"From the outset I had determined to give Lancy no chance for fault-finding, but to have as little to do with him as I possibly could.
"Little by little our beam-trusses pushed out from each bank, and the gap between them grew narrower.
"One thing that interested me especially at first was the wild bees. For miles back into the hills their nests lined the walls of the gorge. Millions of them made it their thoroughfare to and from the flower-covered plains below us. Particularly at morning and night their hum, echoing through the ravine and mingling with the murmur of the river, sounded like the drone of distant machinery.
"These bees were black and small; but they made up in fierceness for what they lacked in size. Their stings were far more painful and poisonous than those of our bees here. Some of us, myself included, learned this by experience; and we didn't need more than one lesson.
"By the middle of June the ends of the opposite beams were about fifty feet apart.
"One hot morning, between ten and eleven, I was reaming out a rivet-hole in the tip of the last beam. I was feeling out of sorts that forenoon. Lancy had given his orders to me gruff and short, though, as a matter of fact, he was probably just as gruff with everybody else. But when you're looking for trouble, you know, you don't have much trouble finding it.
"I straddled the beam, my feet almost touching under it. It was hot in the unclouded sun, and the air was full of tropical scents. Insects hummed round me. Bright-colored butterflies floated by. Now and then a flock of shrieking birds swept up the gorge. On the steel behind me a dozen men were busy.
"I had almost finished the hole, when my ears caught a humming, gradually growing louder. I looked down. Several yards below hung a black mass about as big as a nail-keg. It was a nest of wild bees swarming.
"At first I felt curious, interested. Then I noticed that the bunch was rising directly toward me, and I began to feel alarmed, as I remembered their fearful stings. If they attacked me I should be in a bad fix.
"Slowly, with a revolving motion and an intense, spiteful sszzzzz-ing, the irregular mass kept rising. Its center seemed so solid that I wondered how the wings had room to beat. Its outside frayed off into separate bees, drawn inward by a common attraction.