And in the end Cap'n Sproul allowed himself to be persuaded.
But it was scarcely persuasion that did it.
It was this plaintive remark of the foreman: "Are you goin' to stand by and see Gideon Ward do us, and then give you the laugh?"
Therefore the Cap'n buttoned his blue coat tightly and trudged up to where the committee was busy with the sheets of brown paper, weighting them with stones so that the July breeze could not flutter them away.
Starks, Carthage, and Salem made but passable showing. They seemed to feel that the crowd took but little interest in them. The listless applause that had greeted them in the parade showed that.
Then, with a howl, half-sullen, half-ferocious, Vienna trundled old Niagara to the reservoir, stuck her intake pipe deep in the water, and manned her brake-beams. To the surprise of the onlookers her regular foreman took his station with the rest of the crew. Uncle Brad Trufant, foreman emeritus, took command. He climbed slowly upon her tank, braced himself against the bell-hanger, and shook his cane in the air.
"Look at me!" he yelled, his voice cracking into a squall. "Look at me and remember them that's dead and gone, your fathers and your grands'rs, whose old fists used to grip them bars right where you've got your hands. Think of 'em, and then set your teeth and yank the 'tarnal daylights out of her. Are ye goin' to let me stand here—me that has seen your grands'rs pump—and have it said that old Niag'ry was licked by a passul of knittin'-work old-maids, led by an elephant and a peep-show man? Be ye goin' to let 'em outsquirt ye? Why, the wimmen-folks of Vienny will put p'isen in your biscuits if you go home beat by anything that Smyrna can turn out. Git a-holt them bars! Clench your chaws! Now, damye, ye toggle-j'inted, dough-fingered, wall-eyed sons of sea-cooks, give her tar—give—her—tar!"
It was the old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna seemed to endorse his opinion.
With the foreman marking time with "Hoomp!—hoomp!" they began to surge at the bars, arms interlaced, hands, brown and gristly, covering the leather from end to end. The long, snaking hose filled and plumped out with snappings.
Uncle Trufant flung his hat afar, doubled forward, and with white hair bristling on his head began to curse horribly. Occasionally he rapped at a laggard with his cane. Then, like an insane orchestra-leader, he sliced the air about his head and launched fresh volleys of picturesque profanity.