idleness, nowhere a cold machine or a man at rest.  On every hand was smoke and steam and sweat.  The drills chugged steadily, the hungry iron hogs gouged out the trails the drills had loosened, the trains rolled past at intervals of a moment or so.  Lines of electric wire, carried upon low wooden “shears,” paralleled the tracks, bearing the white-hot sparks that rent the mountain.  At every switch a negro flagman crouched beneath a slanting sheet of corrugated iron, seeking shelter alike from flying fragments and the blazing sun.  From beneath the drills came occasional subterranean explosions; then geysers of muddy water rose in the air.  Under the snouts of the steam shovels “dobe” shots went off as bowlders were riven into smaller fragments.  Now and then an excited tooting of whistles gave warning of a bigger blast as the flagmen checked the flow of traffic, indicating with arms upraised that the ground was “coming up.”  Thereupon a brief lull occurred; men hid themselves, the work held its breath, as it were.  But while the detonations still echoed, and before the flying missiles had ceased to shower, the human ants were moiling at their hills once more, the wheels were turning again, the jaws of the iron hogs were clanking.

Through this upheaval the motor-car penetrated, dodging trains of “flats,” which moved sluggishly to afford them passage up and down over the volcanic furrows at the bottom of the gorge or along some shelf beneath which the foundations were being dug.  At times a shovel reached out its five-yard steel jaw and gently cleared the rails of debris, or boosted some bowlder from the path with all the skill of a giant hand and fingers.  Up and down the canon rolled spasmodic rumblings, like broadsides from a fleet of battle-ships.

“Somebody with a head for figures has estimated what it costs the government to send a motor-car like this through the Cut in working hours,” Runnels said.  “I don’t remember the exact amount, but it was some thousands of dollars.”

“Delays to trains, I suppose?”

“Yes.  A minute here, thirty seconds there.  Every second means a certain number of cubic yards unremoved, and holds back the opening of the Canal just so much.  You have postponed a great event several minutes, Mr. Anthony.”

“It’s the first important thing I ever did.”

“Our little nine-mile trip will cost Uncle Sam more than a brace of tickets from New York to ’Frisco and back again, including Pullmans and travelling expenses.”

Mile after mile the sight-seers rolled on, past scenes of never-varying activity—­past more shovels, more groups of drills, more dirt trains, more regiments of men—­Runnels explaining.  Kirk marvelling until he was forced to exclaim: 

“I had no idea it was so big.  It doesn’t seem as if they’d ever finish it.”