Part 5 (2/2)
”I'd call it too dry,” replied Jack, quietly.
”Are you bossing this job all the way through?” demanded Joshua Owen, angrily, stepping forward. ”Mr. Farnum, Mr. Pollard, if these boys are to have charge of this work, I may as well stop.”
”What's the matter?” asked Mr. Farnum, coining forward.
”This younker is grumbling about the red lead cement,” snapped the irate foreman.
”What's the complaint, Benson?” asked the boatyard owner.
”No complaint, Mr. Farnum,” Jack answered, quickly. ”Only, I've got to make the joint fast with red lead cement, and it seemed to me that this stuff is too dry. If I use it, it won't fill out smoothly enough. It's dry and crumbly, and I'm afraid the joint would be very defective.”
”Nothing of the sort!” snapped Joshua Owen. ”Boy, you've no business trying to do a man's work, anyway. Give me that cement, and I'll make the joint fast myself.”
”All right,” nodded Benson, stepping back. He started to pa.s.s the chunk of cement to the foreman, but Mr. Farnum quickly took it from him, then cast a look upward. Asa Partridge, the yard superintendent, a man past fifty, stood on the platform deck, looking down through the open manhole.
”Come down here, Mr. Partridge,” hailed the yard's owner, while Joshua Owen's scowl became deeper than ever. ”Mr. Partridge, Benson says this cement is too dry to make a joint tight with. Owen says it isn't.
Who wins the bet?” the owner finished, laughingly.
Asa Partridge, a man of long experience in steam-fitting, took the chunk of cement, examining it carefully, then picked it to pieces before he rejoined dryly:
”Why, the boy wins, of course. Any apprentice ought to know that cement as dry as this stuff can't make a tight joint.”
”Isn't there some better cement than this around?” called out Mr. Farnum.
”If there isn't,” volunteered the superintendent, ”I can send you over plenty. But the use of such stuff as that would leave some joints loose, and make a breakdown of the boat's machinery certain.”
”You see, Owen,” spoke the yard's owner, quietly, turning to the foreman, ”you're letting your dislike for these boys spoil your value here as foreman.”
”I've stood all I'm going to stand here,” shouted Joshua Owen, in a tempest of rage, as he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his ap.r.o.n. ”You're letting these boys run the job--”
”Nothing of the sort,” broke in Farnum, icily. ”They haven't tried to run anything. But any workman is ent.i.tled to complain when he's expected to perform impossibilities with poor material.”
”There ye go, upholding 'em again,” roared the foreman. ”I'm through.
I've quit!”
”I don't know as that's a bad idea, either, Owen,” replied Mr. Farnum, in the same cool voice. ”When you don't care how you botch a job it's time for you to walk out. You can call at the office this afternoon, and Mr. Partridge will give you your pay.”
Joshua Owen glared, amazedly, at his employer. Then, seeing that his threat had been taken at par, and that he was really through here, the infuriated man wheeled like a flash, leaping at Jack Benson from behind and striking the boy to the floor. But Grant Andrews, O'brien and others leaped at him and pulled him away.
Jacob Farnum pointed up the spiral staircase, as Jack Benson leaped to his feet, hardly hurt at all.
”You can't get out of here too quickly, Owen!” warned the owner.
”If you linger, I'll have you helped out of this boat! Grant Andrews, you're foreman here from now on.”
”First of all, see that that fellow gets out of here in double-quick time.”
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