"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