The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1922-03-24
CHAPTER VIII.
The Laborinn Pumns-

On the third day after | had tried
to brain myself in the old boiler / was
pretty nearly as good as ever. and my
two Good Samaritans reluctantly con-
scented to my going back TO work,
Jeanne renewing the bandage on my
broken head, and laying many injunc-
lions upon Daddy Hiram to send me
right back to the cabin if l didn't be
have; behaving" in her use of the
word, meaning that l was to take il
easy on the job.
That sounded mighty good to me,
the way she said it. Most men, 1 fan
cy, are only overgrown children in the
sense that they like TO be fused over
by their womankind. Don't mistake
me, please; | wasn't in love with her
then. Candidly, l don't think knew
what real love was. But it was
mighty pleasant to live in the same
house with her, and to eat her deli
ciOus cooking; to be with her every
day, and to have those undisturbed
evening half-hours with her in front
of the fire. Ii 1 had had to get out;
or if there had been another man
but I won't anticipate.
pletely overhauled the rusted and
gummed-up machinery, Daddy and l
happened upon a day when we were
ready to put fire under the boilers and
we did it. If l should live TO be
hundred years old, l shall never forget
the tense, suppressed excitement that
gripped me as we brought the wood for
the furnaces that bright, hot, July
morning. BY eight o'clock we had
ninety pounds of steam pressure on
the boilers, but we held off until it
had climbed to the regular working
pressure Of one hundred and twenty.
Then I started the pumps; two big
centrifugal suctionS, mounted on
platform in the shaft mouth and so
arranged that they could be lowered
to follow the water level dOwn-if it
should 90 down; pumps that each
threw a stream six inches in diameter.
After the pumps were started and
the indicators showed, or seemed to
show. that they were working up to
full capacity. l rugged up measuring
gauge; a bit of wood for a float, with
a string tied to it. and the string pass
roOf-beaming with a weight on the end
of it. If the water level should go down,
the float would sink with it, pulling
the weight up. A smooth board, with
feet. inches and fractions penciled on
it. was stood up beside the weight to
answer for a measuring scale.
At the end of the hour the float
hadn't moved a hairs breadth not q
hundredth part of an inch, so far as we
could see.
Il don't believe the pumps are work
ingv' 1 exploded. surely they'd make
some little difference in the level I'M
less that shafts got all the under
ground water in the world to back it
up. Those indicators must be out of
whack in some way. Where does the
discharge water empty itseIf?"
Daddy knew this. too.
"Over in the Ieft-hand gulch-into
the creek"
"Show me-" I directed.
We found the discharge from the
pumps a little way below the end of
the path; a ten-inch pipe which had
been laid underground from the shaft
house. presumably to keep it from
freezing in winter. The end of the
pipe stuck out over the stream and it
was projecting pretty nearly a solid
ten-inch jet of water. The pumps were
working all right; there was no doubt
about that. I dug up enough of my
college math TO figure that two six
inch streams would just about fill a
ten-inch pipe, and here it was, running
full and pouring like another torrent
into the gulch. So back we went to
the mine buildings to pile more wood
into the furnaces and to resume our
watching of the Indicator and its pen
cil-marked scale.
Noon caught up with US after a
while-with nothing doing save that
we were rapidly diminishing our wood
pile. For solid week we chopped
down trees and split them up, Daddy
and ], and kept the fires roaring under
the boilers and kept those monster
pumps whirring and grinding away at
the shaft mouth-night and day, mind
you; watch on and watch off. And,
right straight through it all, that little
Indicator weight I had rugged up stood
stock still; never moved the width of
one. of the pencil marks I had drawn
on its gauge board.
BY this time my stubbornness was
yielding something to the still more
stubborn fact. If all this pumping
hadn't even started the flood toward
its diminution, truly all the waters I'M
der the earth must be backing the I'M
failing we'll of that drowned shaft.
Toward the last / think we kept
on more from force of habit than any,
thing else, but at the end of the week
L gave in and consented to let the
fires die down, though it was like pull
ing teeth to do 1T. Something, indeed,
1 brought out of the overtime work,
disappointing as it had been in the
major sense; / was muscled I'D as
hard as a key of nails; as strong as
a mule, and the fierce toll OF wood