aited,
ready at any time for the word to go ahead. A dozen of them were lounging
about the brick-paved space in front of the battery of boilers when Bannon
opened the door, and they sprang to their feet as they read his errand in
his face.

"Steam up," he said. "We'll be ready as soon as you are."

There was the accumulated tension of a week of inactivity behind these
men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires were
burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the draughts
roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing out of the tall
chimney. Every man in the room, even the wretchedest of the dripping
stokers, had his eyes on the steam gauges, but for all that the water
boiled, and the indicator needles crept slowly round the dials, and at
last the engineer walked over and pulled the whistle cord.

Hitherto they had marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill
note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was
not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top
of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses
over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been
forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed lest they should
be in the way, had been waiting days for that signal, and they came
streaming into the elevator almost before the blast had died away.

Page's superintendent was standing beside Bannon and Pete by the foot of
the main drive. "Well," he said, "we're ready. Are you?"

Bannon nodded and turned to a laborer who stood near. "Go tell the
engineer to go ahead." The man, proud as though he had just been promoted,
went out on the run.

"Now," said Bannon, "here's where we go slow. All the machinery in the
house has got to be thrown in, one thing at a time, line shafts first and
then elevators and the rest of it. Pete, you see it done up top. I'll look
out for it down here. See that there's a man to look at each bearing at
least once in three minutes, and let me know if it gets warm."

It took a long time to do it, but it had to be done, for Bannon was
inflexible, but at last everything in elevator, annex, and spouting house
that could turn was turning, and it was reported to Bannon. "Now," he
said, "she's got to run light for fifteen minutes. No--" he went on in
answer to the superintendent's protest; "you're lucky I didn't say two
hours. It's the bigge