"You fellows can laugh, if you see anything funny in it," stated Charley reproachfully. "You wouldn't if you were me. You lit on the sand or water, but I landed broadside on a slab of rock. Well, there's no use trying to catch Clarence. He's singing 'Home, Sweet Home,' with four feet. I guess we are as near the camp as we are Jupiter, so we might as well go ahead."
So ahead they marched, looking more like a trio of hoboes than possible investors in a big enterprise. A walk of a few miles brought them in sight of a cluster of white tents, and they hastened their steps, knowing that their destination was not far ahead. They paused at the first tent, the largest of the cluster, and evidently the eating tent, for they could see through the open flap two long tables with rude seating benches running down the middle, and a heap of tin dishes on a table in one corner. Outside a big, powerful, sweating negro was kneading bread on a dirty-looking bench, upon which a protruding stove-pipe from the tent was sending down fine flakes of soot.
"Mister Murphy's dun fudder up the road apiece by the machine," he informed them in reply to their questions. "Be you gentlemen going to stay for dinner?"
They told him that they were not sure as yet, and hurried up the road, eager to be away from the odors of the camp.
"Golly," exclaimed Chris, "did you-alls notice de bench dat nigger was makin' bread on? I'll bet dar was a solid inch ob dirt on de top ob hit. Dat nigger's been scaling fish, chopping up meat, and making bread on dat same bench for de past six months widout washin' hit up once. Huh, if I was his boss I'd give him a licking for sho'."
A few minutes' walk brought them in sight of the big steam shovel, which was doing the work of two hundred men with wheelbarrows. It looked simple enough, a kind of short steel car, resting upon sections of railroad track. Upon the car was mounted, on a kind of ratchet work of iron, a swinging steel platform, from which projected out a long tapering steel boom, at the end of which dangled from wire ropes a huge steel bucket with wicked looking big teeth. Wire ropes an inch and a half thick led down the boom and wound, coil upon coil, around the big controlling drums on the platform below. Two gigantic cog-wheels controlled the lowering and raising of the huge boom in front. Just back of the big revolving drums and cog-wheels a second little platform arose from the first. It was iron-hooded overhead, but in front it was open, and behind the opening, with before him six huge brass levers, stood a man controlling the movements of this mighty worker. Even as the little party watched, the great shovel plunged down, straight down, burying its great teeth in the rooty ground. The drag rope pulled it in until it had gathered up a full load of earth. The boom lifted slightly, the platform swung around, and the bucket dropped its load. For five minutes Charley watched the operation repeated, with his watch in his hand. "Murphy hasn't lied about that," he said. "They are digging a bucket a minute, all right. Let's figure it out: One and one-half yards a minute, that's 26 cents a minute; multiplying that by 60 minutes in the hour, makes $15.60 per hour, and 24 hours in the day, makes $374.40 per day. That's going some, I guess."
"Whew," whistled Walter, "that's just like finding money."