Читать книгу Topsail Island - Paul Boardman - Страница 8

The camp was a crude affair made mostly of rough sawn pine that had been milled on the mainland and shipped over to Topsail Island on a motorized, steam powered barge. The most extravagant building on the island was a small, single room shack, about sixteen feet square. It had one door and two window openings that lacked glass but could be closed off with wooden shutters to keep out some of the bugs and bad weather. In the center sat a table and four chairs. Two walls of the room were lined with iron bunk beds. The angle iron bed frames supported flat strips of flexible steel, secured by short springs at their ends. One row of slats ran the length of the bed and another row ran the width, allowing the bed to sink where body weight was heaviest. The mattresses were made of canvass stuffed with straw. The executive living quarters were less than luxurious.

Usually, the shack accommodated a single person, Amos Reeves. He was a partner in the venture but he was also the lead man on site. He had worked mines his entire life and was familiar with both tunnel and open pit mining. Water was always a problem in mining and Amos Reeves was as good as any man at controlling it.

The workers had a long, narrow bunkhouse with hard wooden beds made of rough sawn pine. Some beds had mattresses, others did not.

The roofs of all the buildings were made of wooden shakes nailed to horizontal slats. Despite their crude appearance they kept the interiors surprisingly dry. In the main cabin, the roof was perfect but in the bunkhouse it leaked in a few, isolated places. The floors of all the buildings were pine plank, perpetually covered with a thin layer of sand the men dragged in on their boots. Occasionally the floors got swept. Most of the sand fell down between the cracks in the floorboards. When it rained, any water that leaked through the roof leaked out the floor cracks before it had a chance to puddle. No one bothered to fix the roof.

The third and final building was the cookhouse. It contained a large, iron cooking stove and shelves for flour, salt, beans, lard and coffee. Potatoes and carrots filled bushel baskets which lined the floor against the walls.

Outside stood a large tripod and a massive iron cooking pot that hung from a chain over an open fire. The meals lacked variety. Anything and everything went into the cook pot and always emerged as stew. The fact that a boat arrived delivering a pig, or a fisherman landed with a catch of fresh fish, made little difference to the cook. The meat or fish was added to the pot that was never totally empty and never cleaned.

Amos Reeves had previously worked with the man who owned the metal detecting machine as a manager and lead hand. He had seen the metal detector in operation and believed in its reliability. He was not surprised when he had been offered a share in the partnership, provided he agreed to act as the principal overseer on the project. In the past, he had made a good deal of money with the same sort of deal.

Amos visited the site, made a list of equipment and supplies he felt would be necessary and established the logistics of the supply line to the island. He hired a versatile crew, capable of erecting the crude accommodations and then working the salvage operation.

When the camp was complete, a barge arrived carrying a steam shovel. It was the only piece of heavy equipment on the site. Unloading it was completed only with a great deal of difficulty. Even at high tide the barge could not float far enough onto the beach and unloading the cumbersome machine onto the soft sand beach had taken nerves of steel. A makeshift ramp had been required but it had to be constructed and the machine unloaded before the next tide. The men worked feverishly to complete the task. If the shovel happened to sink on one side, as it inched down the ramp onto the wet sandy beach, there would have been a real chance it might tip over. If that happened, chances were good that it would never be righted. Every man in the crew was holding his breath as the shovel tilted off the barge and onto the timbers that formed the ramp. Finally the machine crabbed its way onto firm soil. Then it had been driven, its iron tracks tearing up or crushing anything in its way, to the site of the excavation at a speed of half a mile an hour.

The bucket of the machine faced forward and was controlled by steel cables that required constant greasing. Clearing away the stumps from logging operations took over a week. The machine did the digging but the stumps were hauled away with mule teams. Excavation began forty feet away from the pickets that marked the spot where the radioactive metal detector had discovered deposits of iron and precious metals. At first, digging in the soft sand was easy and the operation went smoothly. But as the steam shovel continued to dig, the sand in front of the machine constantly caved in. The machine was forced to back out and build a series of terraces in order to dig without falling into the pit. As it dug deeper the men stabilized the roadway with timbers cut from pines on the mainland so that the machine could drive down inside the pit. That plan failed at a depth of about six feet. Below that, sea water infiltrated the hole, and the vibration of the machine caused the water to bubble up through the sand, beneath the steel tracks. The last time the shovel came out of the hole it had taken a dozen mules and every rope and pulley the men could scrounge, just to get it back on dry sand.

When the steam shovel was safely parked, the men began construction of a cofferdam. The dam was built like a huge steel pipe, twenty feet in diameter. It was constructed of panels of plate steel roughly eight feet long and three feet high. The panel was fed lengthwise through a system of rollers just over three feet long that warped the plate in an even curve. The bent sections were assembled by riveting the panels together and beefing up the joints with steel straps. The assembly eventually formed a three foot high circle, twenty feet in diameter. When the iron ring was completed, one crew climbed inside it and worked with shovels and buckets, excavating another two feet. Meanwhile the rest of the crew worked outside the pipe, pounding on its rim with sledge hammers, gradually forcing the twenty foot diameter ring down in the soupy soil. When they had caused it to sink deep enough, the iron workers installed another three foot high layer of steel plate around the upper edge, completing the joint with a neat row of rivets.

Soon there was too much water in the bottom of the pit for men to work, digging by hand. A pump, capable of pumping both water and sand was employed to excavate inside the cofferdam. Meanwhile, a dozen men swung sledge hammers, pounding the rim down until they had sunk it to grade level. Each time they achieved sinking the damn three feet, the iron workers took over and installed another three foot section and the operation repeated itself.

The crews worked under the blazing Carolina sun, plagued by the constant high humidity. In the evenings, discomfort caused by heat was replaced by the irritation of millions of mosquitoes creating their own brand of discomfort. When it rained, work came to a standstill and could not begin again until the ground dried out and the water was pumped out of the pit. The men had little to do but lie on their bunks or play cards. Amos could not stop the men from gambling but managed to establish table limits so that the poorer players would not lose their entire pay.

Despite the grueling work and rough conditions, few men quit. It was the end of the Dirty Thirties and prospects for other jobs were rare to non-existent.

The pump was undersized and could not cast the discharge as far away from the pit as was desirable. As the sand and water were pumped out of the coffer dam, it was piled in a windrow until the water leached out. But even during the driest periods, water always managed to find its way back into the pit from both the run-off and the water table. The men tried using the steam shovel to make ditches and to move the pile further back but the whole area was soggy because of the water constantly being brought to the surface. They built a timber road and then a tiny railway for steel wheeled mining carts which were loaded using hand shovels, then hitched up and hauled down the track by mules. This method proved the best, most efficient system to move back the overburden of sand. The final resting place of the sand was over a hundred feet from the pit and a sizeable mound of sand began to form behind the dunes.

The operation continued like that for a year and a half, until the pipe was driven into the soggy hole to a depth of twenty feet where the muck took on the consistency of quicksand. The men could no longer stand on the bottom of the hole. Now the entire job was being done from the top by moving the intake nozzle of the steam pump around the perimeter of the hole, sucking out a slurry of sand and water.

The suction nozzle was guided by a man, standing on a raft deep down in the iron walled pit.

Occasionally something would go wrong and the suction nozzle or pipe would plug-up. Using the derrick above the pit, a second raft would be lowered to provide a larger work platform. Then a man with a rope around his waist would be lowered into the hole to clean a plugged suction pipe. Whoever got the job was paid an additional two dollars danger pay and there were always two or three men prepared to risk their lives for the bit of extra money on their paycheck.

Although Amos Reeves had purchased a house on the mainland, he spent the majority of the time living alone in the executive shack, working diligently, directing the men. Every three or four months, his partners from New York would come to visit. The rest of the time he had the shack to himself. That had been the case for nearly two years. The partners had arrived again for their tour of inspection but this time the mood was significantly different.

After supper, the partners gathered around the table in the shack to discuss the venture. The discussion was purely for Amos’ benefit. The other partners had already made up their minds during the train trip from New York to North Carolina.

“We are running out of money, here and we haven’t found a damn thing,” said one of the executives. The others wasted no time in agreeing.

Amos had sensed that the inevitable was going to occur but he tried to hold back his emotions. “We pumped out a piece of wood not long ago. I swear it was hand carved. That means we are getting close. I say we keep digging. No point digging a well and quitting two feet before you hit water.”

“What about the readings we got off our metal detector?” asked the third. “Why can’t we put it down the hole and take some new tests.”

“We tried that two months ago. There is so much steel in the dam that the machine just goes crazy,” replied the Amos. He was dressed like a miner. The other executives wore suits and white shirts. He had been on the job since the beginning and was still committed.

“We have all heard about that piece of wood. It could have been sitting on the beach. Someone could have thrown it in or it could have been on the surface and sucked down the outside of the damn. I’ve seen the cave-in holes around the perimeter every time you run the pump. I say it didn’t come from the bottom of the pit at all. It’s time we give up and pull out!”

“Where exactly do we stand, financially?” asked one of the men.

“Look, here’s the situation,” answered the man in charge of the accounting. “There is a God damned depression going on out there. The stock market lost ninety percent of its value. Our investors have put in nearly forty thousand dollars and we have spent roughly twenty. I say we make a few adjustments to the bookkeeping and quit. We get back to New York, tell the folks we’ve run out of money and have stopped temporarily until we raise a bit more capital. Then we make a token effort to get some new investors. When we don’t find any, we give up. We still have twenty thousand dollars and we can split up four ways.”

“I tell you the gold finder works! There is gold down there. We just have to keep going,” insisted Amos.

One of the executives attempted to find some common ground.

“Why don’t we go back down the hole and drive spikes in. See if we hit something, this time. If we do, we keep going. If we don’t, then I’ll go along with you fellas who want to pull out. But I insist that the men here are paid in full. It looks better that way. If everybody is paid, it looks like we are just pulling out temporarily. It won’t stir up any controversy, that way.”

“What about the machinery?”

“We leave it here. Let the locals keep it. It cost a fortune to get it here. No point in spending another fortune to get it out.”

“Give me another two months,” begged Amos.

“One week. That’s all,” stated the first executive. “I’ll go along with driving down search prods, but unless we actually find gold, which I doubt we ever will, in one week we pull up stakes.”

“You are all making a big mistake. If that is Blackbeard’s treasure down there the paltry sum we have left from the investors wouldn’t account to a hundredth of what we might find,” stated Amos.

“But if we find nothing, it’s a helluva lot more than nothing.”

“We’ll give Amos another week. We have to be unanimous. Can we all agree to that?”

Each of the men acknowledged their assent. One banged his hand on the table, another grunted and the last man made a slight wave of his hand.

“It’s settled then.” The pudgy executive reached for the whiskey bottle and topped up everyone’s glass. Lifting his own glass he pronounced; “Resolution Passed.” The men all took long pulls on their drinks.

X X X X X

The next morning, Amos told his men to lower a raft into the pit. The raft was a small affair, barely four feet by five feet, made of pine logs, lashed together. But it did float on the soupy mix of sand and water that always lay in the bottom of the pit and although wobbly, it could support a man. Nevertheless, it was no easy job to be lowered down on a rope, rappel off the side of the cofferdam and jump onto the raft. Once on the raft, working in the confined space in the intense heat that wafted off the iron dam required almost superhuman effort. The men on top lowered the twelve foot probe into the pit. The blacksmith and machinist on the job had built the probe and a probe driver that morning. The probe was a twelve foot length of round steel. The driver was a crude affair, little more than a piece of three inch pipe, six feet long, with one end capped tight. The cap was held in place with rivets. Secured on the top of the pipe was an iron ring.

At first the miner in the pit manhandled the probe, sinking it about three feet in the soup with just his own weight. He probed in a dozen places before exhaustion forced him to climb back out. Another man went down.

Using the derrick, the six foot probe driver was guided over the probe. The man in the pit held the probe, keeping his hands below a painted mark, seven feet from the probe’s top end. When all was in place, he signaled to the men leaning over the edge of the cofferdam. Two men pulled on the rope attached to the iron ring, causing the driver to slide up the probe to within two feet of the top. On a signal from the man in the pit steadying the probe, the men holding the rope let go.

The man at the bottom pulled away his hands and almost fell off the raft as the pipe slid down around the probe. With a crash, the iron cap struck the top end of the probe and hammered it down into the soup. The probe sunk six inches each time the driver was released, indicating that there was nothing solid to impede the probe. The driver was hauled up and on the signal slammed down again on the butt end of the probe, driving it deeper into the mud. At first the probe had to be held in place by the man on the raft but as the probe went deeper, it supported its own weight. The man on the raft barked out orders and repeated the process until the probe could go no further. Then the driver was hauled out and the rope running through the iron ring was untied and thrown down to the man in the pit. The probe itself was well stuck in the mud. The man below tied the rope to it and the crew on top strained to break the suction and free it, using the same pulley that hoisted the driver. Eventually it gave way and came free. Then it was moved over two feet and the operation began again. With the Carolina sun beating down, it was a hellhole adventure. The temperature in the pit exceeded a hundred and ten degrees and Amos ordered the man at the bottom be replaced each time the probe was moved.

On the seventh placement, as it neared the end of its reach, the probe struck something solid and refused to go deeper.

Excitement built as the man on the raft measured the depth of the probe and ordered another attempt. The men surrounding the pit became strangely silent. The driver was hauled up and on the signal, allowed to crash down on the probe. Nothing happened. The probe refused to sink. The third time the driver struck and the probe refused to budge, the men began to cheer.

“Haul it out. We’ll move a foot south and try again. You want to stay down there or should I send down a replacement,” called Amos.

The workman shook his head, determinedly refusing to give up the taste of success he was feeling, despite the windless, over-baring heat.

“I’ll do it again,” he answered, wondering if his stamina would hold.

“Whatever you say. Just don’t collapse down there,” shouted Amos. “Throw a bucket of water over him so he’ll cool down,” he ordered. Men above dumped cold fresh water on their comrade in the pit.

The second probe reacted the same way as the first.

“Sure as hell, there’s something down there! We better make sure the brass knows about this. You, go tell the top dogs,” yelled Amos over the din of the pump that had to run constantly.

Within minutes the senior partners had all gathered around.

“We’ve hit something hard down about ten feet. So far we don’t know what size it is. We are going to pound down another probe. We know it’s only on the left side of the pit. The probes on the right side showed nothing. I think we found it!” cried Amos, excitedly.

The pudgy executive pulled Amos and the other partners away from the workmen so that they couldn’t overhear the conversation.

“We don’t know that. It might be a tree stump,” replied the pudgy faced executive.

“How would a tree stump get that deep?” demanded one of the others.

“The same way Blackbeard’s treasure got that deep. It sank! Look this island didn’t look this way when Blackbeard was here. The sand shifts worse here than in the Sahara desert. Every time there is a storm …. A hurricane …. The whole island gets swept. Afterwards, the surge runs off the island, back to the sea. It makes river beds as it retreats, eating away the sand. Something gets lodged in the crevice the run-off makes. The water rushes all around it, undermining it. It sinks in the sand. We are digging in quicksand. The more we dig, the chances are the more whatever we find will sink. Look what it has cost us to get this deep. Another ten feet! We might as well look for some asshole in a sampan.”

“We’re not digging to China. It’s a lousy ten feet away,” stated Amos, adamantly. He strutted back to the pit, stood tall and bellowed, “Get that man out of the hole and start the pumps. We keep running day and night from now on. Let’s find it men. There’s gold down there.”

The men, all of whom had gathered around the hole whooped with excitement. Orders were yelled and every man on the job began working, stoking the fire for the steam engine that ran the pump, harnessing up the mule teams, repairing the track and the wooden road where the wagons hauled away the sand. The cook knew the men would be tired and hungry by evening and began to prepare a double ration of stew for everyone. At least with the bosses all here there was lots of meat. The cook decided to slaughter one of the pigs that had arrived on the same barge that had brought the New York brass across from the mainland.

After a few frantic hours Amos began to plan the night shift and sent some of the men back to the bunkhouse with strict orders to lie down in their bunks. “Sleep! You are going to need it if you plan to work all night. The men grumbled. The Carolina sun turned the wooden shack into an inferno during the day. The men found sleep impossible and the foreman had to threaten to fine any man who left the bunkhouse for any reason other than to use the latrine.

“I want to be out there working when we bring up the gold,” one man screeched at him.

“Well then get some sleep. That’s not going to happen until we build at least two more sections onto the dam. You know how long it will take to go ten feet.”

The workman, who had been there since the beginning, certainly did know. Progress had been slow and painful. A year ago, two men had been killed by a cave-in, drowned in the soupy sand. Since then there had been no serious accidents but a few men had been scalded by breaks in the steam lines, another had been kicked by a mule, but no one else had died. Still grumbling, the motivated worker threw himself on his bunk and tried in vain to sleep.

At eight o’clock in the evening, the shift changed. Things went all right for a few hours but then the pump began to give problems and the machinist had to be woken up to make the repair. The mules balked at the night work. They too, were used to resting.

By the following morning, after thirty-six hours of backbreaking labor, the two teams had succeeded in gaining one foot in depth and the iron workers had completed the preliminary work for an entire section of the dam. They stood by, ready to rivet it in place the moment it was called for.

The night crew, exhausted by their long night, retreated to the bunkhouse but found it impossible to sleep because of the heat, the noise of the steam engine that ran the pump and the banging of sledge hammers on the rim of the dam. The excitement began to wear off as the men tried to sink the dam lower. At first the dam had sunk relatively easily, but the deeper it went, the more friction there was from the outer walls and the work became increasingly more difficult.

The next day the rain hit and work slowed down so much due to the extra runoff into the pit that by night the pump was barely maintaining the water level and very little sand was excavated. By morning the saturated sand from beneath the dam had seeped back in and the gains of two days work was lost as the level of the sandy muck rose instead of going lower.

Frustration grew among the crew and many were beginning to think like the partner who had proclaimed that ten feet was impossible.

Amos remained steadfast. He was the only one of the partners who had actually worked at the hole. He had lived in the rough shack most of the time for the last two years sometimes going as much as two months without visiting his house on the mainland. His brief trips had allowed him to at least occasionally experience a night’s sleep in a proper bed with fresh linen sheets and a brief opportunity to eat decent meals, prepared by a cook with a proper kitchen and a fully stocked larder. But he spent most nights in camp and usually ate much of the same food as the other men. It was true that he supplemented the camp food with cheese, biscuits and cakes that his cook on the mainland packed for him. And he had whiskey whenever he wanted it. That made the nights more bearable. Notwithstanding, it had been a rough two years. Only the dream of Blackbeard’s treasure had kept him motivated.

The other partners had never stayed in camp more than three nights at a time and had always brought their own supplies of hams, fresh beef, vegetables and good liquor. After two days of non-stop banging from the sledge hammers, the incessant roar of the steam engine that ran the pump and the braying of the mules, they were ready to return to New York. When the rains came and the excavation filled back in by a foot and a half, their commitment, already waning, drained away completely.

“We said we’d give it a week. That’s all we’ll give it,” stated one of the partners, angrily. He knew the two other partners were on side, in varying degrees. Only one partner wanted to continue. Amos.

“This has all happened before. When it rains it buggers up the whole process. This is hard work but Blackbeard’s treasure is worth every ounce of hard work,” Amos explained.

He knew his pleas to continue were falling on deaf ears.

Amos Reeves left the island, early the next morning, in a small row boat. When he reached the mainland he hauled his boat up on the scraggy shore. A few yards away was a pier that had been built for the barge that kept the operation supplied with food, water, fuel, machinery, tools, pipe, steel plate and rivets. A short walk up the road from the pier, where the land was drier, a horse stable, holding six, well fed and watered animals was maintained for the venture. A field had been fenced so the horses could graze on the coarse grass or find a bit of shade under the pines and live oaks.

Beside the stable was a three walled, four bay, machine shed that had been built in the first year. One bay was used as a blacksmith shop, the second and third bays were used to store two wagons and a buckboard that were used to draw in supplies from the rail depot. The fourth bay protected Amos Reeves pride and joy from the wind, the rain and the unrelenting sun.

It contained a shiny red, 1930, Model A Ford pick-up truck, with steel spoke wheels shining beneath the gracefully flared fenders and running boards. A huge sunscreen over the flat, vertical front window provided protection from the sun and kept some of the rain off the windshield. In bad weather, a single, center mounted windshield wiper pushed away a bit of water but Amos preferred to rubdown the windshield with a sliced, raw potato, finding that it helped the rain bead on the window and run off clean. It worked better than the wiper.

The twin, chrome headlights, the chrome radiator grill and the two chrome flat steel bumper bars, gave the shiny red vehicle a stately appearance that was set off by two chrome rails which protected the top edge of the side panels of the box.

Amos climbed in, turned on the ignition and depressing a knob mounted on the floorboards, started the vehicle with its electric starter. What a gift that was, compared to the hand cranks he was so used to. He let the twenty-four horsepower, four cylinder, L head engine warm up and checked the fuel and oil pressure gauges. Confident that all was in order he accelerated out of the machine shed, running through the gears with its modern gearbox, another significant improvement over the vehicle’s predecessor, the Model T.

Five miles away, over the rough roads was a farm supply dealer who would have the merchandise he was looking for. As he meandered through the countless turns he tested his brakes that worked on all four wheels instead of just two. On the straight stretches he opened up the engine and managed to get the vehicle up to fifty miles an hour, still ten miles an hour less than its maximum speed. He marveled at the smoothness of the ride, grinning to himself, convinced that the five hundred and forty dollars he had spent on the brand new machine was the best money he had ever spent in his life.

When he reached his destination he wasted no time purchasing seventy-eight empty flour sacks. It was all the merchant had in stock.

Then he restarted his truck, depressing the heavy, floor mounted starter switch. He glanced back at the merchant whose jaw dropped when he realized Amos had not hand cranked the vehicle. Feeling proud, he sped off in a cloud of dust.

When he returned to the pier, he loaded the flour sacks and the rowboat on the barge and waited patiently as the barge crew stoked the firebox and built up a head of steam. When he reached camp on Topsail Island it was six o’clock in the evening. This was his last chance to save the treasure hunting expedition. He wolfed down a bowl of stew and sent two men back to the barge to retrieve the flour sacks. Then he tromped through the mounds of sand that surrounded the camp and selected a pile that was old and dry. When the flour sacks arrived, he instructed the men to start filling the bags with sand and tie them off, insisting that the job be finished with the sandbags piled beside the excavation before morning.

“When you finish with the sand bags, get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a full day.”

Then, he retreated to the cabin where the three other executives were playing a card game, drinking whiskey and smoking huge cigars.

“Where the hell did you go?” demanded one of the partners.

“Back to the mainland. Had to pick up some supplies for tomorrow.”

“What’s the point? We are pulling out of here in two days. I don’t know why we are waiting that long.”

The other two grumbled in agreement.

“I have a plan,” stated Amos.

“So do I. Mine’s get back to New York.”

Amos poured himself a healthy shot of whiskey and retired to his bunk without saying another word.

X X X X X

In the morning, he instructed his iron workers to install another, three foot high course of steel around the top edge of the dam. They told him that another section would make the wall too high but Amos insisted.

“We have to push it down another foot, before we are ready to put on the next section. No point doing it yet,” replied the head iron worker.

“Do it now. And do it as fast as you can.”

“What are all them sandbags for?” asked one of the workers.

“You’ll see soon enough. Just get it ready.”

Every man on the crew respected Amos for his good sense and hard work. They weren’t going to argue with him now.

“You’re the boss. Okay men, you heard what we have to do. Get to work,” ordered the foreman.

It took the entire day to fit the steel, drill the holes and rivet the assembly together.

“Good work, men,” said Amos. The men liked him because he was not afraid to pitch in when an extra hand was needed. They worked hard for him because he always congratulated them on their achievements and every man on the crew was a hard worker. Amos had made sure of that. He never hesitated to fire a slacker.

The night crew was due to come on. The water had risen because the pump couldn’t run while the row of steel was being fitted. Amos waited until the new crew was assembled, then, except for the men needed on the pump, he instructed the rest of them to tear up a section of six inch by six inch square logs that formed a bit of unused road.

“I want those timbers placed across the top of the dam. Leave a six inch space between timbers. Keep them far enough apart so that we can fit the nozzle of the hose down between them.”

The men set to work, their only light coming from a row of round tar pots that resembled cannon balls, their wicks burning with a flickering orange flame. The timbers from the abandoned section of road came up easily and were man-handled onto wooden poles about six feet long. Then six men, working as a team, each grabbed hold of a pole end and lifted the heavy timber off the ground. Like pallbearers at a funeral, they carried the timbers to the dam and placed them across the top of it. At midnight, Amos confirmed the platform was complete.

Then, he ordered the men to pile the sand bags on top of it. The hose that had been threaded between the timbers was withdrawn and the men set up a bucket brigade from the sandbag pile to the platform. They began hand-bombing the bags to three men who stood on the deck. The deck workers placed the bags across the timbers in neat, even rows. The men had by now figured out what Amos had in mind and were excited to see if the plan would work. Certainly, a few tons of extra weight on top of the dam would help drive it down. Finally, when all the bags were loaded Amos instructed the crew to man the sledge hammers and drive it down. Twenty men on hammers instead of the usual twelve. The foreman began a rhythmic chant.

“On four, men. One.” The men raised their hammers in unison. “Two.” The hammers reached the apex of their swing. “Three.” The crew tensed their muscles. The hammers began their downward arc. “Four.” Twenty hammers struck the rim of the dam.

There was a brief pause and the chant began again. The noise was deafening when the hammers fell. Six times the ritual was repeated.

Using a stick as a measure, the foreman took some readings around the pit while Amos watched.

“We gained three inches,” proclaimed the foreman. “Again, on four.”

The men began again, swinging the sledges to the steady count bellowed out by the night foreman. Sure enough, the dam sank deeper. The men gained another few inches but it was difficult work. The top edge of the dam was still two feet higher than usual. That made the crews footing difficult. Their swings on the sledges were shorter than usual and carried less power. It was also difficult to drive the sledges between the gaps in the timbers rather than having an unobstructed rim on which to hammer. The crew’s shoulders grew tired, they became less accurate. More hammer blows glanced off the wooden timbers and had almost no power when they hit the rim. After an hour’s work the ground became harder and progress came to a standstill.

“We have to pump more sand out of the hole,” explained the foreman.

“Keep going,” countered Amos.

For the next half hour, every twenty seconds there was a thunderous bang as the sledge hammers all came down in unison. But if there was any gain at all, it could be measured in quarters of an inch.

“It’s not working, boss. We need to pump it out.”

“That means tearing down the whole platform and rebuilding it after the pump has run for about six hours. We’ll add more weight, instead.”

The foreman was confused. Amos had never before tried to rush the job. He had always been patient and methodical. Perhaps if the foreman had fully understood the time constraints that Amos had been placed under by his partners, he might have agreed with adding more weight. As it was, with no knowledge that the operation was due to be shut down, he once again voiced his opinion that pumping out was the best solution. Amos glared at him, letting his anger show on his face.

“Bring the shovel over here. We’ll set up over the platform and drop the bucket onto it.”

“That’s too risky. What if the timbers break and the whole platform collapses into the hole. It will take two days to clean out that mess.”

“Don’t tell me it’s risky. Do it!”

“Yes Sir. You’re the boss.”

It took until morning before the steam shovel had built up enough pressure to operate and Amos used the time wisely, getting two hours sleep.

As he climbed into his bunk, fully dressed except for his boots one of the other partners admonished him for the racket he had made all night long but allowed a word of praise for his determination, however ill-founded. Amos didn’t bother to respond.

The shift changed in the morning. The shovel was at full pressure. Both crews, the cook and all the partners came out to watch the event as the hoe rumbled up toward the excavation. It was a very heavy machine and had never been allowed this close to the pit before. The foreman shouted out orders and waved hand signals at the driver of the steam shovel as he swung his boom over the center of the dam. He knew the risks he was taking. The shovel was controlled by pulleys and steel cable. If he dropped the bucket too fast he was certain to tangle the steel cables, but if he lowered it down in a controlled manner, it would have no driving force other than the dead weight. He tried that first but it did nothing. His second attempt was dropping it from a height of just five feet above the sand bags.

As everyone in camp watched he squeezed the mechanical stops on the control levers and rammed them forward. The boom and bucket plummeted downward and struck the sand bags. One worker scrambled around the pit with the measuring stick.

“We gained an inch,” he yelled proudly.

The crowd around the pit gave a cheer. A couple reached over and pumped Amos’ hand in congratulation. The shovel operator climbed out of his cab and checked his cables. Nothing had snagged or become dislodged. He grinned, resumed his position and prepared for another drop.

No one noticed the sand beneath the iron tracks of the steam shovel begin to change color.

He lifted again and made a second, successful drop.

The man with the measuring stick confirmed another gain. A third drop was equally successful. The night shift began to wander back to the bunkhouse. Just before the fourth drop, one of the night shift crew members noticed water forming below the right track of the shovel.

He yelled at the foreman who reacted immediately.

“Move her back. The vibration is bringing up the water,” he shouted at the operator, warning him of the potential for danger.

The men all looked at once and Amos pushed his way in between them.

“Good eyes,” he said as he nodded at the man who had spotted the soggy sand. “Back her out of here. We’ll lay down more timbers and make a road,” he told the foreman who looked back at him with skepticism evident on his face.

Fear showed in the operator’s eyes. As gently as he could he eased the cumbersome machine into reverse but instead of both tracks moving, the right track spun in the soft, wet sand and sank about four inches.

“Get some timbers under that track,” yelled Amos.

Every man, including the foreman raced to find some wood to place under the steam shovel’s steel track. They rushed back and began digging with hand shovels tried to slide some support timbers beneath the tracks.

“Just ease her back an inch or so. Hopefully the tracks will grab the wood and it will pull out.”

The shovel operator tried again. The tracks did catch on the timbers but rather than pull the machine backward, the timbers just sank. The action dug the front of the machine further into the quicksand. The vibration of the machine caused more water to bubble toward the surface. Now puddles were beginning to form around the left track.

“Hitch up the mules. Get some chain on the shovel. Get every man in camp on ropes. If we don’t work fast that whole shovel is going to be on her side.”

The steam shovel operator thought he could take some weight off the front of the machine by lowering his boom onto the top of the dam. That helped momentarily but the machine was cable driven, not hydraulic and although it lightened the load, it created no lift. The ground was becoming more and more soggy.

The mule teams were hitched up and connected to the shovel with chain. Two ropes were also attached and twelve men pulled on each rope while two men beat the mules savagely. The mules brayed and the men groaned, exerting all their strength against an immoveable object. The operator lifted his boom about three feet above the dam and with the gears in reverse added power to back out.

It was working. The tracks were riding up on the timbers. It looked as if the machine would come free but as the rear of the tracks climbed up and out of the ooze onto a row of timbers, the machine pitched forward and the front of the tracks dug deeper. The operator had no choice but to give her more power. For a few seconds the machine hovered at the balance point as the tracks clawed into the timbers.

Seconds seemed like an eternity. Slowly at first, then gaining speed, the steam shovel lost its battle with gravity and toppled forward. The boom crashed down on the bucket which sat on the sand bags.

Inevitably, the timbers were not strong enough to support the sand bags, the bucket and the massive boom. One timber snapped like a twig. After that the sequence became a blur as more timbers cracked. Like the aftershock of an earthquake, the sand bags gave way en masse and the boom crashed down on the edge of the dam. Then the worst possible thing happened. The combined weight of the shovel, the water soaked sand and the crash of the boom caused the top three sections of the dam to buckle inward. The machine came to rest. It was leaning forward but luckily it had not rolled over sideways. With a bit of effort, it could probably still be pulled free. But the rim of the dam, the top three sections, nine feet in height were warped and twisted like a crushed tin can. The damage occurred four feet above ground level and continued five feet below the grade of the sand. It was reparable, but it would take a month to accomplish.

Amos Reeves knew that the other partners would never agree to continue. Weary with regret he trudged back to the cabin that had been his primary home for the last two years, talking to no one.

The foreman, not realizing the project was over, sent the night crew back to bed and put the day crew into the job of salvaging the shovel.

The following day was payday. The men were paid and most of them took the barge back to the mainland to visit their wives and girlfriends or just to get drunk. When they returned the next morning the foreman told them that all of the executives, including Amos Reeves, had loaded their gear and left. No one had witnessed their departure, but there were two row boats on the mainland that should have been on the island and Amos’ shiny red Model A pick-up was gone from the carriage shed.

A few of the men surveyed the damage done to the dam.

“We could repair that,” one worker said.

“Not unless someone pays me to do it,” snarled another.

“Might as well pack up your gear men. I’ll make sure the barge waits until we are all aboard.”

The foreman slouched away, dejection clearly evident in each step. It was the tail end of the depression and he had just lost his job. The war was raging in Europe and some said the USA would soon join the battle. His next job was likely to be that of a soldier and that meant injury or death, on any given day.