Page:Ralph Paine--The Steam-Shovel Man.djvu/61

 "Please lead me to it," gratefully cried Walter. "I guess I can live on twenty cents an hour until something better turns up."

"Good for you," said the unruffled gentleman. "I am Mr. Naughton, in charge of the dynamite. We use eight hundred thousand pounds a month on the canal. I have a ship to unload, and the negroes have been panicky since the explosion this morning. Several of them quit me, and I guess they are running yet."

Walter shied like a frightened colt, and stammered with sudden loss of enthusiasm:

"A whole s-ship-load of d-dynamite? You w-want me to help handle it?" Then he grinned as his sense of humor overtook his fright. He had just fled from Colon at sight of General Quesada and his friends. This was hopping from the frying-pan into the fire with a vengeance.

"What if I drop a box of it?" he asked.

"I am not hiring you to drop it," was the pensive answer of Mr. Naughton, as he flicked a bit of soot from his white serge coat and caressed his neatly trimmed brown beard. "I