We'll only need the hoist at the spouting house. The
rest of it's just plain sliding down hill."

"But who'll run it?"

"I will. Pete, you get up on the spouting house and see that they're
started down. Max will stay over here and watch the piling. Now rush
it."

Half an hour had gone before the cable could be stretched from the
spouting house, high over the tracks, down to the elevator structure,
and before the hoisting engine could be got under steam. Meanwhile, for
the third time since five o'clock, the laborers stood about, grumbling
and growing more impatient. But at last it was all under way. The
timbers were hoisted lightly up the side of the spouting house, hooked
to the travelling block, and sent whirling down to Max's waiting hands,
to be snatched away and piled by the men. But compared with the other
method, it was slow work, and Bannon found that, for lack of employment,
it was necessary to let half of the men go for the night.

Soon, to the rattle of blocks and the tramping of feet and the calling
and shouting of men, was added the creak of the steamer's hoists, and
the groan of her donkey engines as her crew began the work of dumping
out the cribbing by hand and steam, on the cleared space on the wharf.
And then, when the last big stick had gone over, Peterson began sending
bundles of two-inch cribbing. Before the work was finished, and the last
plank from the steamer's cargo had been tossed on the pile by the annex,
the first faint color was spreading over the eastern sky, and the damp
of a low-country morning was in the air.

Bannon stopped the engine and drew the fire; Peterson and his crew
clambered to the ground, and Max put on his coat and waited for the two
foremen to come across the tracks. When they joined him, Bannon looked
sharply at him in the growing light.

"Hello, Max," he said; "where did you get that black eye?"

"That ain't much," Max replied. "You ought to see Briggs."

CHAPTER VI

When Bannon came on the job on Friday morning at seven o'clock, a group
of heavy-eyed men were falling into line at the timekeeper's window. Max
was in the office, passing out the checks. His sister was continuing her
work of the night before, going over what books and papers were to be
found in the desk. Bannon hung up his overcoat and looked through the
doorway at the square mass of the elevator that stood out against the
sky like some gigantic, unroofed barn. The walls rose nearly eighty f