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The Sand-Hog
by
“Then the case has nothing to do with your trouble, nothing to do with the bends?” asked Kennedy, keenly showing his anxiety to help our old friend.
“Well, it may and it may not,” replied Orton thoughtfully. “I begin to think it has. We have had a great many cases of the bends among the men, and lots of the poor fellows have died, too. You know, of course, how the newspapers are roasting us. We are being called inhuman; they are going to investigate us; perhaps indict me. Oh, it’s an awful mess; and now some one is trying to make Taylor believe it is my fault.
“Of course,” he continued, “we are working under a high air-pressure just now, some days as high as forty pounds. You see, we have struck the very worst part of the job, a stretch of quicksand in the river-bed, and if we can get through this we’ll strike pebbles and rock pretty soon, and then we’ll be all right again.”
He paused. Paddy quietly put in: “Beggin’ yer pardon again, Mr. Orton, but we had entirely too many cases of the bends even when we were wurkin’ at low pressure, in the rock, before we sthruck this sand. There’s somethin’ wrong, sir, or ye wouldn’t be here yerself like this. The bends don’t sthrike the ingineers, them as don’t do the hard work, sir, and is careful, as ye know – not often.”
“It’s this way, Craig,” resumed Orton. “When I took this contract for the Five-Borough Transit Company, they agreed to pay me liberally for it, with a big bonus if I finished ahead of time, and a big penalty if I exceeded the time. You may or may not know it, but there is some doubt about the validity of their franchise after a certain date, provided the tunnel is not ready for operation. Well, to make a long story short, you know there are rival companies that would like to see the work fail and the franchise revert to the city, or at least get tied up in the courts. I took it with the understanding that it was every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”
“Have you yourself seen any evidences of rival influences hindering the work?” asked Kennedy.
Orton carefully weighed his reply. “To begin with,” he answered at length, “while I was pushing the construction end, the Five-Borough was working with the state legislature to get a bill extending the time-limit of the franchise another year. Of course, if it had gone through it would have been fine for us. But some unseen influence blocked the company at every turn. It was subtle; it never came into the open. They played on public opinion as only demagogues of high finance can, very plausibly of course, but from the most selfish and ulterior motives. The bill was defeated.”
I nodded. I knew all about that part of it, for it was in the article which I had been writing for the Star.
“But I had not counted on the extra year, anyhow,” continued Orton, “so I wasn’t disappointed. My plans were laid for the shorter time from the start. I built an island in the river so that we could work from each shore to it, as well as from the island to each shore, really from four points at once. And then, when everything was going ahead fine, and we were actually doubling the speed in this way, these confounded accidents” – he was leaning excitedly forward – ” and lawsuits and delays and deaths began to happen.”
Orton sank back as a paroxysm of the bends seized him, following his excitement.
“I should like very much to go down into the tunnel,” said Kennedy simply.
“No sooner said than done,” replied Orton, almost cheerfully, at seeing Kennedy so interested. “We can arrange that easily. Paddy will be glad to do the honours of the place in my absence.”