This doubter was Lonny Bowles, whom the Pocomokian had cared for in the old warehouse hospital the night of the explosion. Bowles had quietly dogged the major’s steps over the work, in the hope of being recognized. At last the good-natured lineaments of the red-shirted quarryman fastened themselves upon the major’s remembrance.
“My dear suh!” he broke out, as he jumped down from a huge coping-stone and grasped Lonny’s hand. “Of co’se I remember you. I sincerely hope you’re all right again,” stepping back and looking him over with an expression of real pride and admiration.
“Oh yes, I’m purty hearty, thank ye,” said Bowles, laughing as he hitched his sleeves up his arms, bared to the elbow. “How’s things gone ’long o’ yerself?”
The major expressed his perfect satisfaction with life in its every detail, and was about to compliment Bowles on the wonderful progress of the work so largely due to his efforts, when the man at the hoisting-engine interrupted with, “Don’t stand there now lalligaggin’, Lonny. Where ye been this half hour? Hurry up with that monkey-wrench. Do you want this drum to come off?” Lonny instantly turned his attention to the work. When he had given the last turn to the endangered nut, the man said, “Who’s the duck with the bobtail coat, Lonny?”
“Oh, he’s one o’ the boss’s city gang. Fust time I see him he come inter th’ warehouse when we was stove up. I thought he was a sawbones till I see him a-fetchin’ water fur th’ boys. Then I thought he was a preach till he began to swear. But he ain’t neither one; he’s an out-an’-out ol’ sport, he is, every time, an’ a good un. He’s struck it rich up here, I guess, from th’ way he’s boomin’ things with them Leroy folks,”—which conviction seemed to be shared by the men around him, now that they were assured of the major’s identity. Many of them remembered the nankeen and bombazine suit which the Pocomokian wore on that fatal day, and the generally disheveled appearance that he presented the following morning. The present change in his attire was therefore the more incomprehensible.
During all this time, Sanford, with the assistance of Captain Joe and Caleb, was adjusting his transit, in order that he might measure for the committee the exact difference between the level shown on the plans and the level found in the concrete base. In this adjustment, the major, who had now joined the group, took the deepest interest, discoursing most learnedly, to the officers about him, upon the marvels of modern science, punctuating his remarks every few minutes with pointed allusions to his dear friend Henry, “that Archimedes of the New World,” who in this the greatest of all his undertakings had eclipsed all former achievements. The general listened with an amused smile, in which the whole committee joined before long.
Either General Barton’s practiced eye forestalled any need of the instrument, or Carleton had already fully posted him as to which side of the circle was some inches too high, for he asked, with some severity:—
“Isn’t the top of that concrete base out of level, Mr. Sanford?”
“Yes, sir; some inches too high near the southeast derrick,” replied Sanford promptly.
“How did that occur?”