The foreman looked a little pitifully at the concrete section.
"That last pouring'll go out like a snow bank, Mr. Manning."
Jim nodded. "Dam builders luck, Fritz. Get busy." He hurried into a telephone booth, even in the stress of the moment smiling ruefully as he remembered the complaint at the hearing. The booths had been too well built. Jim's predecessor had been a government man of the old school in just one particular. Honest to his heart's core, he still could not understand the need of economy when working for Uncle Sam.
"Have you heard from Iron Skull?" Jim asked the operator.
"He ought to be here now, Mr. Manning," she replied. "I sent the car over to the kitchen."
"You are all right, Miss Agnes," said Jim. "Tell Dr. Emmet to be near the telephone. I don't like the looks of this."
Jim hung up the receiver, pulled off his coat and hurried out to the edge of the concrete section. A derrick was being spun along the cableway, just above the excavation. A man was standing on the great hook from which the derrick was suspended. Men were clambering through the heavy sand up out of the excavation. The man on the edge of the pit who was holding the guide rope attached to the swinging derrick was caught in the rush of workmen. He tripped and dropped the rope, then ran after it with a shout of warning. For a moment the derrick spun awkwardly.
The man in the tower rang a hasty signal and the operator of the cableway reversed with a sudden jerk that threw the derrick from the hook. The man on the hook clung like a fly on a thread. The derrick crashed heavily down on the excavation edge, and slid to the bottom, carrying with it a great sand slide that caught two men as it went.
Jim gasped, "My God! I hate a derrick!" and ran down into the excavation, the foreman at his heels. Men turned in their tracks and wallowed back after Jim.