From the mills the cut timber was run out on elevated tramways and piled along the wharves. Ordinarily there was a wide space between the mills and the nearest pile of lumber. There was a provision, indeed, in the insurance policies, that it could not be piled nearer than two hundred feet without the payment of a higher premium; and if the piles should extend within fifty feet of the mills the rate mounted to an almost prohibitive point.
The yards were surrounded by water on three sides—on the fourth were the cottages of the labourers and of the other poorer residents of the town. Halloran had a choice, then, between piling the lumber close around the mills (there being already a considerable quantity in the yards) and either paying the higher rate of insurance or going without, or carting it off and renting outside land for storage, thus adding a new item to his expenses. Every spare moment between this day and the arrival of the first steamer was spent in looking over the yards and planning the arrangement so as to get the best advantage of the space.
It was on the second day after the departure of the steamers that Crosman burst into the office and cried:
“She's coming in—the Number Two! I saw her funnels over the sand-hills.”
His excitement was catching, and Halloran got up from his desk and looked out the window. Sure enough, there was the smoke, far out along the sky-line. A moment later, looking between the channel piers, he caught a glimpse of the steamer heading in toward the lighthouse.
Watchful eyes had already seen her from the cottages near the beach; and as man after man hurried over to the yards to get an early place in the lines, the news spread through Wauchung. These men did not know what it meant—Bigelow was a myth to them, known, if at all, merely as an employer of labour twenty miles up the lake—but there was the steamer, bringing in a cargo of lumber that must be discharged and piled, and this meant work. Soon she was entering the channel; and they could see her Captain standing on the wheel-house roof with a hand resting on the bell-pull. And while Halloran went over to the wharf to direct the work, Crosman was kept busy giving out time-checks and cant-hooks and sending man after man across the yards.
Then she was in the harbour, was slipping up to the wharf; the engine-room bell jingled, and the propeller churned the water; the lines were thrown out and caught by eager hands, and the Higginson No. 2 lay motionless at the wharf, her deck piled high with yellow hemlock and pine. The labourers swarmed over the rail and went at the work with the spirit of men who know what hunger means. The donkey-engines at each end of the deck rattled and clanked as the hoisting-spars were lowered over the cargo. And not a man on the ground, from Halloran down, but felt the impetus that the arrival of this first load of lumber had given to all Wauchung. Some of the men showed it by laughing easily, others by swearing easily, and now and then they would all break out into a song that would almost have shocked Jimmie McGinnis himself if he had been there to hear it—to the immortal air of
“My father and mother were Irish,
And I was Irish, too.”
They did not know that this song had been shouted by valiant fighters and workers in many tongues—sometimes to reputable words, oftener not—for centuries, nor did they care. It would not have interested them to hear that, thanks to its wonderful vitality, this same melody had served generations of students as “We won't go home till morning”; had swung thousands of wearied French soldiers along wild roads before Napoleon was born as “Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre”; had perhaps led white-clad swordsmen, with a lilt and rhythm that fairly lifted the feet, off to the taking of Jerusalem nearly a thousand years ago. And now here it was again, sung to disreputable words, but as truly as ever a shout of good-will and dauntless effort. Somebody had bucked the Old Gentleman—no matter who or how—and the Old Gentleman, through Mr. Halloran, was bucking back, was nearer than ever to winning. And when he should win, as win he must, there would be steady work and meat every day for the labourers of Wauchung. This was all they knew or cared. But was the spirit less honest and earnest than the spirit of those jack-booted Frenchmen or those white-clad crusaders? Allowing for the glamour of the past, for the shining mist that enlarges the old figures as their real outlines grow steadily fainter, were these hard-handed fellows, heaving the new lumber from the deck of the Number Two to the wharf, laughing and joking and swearing like pirates all the while, so different? Was there no romance here?