Adventure Magazine Cover — page 177: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AS THE SPILE-DRIVER TOLD IT by Frank Parker Stockbridge ES, I’ve been runnin’ steam engines f’r more than fifty years, An’ more I studies their habits, the certainer it appears That human bein’s came closest to God an’ the angels when They first created steam engines an’ set ’em to work f’r men; F’r of all of man’s inventions, from now ’way back to the Flood, Steam engines comes the nearest to bein’ like flesh an’ blood. Gas engines has their merits—they pack ‘more power to the pound— But that’s no great advantage, so long as you stay on the ground, An’ when it comes to flyin’ Ill wait till they make a machine That ain’t so darned dependent on havin’ its gasoline. Steam engines, now, are.human, just like a man or a mule. They ain’t so darned partic’ler about what they have f’r fuel. If there ain’t no coal pile handy ‘there’s other tricks you can turn, F’r there ain’t no part o’ creation you can’t find somethin’ to burn; Blubber or hay or cactus—I’ve got up steam with ’em all— An’ I even fired a b’iler without no fuel at all! That was up in the Andes Mountains, atop o’ the timber line, On a pumpin’ job—unwaterin’ the Cerro de Pasco mine. Seventy miles from the railroad, three miles up in the sky— She’ll bile at a hundred an’ eighty—when you get up that high. We fired her a while on cordwood that we packed up on Ilamas, which Is a stinkin’, half-baked camel, till the cholo choppers got rich An’ quit in a bunch, one payday; we might ha’ been shut down yet If me an’ the head geologer we hadn’t ha’ made a bet. He said right where we was workin’ was an old volcano’s spout, An’ there must be fire in the mountain still if we only could get it out. I told him if he’d locate it I’d hook it up some way, a he said I couldn’t do it, so I bet him a whole month’s pay. I thought the youngster was bluffin’; but the boy was there with the dope, F’r he showed me a hot spring b’ilin’ a little ways down the slope. Well, I screwed up a coil 0’ steam pipe an’ shoved it down in the hole, An’ she turned that engine over just like we was burnin’ coal. She wouldn’t get up much pressure, but I rigged a condensin’ gear, An’ we pumped them Spanish workin’s dry on a half of an atmosphere! I never seen a gas engine that hadn’t a yellow streak. But steam engines act like people; they’ll do everything but speak. A Diesel comes in handy—if you’re talkin’ o’ submarines; But the whole internal combustion tribe—they’re nothin’ at all but machines. They'll deliver their rated horsepower, but when they’ve done that they stop; Just give ’em a pound of overload, an’ there’s junk all over the shop. 171 | ee See , “scomichbooks.com ~