Charlie rose and began to undress gingerly. "You can stand up to make your toilet," he said, "which is more than the Pullman offers you."
They ate a cold canned supper and afterward, as they sat shivering, Jim said, "If we fail to locate the dam site, no one will have any sympathy with our troubles."
"We will find it," said Charlie with the calm certainty he never had lost. "Jupiter looks as big as a dinner plate down here. Sometimes when I look at the stars I wonder what is the use of this kind of work."
Jim looked up at the stars which seemed almost within hand touch. Their nearness was an unspeakable comfort to the two in the crevice. He spoke slowly but with unusual ease. Charlie Tuck had grown very near to him in the past few days.
"I've had a feeling," he said, "ever since we actually got down here and on the job, that I'm doing the thing I've always been intended to do. I don't know how I got that feeling because I've always lived in towns."
"I feel that way every time I go out exploring," answered Tuck. "I can stand the draughting board just so long and then I break loose. I suppose someone has got to do these jobs and there is always someone willing to take the responsibility. Kipling calls it being a Son of Martha. Do you know those verses?"
"No," said Jim. "I'd like to hear them."
Charlie chuckled. "Me reciting Kipling is like hearing a 'co-ed yell'—it's the only poem I know, though, and here goes. The Sons of Martha
'—say to the Mountains, Be ye removed! They say to the lesser floods, run dry!
Under their rods are the rocks reproved. They are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hilltops shake to their summits, then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts break loose,
They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work whenever they choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.
Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.'"
The two men sat in silence after Charlie had finished until he said: "If I were you I'd read Kipling a good deal. He's good food for a man of your type. People don't realize what their comforts cost. I hope that when I die it will be on a Son of Martha job. I'm built that way. My people were New Englanders, then middle west pioneers, and now here I am, still breaking the wilderness."