“Here’s the book. Look for yourself.”
Macmillan took the book, rapidly thumbed the pages, and then swore softly. “I didn’t think it was in you, young man,” he declared. “Why, the regular fellow often takes two days on the same job.”
“It’s really a simple matter, once you get the hang of it,” Nash said modestly. “Anything else you want me to do?”
Macmillan reflected a moment, his cold eyes traveling from Nash’s muddy boots to the slouch hat that covered his brown hair. It was a critical, impersonal glance that one might bestow upon a piece of interesting and complicated machinery. Nash realized he was being weighed in the balance. The subforeman was surprised, but did not want to betray his feelings; finally he said, in a matter-of-fact tone:
“Hooker left orders that we were to test a length of the finished conduit to-day. Suppose you could attend to it?”
“Certainly,” Nash replied, without hesitation.
“Very well, then. You’ll find a gang of wops a quarter of a mile down the line, awaiting orders. You hurry down and start things. I’ll happen along presently—soon as I get this confounded shovel to working right, and help you out.”
Satisfied that Macmillan’s opinion of him was an agreeable one, Nash hurried away, and soon reached the finished stretch of glistening concrete. Here a group of laborers were resting. Nash gave out his orders, and instantly the men were running this way and that, preparing for the test.
Hundreds of sandbags had been conveniently placed, and these were dumped into the conduit, damming it for a length of several hundred feet. Into this improvised basin a stream of water was turned. On all concrete work a certain amount of seepage and percolation is naturally expected, and it is to determine the exact amount that these tests are made.
Superintending the placing of the sandbags at each end of the finished section of the conduit, Nash did not examine closely the walls until the first water began to pour from the huge nozzle. Standing on the cement floor, protected by a slicker and hip boots, which he had borrowed from one of the men, he unintentionally struck the steel-nosed pole he carried against the white wall.