Some delicate and important work was being done, and Stuyvesant had had
his lunch sent up to the dam. Bethune and Dick joined him afterwards, and
sat in the shade of a big traveling crane. Stuyvesant and Dick were hot
and dirty, for it was not their custom to be content with giving orders
when urgent work was going on. Bethune looked languid and immaculately
neat. His speciality was mathematics, and he said he did not see why the
man with mental talents should dissipate his energy by using his hands.
"It's curious about that French liner," Stuyvesant presently remarked. "I
understand her passengers have been waiting since yesterday and she
hasn't arrived."
"The last boat cut out Santa Brigida without notice," Bethune replied.
"My opinion of the French is that they're a pretty casual lot."
"On the surface. They smile and shrug where we set our teeth, but when
you get down to bed-rock you don't find much difference. I thought as you
do, until I went over there and saw a people that run us close for
steady, intensive industry. Their small cultivators are simply great. I'd
like to put them on our poorer land in the Middle West, where we're
content with sixteen bushels of wheat that's most fit for chicken feed to
the acre. Then what they don't know about civil engineering isn't worth
learning."
Bethune made a gesture of agreement. "They're certainly fine engineers
and they're putting up a pretty good fight just now, but these Latins
puzzle me. Take the Iberian branch of the race, for example. We have
Spanish peons here who'll stand for as much work and hardship as any
Anglo-Saxon I've met. Then an educated Spaniard's hard to beat for
intellectual subtlety. Chess is a game that's suited to my turn of mind,
but I've been badly whipped in Santa Brigida. They've brains and
application, and yet they don't progress. What's the matter with them,
anyway?"
"I expect they can't formulate a continuous policy and stick to it, and
they keep brains and labor too far apart; the two should coordinate. But
I wonder what's holding up the mail boat."
"Do they know when she left the last port?" Dick, who had listened
impatiently, asked with concealed interest.
"They do. It's a short run and she ought to have arrived yesterday
morning."
"The Germans can't have got her. They have no commerce-destroyers in
these waters," Bethune remarked, with a glance at Dick. "Your navy
corralled the lot, I think."
Dick wondered why Bethune looked at him, but he answered carelessly: "So
one understands. But it's strange the French company cut out the last
call. There was a big quantity of freight on the mole."
"It looks as if the agent had suspected something," Stuyvesant replied.
"However, that's not our affair, and you want to get busy and have your
specifications and cost-sheets straight when Fuller comes."