ll, that doesn't matter. We're going to get what we're after and
that's the main thing. Let's go down to camp."

They rode down the winding trail that led from the upper terrace. The
remainder of the afternoon was spent in an inspection of the work. After
supper, their pipes lighted, they sat looking out over the valley.

"Engineering is a great business," Uncle Sid observed meditatively.

"Yes," Ralph assented, "so is anything, if you push it."

"I guess not." Uncle Sid chuckled. "I ran away to sea when I was twelve
years old. My education was got dancin' at a rope's end when the
captain's mess didn't sit well on his stomach." Uncle Sid paused, again
chuckled. "A rope's end makes a boy mighty observin.'"

"You didn't learn navigation that way, did you?"

"No-o." Uncle Sid pulled meditatively at his pipe. "A rope's end is also
mighty stimulatin' to the imagination. It struck me that I had got all I
needed. At the same time, I saw old sailors with bald heads an' gray
whiskers, still a dancin'. The only difference I could see between them
an' the captain was that the captain could squint at the sun through a
spyglass with a half moon hitched to it, an' tell the man at the wheel
to hold the ship's head nor'-nor'east."

"Then what?"

"Then? Oh, I just got me a nautical almanac and learned to squint too.
The first thing I knew I was mate, then first officer an' by squintin'
long enough I squinted myself on the quarter deck."

Ralph waited a moment, then spoke laughingly.

"I guess my rope's end wasn't so very different from yours, only I had
mine in college."

"You didn't run away to college, did you?"

"No, I didn't; but I had a gad flying around my heels, just the same.
After I got out of college, I was engaged as assistant to a famous
hydraulic engineer. He sent me into the mountains to make a preliminary
survey. There weren't many men as big as I was when I strapped a level
and a transit to my mule's back and started off. I was going to show
that old bomb-shell that he'd got a man worth having, and I wasn't going
to stop with him either." Ralph paused to give way to a reminiscent
chuckle.

"Well! I wish you could have seen those mountains as I saw them. Talk
about taking the starch out of a man! Why, Captain, you could have
wadded me up and drawn me through a finger ring like one of those
Arabian Nights shawls. There were mountains and mountains, and gulches
and gulches, precipices and canyons, and rushing