His own boat had reached quieter water. Simultaneously, it seemed, both he and his helper thought of Smaltz. They took their eyes from the boat in trouble and the hind-sweepman's jaw dropped. He said unemotionally--dully--as he might have said--"I'm sick; I'm hungry"--"They've struck."
Yes--they had struck. If Bruce had not been so absorbed he might have heard the bottom splintering when she hit the rock.
Her bow shot high into the air and settled at the stern. As she slid off, tilted, filled and sunk, Smaltz and Porcupine Jim both jumped. Then the river made a bend which shut it all from Bruce's sight. It was half a mile before he found a landing. He tied up and walked back, unexcited, not hurrying, with a curious quietness inside.
Smaltz and Jim were fighting when he got there. Smaltz was sitting astride the latter's chest. There were epithets and recriminations, accusations, counter-charges, oaths. The Swede was crying and a little stream of red was trickling toward his ear. Bruce eyed him calmly, contemplatively, thinking what a face he made, and how ludicrous he looked with the sand matted in his corn-silk hair and covering him like a tamale casing of corn-meal as it stuck to his wet clothes.
He left them and walked up the river where the rock rose like a monument to his hopes. With his hands on his hips he watched the water rippling around it, slipping over the spot where the boat lay buried with some portion of every machine upon the works while like a bolt from the blue the knowledge came to him that since the old Edison type was obsolete the factories no longer made duplicates of the parts.