Mark me wurds, gintlemen, he'll finish that tunnel an'
beggin' yer pardon, Mr. Orton, marry that gurl, too. Didn't I see
her with tears in her eyes right in this room when he wasn't lookin',
and a smile when he was? Sure, ye'll be all right," continued Paddy,
slapping his side and thigh. "We all get the bends more or less
- all us sand-hogs. I was that doubled up meself that I felt like
a big jack-knife. Had it in the arm, the side, and the leg all at
once, that time he was just speakin' of. He'll be all right in a
couple more weeks, sure, an' down in the air again, too, with the
rest of his men. It's somethin' else he has on his moind."
"Then the case has nothing to do with your trouble, nothing to do
with the bends?" asked Kennedy, keenly showing his anxiety to help
our old friend.
"Well, it may and it may not," replied Orton thoughtfully. "I begin
to think it has. We have had a great many cases of the bends among
the men, and lots of the poor fellows have died, too. You know, of
course, how the newspapers are roasting us. We are being called
inhuman; they are going to investigate us; perhaps indict me. Oh,
it's an awful mess; and now some one is trying to make Taylor believe
it is my fault.
"Of course," he continued, "we are working under a high air-pressure
just now, some days as high as forty pounds.
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