The Iron Boys on the Ore Boats Part 42

"Why, Rush, you amaze me. It cannot be possible, after figuring down all transportations the way the experts of this company have done and been doing for years."

"The old saying is to the effect that figures never lie. Perhaps mine do. If so, you will be able to discover the untruth at once."

"May I ask how you propose to work this great saving?" asked the president good-naturedly.

"Send your boats back light."

"Send them back light?"

"Yes, sir; in water ballast."

"But, my boy, don't you understand that it will mean the loss of a lot of money to do that? The ships earn a great many thousands of dollars a year by carrying freight for pay on the return trips."

"Yes, sir; I understand that. Their cargo is mostly coal, is it not?"

"It is."

"For ports all along the Great Lakes?"

"Certainly."

"And through carrying this coal your ships lose from a week to ten days and some times two weeks' on every round trip."

"How do you know this?" interrupted Mr. Carrhart.

"I have asked questions," smiled Steve. "Call it a week's loss of time on each trip. Do you know what that means?"

"I begin to see," answered the president reflectively.

"It means that every time your fleet makes a round trip, carrying coal back with them, the company loses their services to the enormous total of two hundred and ten weeks, more than four years, Mr. Carrhart. If you will glance over these figures of mine you will observe that, by this method, the company is losing about the figure stated by me a few minutes ago, over and above what you get in freights for carrying the coal."

The president made a few brief calculations. He went over his figures and Steve's several times, his forehead corrugated with deep wrinkles as he did so. At last Mr. Carrhart glanced up, gazing steadily at the slightly flushed face of the Iron Boy.

"Rush you are a very remarkable young man," he said. "Of course, I knew that before, but what I did not know was that you had a head for finance, such as you have just demonstrated. This is really a most remarkable showing. I shall bring it before the board at the next meeting. There is no doubt about your suggestions being adopted. I think it will come in the nature of a revelation to the board. My boy, I am proud of you. I can't tell you how proud I am, especially so because I picked you out, feeling from the first that you would prove a winner."

"Thank you, sir."

"And, in this connection, I received a long letter from Captain Simms from Cleveland yesterday. He made certain suggestions regarding yourself and your friend Jarvis, which it gives me great pleasure to act upon.

You have been appointed second mate of the steamer 'Richmond'; Jarvis, first wheelman. You will be called upon to pa.s.s a government examination for a license, which you will take to-morrow morning. You will have no difficulty about it, if you are as good a navigator as Captain Simms says you are, and I have no doubt you are. If you remain on the lakes we'll be making a captain of you some of these days. However, I have an idea you do not intend to be a sailor."

"No, sir, not permanently."

And so Steve Rush began as a watch officer on the Great Lakes. He proved that the confidence of his superiors was not misplaced, and for the rest of the season he remained on the "Richmond," distinguishing himself in many ways. Gus Collins, with his fresh start in life, had dropped his hang-dog expression. When he talked to a man, now, he looked that man squarely in the eye, and from the moment of his return to the ship he was a daily worshipper at the shrine of Steve Rush.

At the close of the season Steve found the foreman a place with a manufacturing firm, with the help of a letter from Captain Simms. Then, bidding good-bye to their friends, the lads gathered up their dunnage and went home for a few weeks' rest before taking up the new life that they had about decided upon. What happened to them in their new calling will be related in detail in a following volume ent.i.tled, "THE IRON BOYS IN THE STEEL MILLS; Or, Beginning Anew in the Cinder Pits." In the great steel mills the boys were to work among the roaring furnaces, the swiftly moving cranes and the moulding mills, where the metal that they had helped to mine ran in rivers that turned into gold. There the boys were to be called upon to face death many times, and in many forms, as they toiled among the rough men of the mills and laughed at the thousand and one perils of their new life.

THE END.