“Naw,” replied Dennis awkwardly after a time, feeling himself the centre of a fire of curious observations and solicitation.
“Well, yuh will if yuh ever git ’em—haw! haw!” this from a waggish lout, a bricklayer who had previously not spoken. The group in the lock was large. “It comes from them lettin’ the pressure be put on or took off too fast. It twists yer muscles all up, an’ does sumpin’ to yer nerves. Yuh’ll know it if yuh ever git it.”
“Member Eddie Slawder?” called another gaily. “He died of it over here in Bellevue, after they started the Fourteenth Street end. Gee, yuh oughta heerd him holler! I went over to see him.”
Good news, indeed! So this was his introduction to the tunnel, and here was a danger not commented on by Cavanaugh. In his dull way McGlathery was moved by it. Well, he was here now, and they were forcing open the door at the opposite side of the lock, and the air pressure had not hurt him, and he was not killed yet; and then, after traversing a rather neatly walled section of tunnel, albeit badly littered with beams and plates and bags of cement and piles of brick, and entering another lock like the first and coming out on the other side—there, amid an intricate network of beams and braces and a flare of a half dozen great gasoline lamps which whistled noisily, and an overhanging mass of blackness which was nothing less than earth under the great river above, was Cavanaugh, clad in a short red sweater and great rubber boots, an old yellowish-brown felt hat pulled jauntily over one ear. He was conversing with two other foremen and an individual in good clothes, one of those mighties—an engineer, no doubt.
Ah, how remote to McGlathery were the gentlemen in smooth fitting suits! He viewed them as you might creatures from another realm.
Beyond this lock also was a group of night workers left over from the night before and under a strange foreman (ditchers, joiners, earth carriers, and steel-plate riveters), all engaged in the rough and yet delicate risk of forcing and safeguarding a passage under the river, and only now leaving. The place was full. It was stuffy from the heat of the lamps, and dirty from the smear of the black muck which was over everything. Cavanaugh spied Dennis as he made his way forward over the widely separated beams.
“So here ye arr! These men are just after comin’ out,” and he waved a hand toward the forward end of the tunnel. “Git in there, Dennis, and dig out that corner beyond the post there. Jerry here’ll help ye. Git the mud up on this platform so we can git these j’ists in here.”
McGlathery obeyed. Under the earthy roof whose surface he could see but dimly at the extreme forward end of the tunnel beyond that wooden framework, he took his position. With a sturdy arm and a sturdy back and a sturdy foot and leg, he pushed his spade into the thick mud, or loosened it with his pick when necessary, and threw it up on the crude platform, where other men shoveled it into a small car which was then trundled back over the rough boards to the lock, and so on out. It was slow, dirty, but not difficult work, so long as one did not think of the heavy river overhead with its ships and its choppy waves in the rain, and the gulls and the bells. Somehow, Dennis was fearfully disturbed as to the weight of this heavy volume of earth and water overhead. It really terrified him. Perhaps he had been overpersuaded by the lure of gold? Suppose it should break through, suppose the earth over his head should suddenly drop and bury him—that dim black earth overhead, as heavy and thick as this he was cutting with his shovel now.
“Come, Dennis, don’t be standin’ there lookin’ at the roof. The roof’s not goin’ to hurt ye. Ye’re not down here to be lookin’ after the roof. I’ll be doin’ that. Just ye ‘tend to yer shovelin’.”
It was the voice of Cavanaugh near at hand. Unconsciously McGlathery had stopped and was staring upward. A small piece of earth had fallen and struck him on the back. Suppose! Suppose!