The clouds which, at noon, had been rising behind the mountains and dropping dark into the valleys and cañons, had spread half over the sky. There was a low, whining wind, growing steadily stronger. And the seven thousand miles of sea stretching unbroken to the west was sending in heavier ground swells to the open harbor. The steamer went heaving from side to side. Even the sailors were finding it not always easy to keep their footing. And it was now that the great iron chimney stacks had to be brought up. It would not have been a small matter at the best. At present it was extremely dangerous. The loaded lighter had gone off. The tackle had been changed on the block of the foremost derrick to new hemp, yellow and strong. There was the huge clangor and rumble of hollow iron striking against iron down in the cargo-space. The mate had taken out his own whistle. The responsibility was too great to be intrusted to subordinates here. He shrilled one order after another, or shouted them in nautical English and strange Spanish, and they were answered from the depths of the hold. The monster tube rolled into the opening guided by a man naked to the waist, on whose brown torso, swelling with muscles, the sweat rolled and glistened. The stack rose slowly upward--roaring its vast basso protests as it struck--fifty feet long, a yard in diameter, heavy, unwieldy, plunging as the ship rolled to starboard, down and down, and back to port, down and down again. It was a formidable thing, all but unmanageable even there. But once clear of the hatchway it flung itself, charging and swinging and threshing, with the great iron bellow of warning. The sailors jumped from its way. There was only the mate to handle it. The ship gave a heavy lurch to starboard. The chimney whirled and lunged toward him with a vibrating song of onslaught, and the voice of the white man in the launch below called an involuntary “Look out!” An instant of the hesitation of fear and the mate would have been struck overboard by all the force of the great cylinder of iron. But he put out his hand and pushed it, and it swung off harmlessly enough, as docile as it was formidable. The little whistle shrilled, the derrick moved its long arm around and out, and the stack hung overside, directly above the launch. The _lancheros_ had retreated to the sides, ready to scramble out of the way, or to jump overboard, if need should be. They stood looking up at it uneasily. If the rope were to break or slip, if the mate were to give a wrong order----