"Good! Tell your associates to finish dressing as quickly as possible and to meet me in the office."
"The office" was a little room just inside the entrance to the building.
It was a room where the foremen sat and chatted in the evenings.
"Put a double-hustle on, everyone," Tom called after Dill.
"Yes, sir."
Barely three minutes had passed when all of the six remaining foremen had assembled. Tom plunged instantly into a brief account of what had happened.
"It seems to me, sir—-" Dill began.
"Keep it to yourself, then, if you please," Tom interrupted him gently. "We haven't any time for opinions to-night. What we want is swift, intelligent work, and a lot of it."
Tom thereupon gave each man his directions.
"Now, each of you go to your own gangs in the camp," he added. "Wake what men you need and put 'em to work. If any of the men object to being taken from their cots in the night, just lift them out. Don't stand any nonsense. Let each foreman make it his business to know just what the men under him are doing."
One foreman was to take men with lanterns and go out carefully over every foot of the seawall. Another was to organize a beach patrol. Still another, with but two men, was to go into the town of Blixton and see if any tidings of Hazelton could be obtained there. To one foreman fell the task of searching carefully through camp before going to other work assigned to him.