Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/172

160 could n't make the stroke. It was choked with condensed steam. And Larsen groaned as if he were watching a deathbed.

"However, it got to work after a little and began to lift. I felt mighty grateful to Larsen. I took it that if he had n't been working, this way, out of any loyalty to Nolan—or with any hope of getting a raise of wages—it must be that he had some sort of affectionate interest in me and my success with the job. And when we were drying out our clothes together, in front of one of the furnaces, I tried to express my gratitude, you know.

"He took it in silence. He kept going out, every now and then, to look at the water in the shaft, in a sort of angry bewilderment that ignored me altogether. I tried to jolly him out of his bad mood, by telling him about an engineer who got his back up at things, that way—and lost a leg before he regained his temper. Larsen did n't wait to hear about it. He simply walked back to his pumps without paying any attention to me whatever. And I was wise enough to see that he had no more personal loyalty for me than he had for Nolan.

"That was lesson number three. "I 'm nearly done now. Just a minute.

"When the day shift arrived, I was 'cross-eyed' with lack of sleep, but the square dam was empty and the pumps were beginning to draw water from the shaft itself. I took a final look around, and warned the superintendent to watch the wooden cofferdam, because