fitting, took the chunk
of cement, examining it carefully, then picked it to pieces before he
rejoined dryly:

"Why, the boy wins, of course. Any apprentice ought to know that cement
as dry as this stuff can't make a tight joint."

"Isn't there some better cement than this around?" called out Mr. Farnum.

"If there isn't," volunteered the superintendent, "I can send you over
plenty. But the use of such stuff as that would leave some joints
loose, and make a breakdown of the boat's machinery certain."

"You see, Owen," spoke the yard's owner, quietly, turning to the foreman,
"you're letting your dislike for these boys spoil your value here as
foreman."

"I've stood all I'm going to stand here," shoute