CHAPTER XIII THE MAIN BITT

“Better stand off a little! Move back! You’re too close. No--no one knows what may happen. The frame isn’t shored up--propped in place--yet.... Get back--back--I say!”

Thus Atlas delivered his commands, looking up, a frowning young god, of lowering brows, from under the weight which he was steadying--helping to steady. And if his tones were cramped, they were the more imperious.

The May-flower flock of faces, swimming before his bent gaze, receded--retreated to the confines of the shipyard; all--all save one!

One defied him. One still derided him with that firefly challenge which silently said, “Dear me! how important we are!”

“Back!” waved Atlas again, flourishing a half-numbed arm. But the Flame was still defiant. He knew it for a Flame now: a flame of mischief, sunlit mockery, obstinacy, perhaps--temper, upon occasion--and all manner of deeper fires.

He did not know that it was named by the Council Fire for what it was--and what it aspired to be of kindling warmth--Sesooā, the Flame; otherwise, Sara Davenport, embodiment of “pep” in a Camp Fire Group.

Once more he waved his right hand imperiously. Even the fingers began to feel wooden and look yellow in the sunlight, like the great branching timber, measuring thirty feet in its curve, weighing half a ton, which to an onlooker he seemed to be supporting upon his back and shoulders, although the ponderous weight was still really suspended in the hempen falls of the derrick.

Relying upon these straining ropes, one of the two ship-carpenters who had been steadying the ponderous rib with their hands, leaped down to lend some aid in “shoring it,” propping it in place upon the skeleton vessel’s narrow keel-timbers.

It might have been ten seconds later that Atlas felt the peculiar thrill and quiver all through his bent back, his numbing legs--with their feet braced upon the stocks, or building-blocks--that he felt when trout-fishing or “drailing” in the ocean, if a big fish nibbled at his line.

He had got a nibble now! A danger nibble! There was a tremble, a shudder, in the great rib pressing upon him.

Er-er-err-r! It was the gurgle of an aged rope, a worn-out rope, parting, strand by strand, in mid-air.

“My s-soul! The--the falls--derrick’s falls--are--giving--way!”

The nibble had become a bite now, with the hook in his brain.

And he came of a race--a ready-witted race--which was accustomed to act upon any strong nibble of conviction--to take lightning-hold upon a situation.

It was a lightning vision which swam before Atlas now, against a black background of shipyard. He saw the great rib, the ponderous timber, released by the derrick’s failing ropes, unable to maintain, even with his aid, its balance, tottering--tumbling--sidewise, off from him--crashing down into the yard.

He saw, too, that the near-by girl defying him with that merry, wilful glance pointed to mockery on the golden tips of her eyelashes, was within reach of being struck by it--by the wide curve it would describe in falling.

His hunched back became a razor-back--chin touching his knees. And, like a wild-cat, he leaped upon her, pushing her aside--away.

Er-er-r-r! Pop! Snap went the parting ropes--one giving way after the other--their report as thunder in his ears, while, elastically doubling, he sprang from under the wildly swaying timber.

But it did not spare him. Like the kick of a thunder-cloud something grazed him, dealt him a glancing blow upon the shoulder, staggering enough to send his feet from under him--even as he hurled the girl aside.

He was beyond seeing that it was the massive tip of the ungrateful rib which--in feeling--he had been supporting.

Down he went, and the earth, in the shape of another grinning yellow timber--one of those lumber-reefs amid which he was wont to steer Blind Tim--rose up to meet him with such a warm welcome that he saw stars--a whole firmament of them, blood-red, and brighter than the twinkling galaxy which had adorned Sybil’s arm.

Then he lay very still and saw nothing--nothing--just outside the yellow curve of the monster rib, which lay still and prostrate, too, while the girl, her equilibrium likewise upset, rolled over upon the shavings, feeling that, according to a nursery rhyme of her childhood, “heaven and earth had fallen together” and crushed the upholding Atlas between them.

The first to reach him was a ship-carpenter. And according to the pell-mell disorder that broods over most accidents, it happened to be the pessimist, Libby Taber--Libby, who had seen him from the first in the light of a quitter!

He sprang from under the wildly swaying timber.

Now, there is nothing more pell-mell than the moods of a pessimist, not being strung upon the consistent thread of hope!

Libby was no exception. He fogged the air with his stricken cry.

“Oh-h! he’s done for,” he wailed. “Knocked out--done for; the--the best lad that ever set foot in the yard--an’ the quickest to take hold--no ‘sass’ about him, at all, if he is a--rich--man’s--son!”

“Shut up--before I choke you!” growled a steadier voice, the foreman’s. “Done for! Not much! His head came against that lumber-pile. He was doing his bit and it sure was the main bitt that time”--in low, shaken tones--“with a girl’s life depending on it!”

But the girl--why! she felt herself shrinking into such a little “bit” that it seemed as if, presently, she must fade out altogether into the foggy consternation of the ship-yard.

Piteously she looked around for her Camp Fire Sisters. In the deepest pit of blunder and humiliation they would stand by her--even even though Libby was calling the heavens to witness that the fallen rib, grinning in the sunlight, had more sense than the rib that was taken out of Adam’s side and made into a girl--“so it had, by gosh!”