"There's a heap of them engaged with the rock drillers," said Harry, "and ef you go along the line to-morrow, towards Panama, and enter the great Culebra cut, you'll see and hear 'em at work everywhere. Most every night, when the whistles has blown and the men cleared off, you'd think a battle was being fought over there, for there's dynamite and powder exploding on every side, and huge rocks jest bounding down into the trench. Gee! There is a dust up. But I war saying that most everyone who's white has a machine to mind. Of course there are overseers, and lots of officials. Then there's a small army kept going in the repair shops 'way along over Panama direction, at Gorgona. That's a place as would open the eyes of people at New York. I tell you, they turn out a power of work there. See that machine down there running along the rails? Wall, that's home-made, every stick and rod of it put together at Gorgona, and, what's more, it's the invention of one of the employees here." He was bursting with pride, with a legitimate pride. There was no conceit about Harry, but merely a robust belief in all that his comrades did, and in particular in the brains and muscles at work on this giant undertaking. With a sweep of his hand he pointed to a heavy truck, with a crane-like attachment built on it, running along the rails on one of the higher steps of the huge cutting on which he himself was engaged. "Jest watch it," he invited Jim. "It's a treat to see it handle rails. You see, our rails wants shifting constantly; for as the diggers clear the dirt they naturally want to get forward or outward, as the case may be, seeing that we cut our steps away to the side. Anyhow, there's need to swap the rails from place to place and lay new tracks, and that 'ere machine is a track layer, which handles the double lengths of bolted rails as if they was sticks." Jim was fascinated, indeed, as he watched this new wonder; for wonder the machine undoubtedly was. As he looked he could realize that gangs of men and much time might be needed to shift the lines of rails, and time, he remembered, was an item of which his comrades were sparing. Bustle was the order of the day, and of every succeeding day, on the isthmus. As to the machine, it swung its arm over a long length of rail, fastened its clutches upon it, and lifted the double track, ready bolted to its sleepers, into the air. Then it trotted along the rails, and presently deposited its burden somewhere else. "And by the time it's nipped back for another length, and has brought it, the track gang has got the lengths in line, and has bolted the fishplates to it," explained Harry. "But that digger's waiting for us. Git along, Jim."