A few minutes' walk brought them in sight of the big steam shovel, which was doing the work of two hundred men with wheelbarrows. It looked simple enough, a kind of short steel car, resting upon sections of railroad track. Upon the car was mounted, on a kind of ratchet work of iron, a swinging steel platform, from which projected out a long tapering steel boom, at the end of which dangled from wire ropes a huge steel bucket with wicked looking big teeth. Wire ropes an inch and a half thick led down the boom and wound, coil upon coil, around the big controlling drums on the platform below. Two gigantic cog-wheels controlled the lowering and raising of the huge boom in front. Just back of the big revolving drums and cog-wheels a second little platform arose from the first. It was iron-hooded overhead, but in front it was open, and behind the opening, with before him six huge brass levers, stood a man controlling the movements of this mighty worker. Even as the little party watched, the great shovel plunged down, straight down, burying its great teeth in the rooty ground. The drag rope pulled it in until it had gathered up a full load of earth. The boom lifted slightly, the platform swung around, and the bucket dropped its load. For five minutes Charley watched the operation repeated, with his watch in his hand. "Murphy hasn't lied about that," he said. "They are digging a bucket a minute, all right. Let's figure it out: One and one-half yards a minute, that's 26 cents a minute; multiplying that by 60 minutes in the hour, makes $15.60 per hour, and 24 hours in the day, makes $374.40 per day. That's going some, I guess." "Whew," whistled Walter, "that's just like finding money." CHAPTER III. INVESTIGATING. THE working of the powerful machine had been observed from a distance. As the little party drew nearer, they could see more plainly the heaps of mud and wet dirt left in the wake of the steam shovel. Five gigantic negroes, with shovels and hoes, leveled off the piles, working slowly and languidly over the task, their legs wet to the knees and their bodies plastered with mud. "Saws, all of them." Charley commented briefly, as they passed the sudden, slow-working group. "Saws?" echoed Walter questioningly. "I never heard of that race before." "They come from the Bahama Islands," Charley replied. "They all have to ship for this country by way of the port of Nassau. So they get their title from that port, but people on this side have shortened the title down to 'Saws.' They are the finest built and laziest race in existence, I believe. There, that's Mr. Murphy, right back of the machine. He hasn't seen us yet. Whew! Just listen to him."