though nothing whatever had happened. I thought of the men I had seen
that day. How crassly ignorant they seemed. And yet in a few brief hours
they had paralyzed all that the tower had planned, reduced it all to
silence, nothing. Could it be that such upheavals as these meant an end
to the rule of the world from above, by the keen minds of the men at the
top? Was that great idol which had been mine for so many glad years,
that last of my gods, Efficiency, beginning to rock a little now upon
its deep foundations?

What could these men ever put in its place? I recalled the words of an
old dock watchman with whom I had talked the evening before. From the
days of the Knights of Labor he had been through many strikes, and all
had failed, he told me. His dog sat there beside him, a solemn old red
spaniel, looking wistfully into his master's face. And with somewhat the
same expression, looking out on the moonlit Hudson, the old striker had
said slowly:

"Before these labor leaders will do half of what they say--a pile of
water will have to go by."

A sharp slight sound behind me jerked me suddenly out of my thoughts. I
jumped as though at a shot. How infernally tight my nerves were getting.
The sound had come from a mere piece of paper blown by the wind--a rough
salt wind which now blew in from the ocean as though impatient of all
this stillness. From below came a lapping and slapping of waves. Above
me a derrick mast growled and whined as it rocked. And now as I looked
about me all those densely crowded derricks moved to and fro against the
sky. I had never felt in this watery world such deep restlessness as
now.

"I wonder if you'll ever stop heaving," I thought half angrily. "I
wonder what I'll be like when you finally get through with me. When will
you ever let me stand pat and get things settled for good and all? When
stop this endless starting out?"

CHAPTER XIII

What could such men as these raise up in place of the mighty life they
had stilled?

At first only chaos.

As I went along the waterfront I felt a confused disappointment. Deep
under all my questioning there had been a vague subconscious hope that I
would see a miracle here. I had looked for an army. I saw only mobs of
angry men. They were "picketing" the docks, here making furious rushes
at men suspected of being "scabs," there clustering quickly around some
talker or some man who was reading a paper, again drifting up into the
streets of te