Everyone in the canal zone had heard of these immense shops to which the official alluded, for there a great amount of engineering work was undertaken. In such a colossal task as this building of a canal between Panama and Colon, between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the reader will readily comprehend that an enormous number of locomotives, steam diggers, and machinery of every sort and description was in constant operation, and that, like machinery all the world over, such implements break down on occasion and require repair. The works at Gorgona coped with all such matters, and was staffed by such keen engineers that they even did not stop at repairs of whatever description. There, in those sheds, engines were constructed, from the smallest bolt down to the heaviest crank shaft, according to the designs produced at the drawing offices at Gorgona. The workers on the canal had long since discovered that special machines were often required to deal with the special jobs they had in progress. And clever heads at Gorgona invented means to satisfy them. Witness the ingenious rail layer, without which the task of delving would have been much delayed; witness that other clever arrangement which did in seven minutes the work of a hundred men, and swept the dirt clear from a whole line of earth wagons.
"You've heard of those shops 'way over at Gorgona?" asked the official again.
"I have," Jim admitted. "I'm longing to see them."
"Then you shall, I promise. But, see here, about this job. A good man deserves a proper place for his knowledge and his energies; down there, at Gorgona, we've just turned out a gasolene rock driller that'll knock the other steam-driven concerns into the shade. I'm looking for a man to run it, one used to gasolene motors. Say, if I apply for you, sir, will you take the work?"
Jim looked round the circle before he replied, and almost smiled at the expression he caught on Harry's face. The genial fellow who had given him a day's instruction in the working of a hundred-ton steam digger did not look best pleased; but that was to be put down to his own keenness, to the keenness which he inherited in common with every white man labouring on the canal. For in Harry's eyes it was the machine which he himself ran which was helping the progress of the canal; it was the enormous mouthfuls of dirt which his digger tore from the soil that placed the undertaking nearer completion. And every man he coached in the task was something approaching a traitor if he abandoned that particular machine for another. Then, of a sudden, his face took on another expression.
"You ain't got no cause to think of me, young 'un," he said pleasantly. "I don't deny as I'd have liked to see you running a digger, 'cos it's me as taught you; but, then, I don't forget that you've shown that you know one of these gasolene motors right away from the piston to the crank shaft. You close with the offer if you like it; there'll be more dollars in it, I reckon."
He addressed the last remark to the official, who nodded acquiescence.
"Special work, special pay," he replied curtly. "We want a man, and we must be prepared to spend dollars on him. I offer a dollar more than digger rates. What's the answer?"
"Of course he takes it!" burst in Phineas eagerly. "It ain't in human nature to refuse advancement, and of course Jim'll take that motor. Do you want him yet awhile?"
"In a couple of weeks perhaps. We're not quite ready."