ers naphtha-lights
guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
the day shift came to relieve us.

And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one.

It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention.

Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
I fairly lost my temper.

"What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
Hopkins there?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
it's the only one."

But he grabbed my arm.

"Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up.

Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
crane set off at a tear back.

"Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
yelled, and made a spring for a ladder.

The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place.
By that time I was halfway up t