Bruce smiled grimly but made no reply. He had been thinking the same thing himself.
Bruce often had watched an ant trying to move a bread-crumb many times its size, pushing with all its feet braced, rushing it with its head, backing off and considering and going at it again. Failing, running frantically around in front to drag and pull and tug. Trying it this way and that, stopping to rest for an instant then tackling it in fresh frenzy—and getting nowhere, until, out of pity, he gave it a lift.
Bruce felt that this power-plant was his bread-crumb, and tug and push and struggle as he would he could not make it budge. The thought, too, was becoming a conviction that Jennings, who should have helped him push, was riding on the other side.
“I wouldn’t even mind his riding,” Bruce said to himself ironically, “if he wouldn’t drag his feet.”
He was hoping with all his heart that the much discussed cross-arms would hold, for when the wires were up and stretched across the river he would feel that the bread-crumb had at least moved.
When Bruce crossed to the work the next morning, the “come-along” was clamped to the transmission wire and hooked to the block-and-tackle. Naturally Jennings had charge of the stretching of the wire and he selected Smaltz as his assistant.
All the crew, intensely interested in the test, stood around as Jennings, taciturn and sour and addressing no one but Smaltz, puttered about his preparations.
Finally he cried:
“Ready-O!”