Engineers -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction; Western stories; Young men -- Fiction
They ate a cold canned supper and afterward, as they sat shivering, Jim
said, "If we fail to locate the dam site, no one will have any sympathy
with our troubles."
"We will find it," said Charlie with the calm certainty he never had
lost. "Jupiter looks as big as a dinner plate down here. Sometimes when
I look at the stars I wonder what is the use of this kind of work."
Jim looked up at the stars which seemed almost within hand touch. Their
nearness was an unspeakable comfort to the two in the crevice. He spoke
slowly but with unusual ease. Charlie Tuck had grown very near to him in
the past few days.
"I've had a feeling," he said, "ever since we actually got down here and
on the job, that I'm doing the thing I've always been intended to do. I
don't know how I got that feeling because I've always lived in towns."
"I feel that way every time I go out exploring," answered Tuck. "I can
stand the draughting board just so long and then I break loose. I
suppose someone has got to do these jobs and there is always someone
willing to take the responsibility. Kipling calls it being a Son of
Martha. Do you know those verses?"
"No," said Jim. "I'd like to hear them."
Charlie chuckled. "Me reciting Kipling is like hearing a 'co-ed
yell'--it's the only poem I know, though, and here goes. The Sons of
Martha
'--say to the Mountains, Be ye removed! They say to the lesser floods,
run dry!
Under their rods are the rocks reproved. They are not afraid of that
which is high.
Then do the hilltops shake to their summits, then is the bed of the deep
laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the
nuts break loose,
They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work whenever
they choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert
they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long
in the land.
Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their
common need.'"
The two men sat in silence after Charlie had finished until he said: "If
I were you I'd read Kipling a good deal. He's good food for a man of
your type. People don't realize what their comforts cost. I hope that
when I die it will be on a Son of Martha job. I'm built that way. My
people were New Englanders, then middle west pioneers, and now here I
am, still breaking the wilderness."
Jim sat with his heart swelling with he knew not what great dream. It
was the divine fire of young sacrifice, the subtle sense of devotion
that has made men since the world began lay down their lives for the
thing not seen with the eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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