Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing white steam-clouds at regular intervals from his “meerschaum” pipe. After twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board walk of Canal Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning them to haste. A moment later, a fat and dignified officer passed, swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his march at the head of a crew of men now thoroughly aroused to the fact that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night silence. They crossed Fairbanks Street, and a moment after stood at one end of the power dam. The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes that were the stars. Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet rush above. Then seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels caught against the combing, midleg in water, was braced back at the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the liquid, nailed it home with heavy inaudible strokes. As though by magic a second timber braced the first, bolted solidly through sockets already cut for it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another. More men entered the water to pass the timbers. A row of heavy slanted supports grew out from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long, arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place. When the supports had reached out over half of the river’s span, and the water was dotted with the shoulders of men gracefully slanted against the current, Jimmy gave orders to begin placing the flash-boards. Heavy planks were at once slid across the supports, where the weight of the racing water at once clamped them fast. The smooth, quiet river, interrupted at last, murmured and snarled and eddied back, only to rush with increased vehemence around the end of the rapidly growing obstruction. The policeman passing back and forth on Canal Street heard no sound of the labor going on. If he had been an observant policeman he would have noted an ever-changing tone in the volume of sound roaring up from the eddy below the dam. After a time even he remarked on a certain obvious phenomenon. “Sure,” said he, “now that’s funny!” He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were, after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, East Side; and Canal Street, East Side, seemed peaceful. The river had fallen abruptly silent. The last of Jimmy’s flash-boards was in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce’s Tower struck two.