Max hurried away.  Group after group of laborers, peavies or cant-hooks on shoulders, were moving slowly past him toward the wharf.  It was already nearly dark, and the arc lights on the elevator structure, and on the spouting house, beyond the tracks, were flaring.  He started toward the wharf, walking behind a score of the laborers.

From the east, over the flats and marshes through which the narrow, sluggish river wanders to Lake Michigan, came the hoarse whistle of a steamer.  Bannon turned and looked.  His view was blocked by some freight cars that were standing on the C. & S. C. tracks at some distance to the east.  He ran across the tracks and out on the wharf, climbing on the timber pile, where Peterson and his gang were, rolling down the big sticks with cant-hooks.  Not a quarter of a mile away was a big steamer, ploughing slowly up the river; the cough of her engines and the swash of the churning water at her bow and stern could be plainly heard.  Peterson stopped work for a moment, and joined him.

“Well,” Bannon said, “we’re in for it now.  I never thought they’d make such time as this.”

“She can lay up here all night till morning, I guess.”

Bannon was thinking hard.

“No,” he finally said, “she can’t.  There ain’t any use of wasting all day tomorrow unloading that cribbing and getting it across.”

Peterson, too, was thinking; and his eyebrows were coming together in a puzzled scowl.

“Oh,” he said, “you mean to do it tonight?”

“Yes, sir.  We don’t get any sleep till every piece of that cribbing is over at the annex, ready for business in the morning.  Your sills are laid—­there’s nothing in the way of starting those bins right up.  This ain’t an all-night job if we hustle it.”

The steamer was a big lake barge, with high bow and stern, and a long, low, cargo deck amidships that was piled squarely and high with yellow two-inch plank.  Her crew had clearly been impressed with the need of hurry, for long before she could be worked into the wharf they had rigged the two hoists and got the donkey engines into running order.  The captain stood by the rail on the bridge, smoking a cigar, his hand on the bell-pull.

“Where do you want it?” he called to Bannon.

“Right here, where I’m standing.  You can swing your bow in just below the bridge there.”

The captain pulled the bell, and the snub-nosed craft, stirring up a whirl of mud from the bottom of the river, was brought alongside the wharf.

“Where are you going to put it?” the captain called.

“Here.  We’ll clean this up as fast as we can.  I want that cribbing all unloaded tonight, sure.”

“That suits me,” said the captain.  “I don’t want to be held up here—­ought to pull out the first thing in the morning.”

“All right, you can do it.”  Bannon turned to Peterson and Vogel (who had just reached the wharf).  “You want to rush this, boys.  I’ll go over and see to the piling.”