The Survivor by Paul Almond Page A

he must make every effort to get the job.
    He noticed little Ben by his wheelbarrow watching with keen interest. Hall followed his look, and frowned. “Go on with ye now, Ben, get yourself some supper.”
    Ben turned and walked sheepishly toward the lodgings.
    “Actually, sir, I’ve been chatting with him. I had in mind that if I worked here, I might teach him some reading, writing, and ’rithmatic.
    “Now why would ye do that, for pity’s sake?”
    “Well sir,” said James, noticing a hesitation in the millwright, “I know what it is to be uneducated and to be in a class where you’re ignored. Everything I learned was from a kindly old tutor who took pity on me and encouraged me to study hard. That’s how I came to be, in some small way, an educated man. I’d feel it were my duty to do the same for Ben.”
    “And I suppose them Garretts saw you as an educated man? And that I could need that kind o’ help?”
    “No no, sir, they see me, I hope, as a new settler, with dreams for his future, and who is not afraid to work extra hard to realize those dreams.”
    Hall stared after the men who had gone to their bunkhouse, then pulled out his pipe and tinderbox. He worked at it with the most amazing agility, fingers moving so fast that James could hardly follow him. The tinder was alight in a trice, and from that he lit his pipe.
    James felt that Mr. Hall must now be tossed upon the horns of a dilemma: reject James as a spy from his coowner, William, or accept James as an innocent, and so harness his youthful energy to the sawmill.
    James stayed silent. Damn! Why had he given him the letter? Maybe by now the job would be his. He felt oddly as if his thoughts were travelling in some curious link to the millwright’s brain.
    “Why not just give me a try, sir?” James ventured. “If I prove unworthy, I shall earn nothing. If I succeed, then you will see your output rise in accordance with my hard work.” He looked down, nervous lest this last plea had been overdone.
    The millwright turned abruptly and started to walk off. James heart sank.
    Then he heard Hall call out, “Come with me.” They walked over to a clearing where stood a cabin of rough logs, roofed with overlapping planks. “Had this here built some years ago so the fellas wouldn’t have that three-hour walk from Bonaventure every day. French, good workers, though helluva time training them.” He shoved open the door.
    James saw, in the light of a lantern hung from a beam, four men gathering round an open fireplace in the middle, under a hole in the roof. Kettles and a cauldron hung over the open fire, heating the men’s supper. The room contained six rough bunks, much like his lumber camp that winter back of Paspébiac. Here, Hall had provided straw mattresses and the floor was of rough planks, not mud as in the lumber shacks.
    “That bunk in the far end — the top one — ye can take that,” the millwright said, and made an introduction to his other workers, in French.
    So he was hired! James thought. Thank the Good Lord above!
    ***
    “Throw her out o’ gear,” called the millwright as he hurried down to join James below the heavy flooring of the mill.
    Above, ’Ti-Pete slid a lever back, and James heard the system of pulleys and belts slowly wind down. When the whirring stopped, James began to trace the power. He’d always had a yen for mechanical things, although he was new at this sort of work. In the Navy, he had to learn, as had all Midshipmen, the way of sails and jibs and how they worked. And now he marvelled at both the simplicity and complexity of the mill’s design beneath the floorboards. Belts and pulleys transferred power from the paddle wheel, through a system of smaller wheels linked by broad belts perhaps six inches wide, to the actual wheel that drove the saw.
    “This’ll ruin me!” the old man said. “Finish me off. I knew it!”
    “No, no, just wait, Mr. Hall. We can fix it. Watch.” Curiously enough, James had only