Becker had not been aboard long before it was clear that Hiram had planned better than he knew. There is something about a saw in full career that the most blasé cannot resist. He stood watching it for some time. A huge wet and mud-laden log was hauled aboard, laid on the carriage, where steel teeth clenched it down. In a twinkling four side slabs came off and it was transformed into a square timber, clean and white, in strange contrast to the slimy thing it had been but a moment before. Then the whirling teeth began to travel through it with an ease that suggested a much softer material, laying out inch boards which disappeared below.
Captain Marianna brought him below to see the stock on hand, and it seemed to fill the bill, but as he was leaving our big motor attracted his attention. Becker was not the debonaire Lothario he affected to be when in New Orleans. Now sadly unkempt, it seemed to me that his great midriff exuded grease, but it might have been sweat.
He was greatly interested in learning how the big motor, originally intended for an air-plane, not only propelled a boat and ran a sawmill, but yanked in the logs, and hauled in our rigging.
He finally came over to where I stood trying my best to look bored and tired.
"Do you ever have any trouble with it?" he asked, jerkily pointing a pudgy thumb toward the motor.
"No-o-o—but of course it's got to be watched."
"I've got one over there running an ice machine, but I don't know whether its the nigger I've got running it, or whether it's overloaded, or no good, but it makes lots of trouble." I could see he wished to get some free technical instruction.
"It's likely your man doesn't know all about it," I led him on.