er in a
puzzled scowl.

"Oh," he said, "you mean to do it tonight?"

"Yes, sir. We don't get any sleep till every piece of that cribbing is
over at the annex, ready for business in the morning. Your sills are
laid--there's nothing in the way of starting those bins right up. This
ain't an all-night job if we hustle it."

The steamer was a big lake barge, with high bow and stern, and a long,
low, cargo deck amidships that was piled squarely and high with yellow
two-inch plank. Her crew had clearly been impressed with the need of
hurry, for long before she could be worked into the wharf they had rigged
the two hoists and got the donkey engines into running order. The captain
stood by the rail on the bridge, smoking a cigar, his hand on the
bell-pull.

"Where do you want it?" he called to Bannon.

"Right here, where I'm standing. You can swing your bow in just below the
bridge there."

The captain pulled the bell, and the snub-nosed craft, stirring up a whirl
of mud from the bottom of the river, was brought alongside the wharf.

"Where are you going to put it?" the captain called.

"Here. We'll clean this up as fast as we can. I want that cribbing all
unloaded tonight, sure."

"That suits me," said the captain. "I don't want to be held up here--ought
to pull out the first thing in the morning."

"All right, you can do it." Bannon turned to Peterson and Vogel (who had
just reached the wharf). "You want to rush this, boys. I'll go over and
see to the piling."

He hurried away, pausing at the office long enough to find the man sent by
the electric light company, and to set him at work. The arc lamps had been
placed, for the most part, where they would best illuminate the annex and
the cupola of the elevator, and there was none too much light on the
tracks, where the men were stumbling along, hindered rather than helped by
the bright light before them. On the wharf it was less dark, for the
lights of the steamer were aided by two on the spouting house. Before
seven o'clock Bannon had succeeded in getting two more lights up on poles,
one on each side of the track.

It was just at seven that the timbers suddenly stopped coming in. Bannon
looked around impatiently. The six men that had brought in the last stick
were disappearing around the corner of the great, shadowy structure that
shut off Bannon's view of the wharf. He waited for a moment, but no more
gangs appeared, and then he ran around the elevator over the p