“All right, Noah, that’s the fourth stone,” Rocky announced.
“We’re ready for the first beam.” The bulky man wiped his
brow as he turned to Noah.
Four stones extended vertically out of the ground in the field
where Noah had previously told his father and grandfather he
would build the box. These stones stood as columns, two and a half
feet square, four feet out of the ground, with a three-inch channel
cut in the top to cradle future beams. Spaced at twenty-five-foot in-
tervals, they aligned perfectly. Twenty-five feet to the west, another
four holes were dug ten feet deep with large stone footings at the
bottom. Workers were lowering another obelisk into one of those.
Noah nodded. “The crew is ready to cart the beam in, but be
patient with us, Rock. Moving those eight-and-a-half-ton sticks
and setting them in place will take time.”
The large man gestured with his massive arms. “As you can see,
my crew is already getting ready to set the next four stones while
you prep your little twig. Let us know when you’re ready to set it or
if you need any help.” The man turned back to his crew.
“Very good,” Noah said as they parted. “I’m anxious to see if
you need any shims. Leveling this platform is critical. The greater
the accuracy here, the truer the rest of the box will be, and the eas-
ier it will fit together.
The man turned to face Noah. “You sound like we’ve never
done this before, Noah. We use this same technology for building
pyramids and your drying fields. There’s nothing new—just the
size and shape.”
Noah laughed. “I know. But after this, the pieces get heavy.
I can’t have any movement in the foundation while we slide the
beams into place.”
“Slide?” Rocky turned to Noah. “I thought you were going to
lift them and set them in place gently.”
“That’s the easy way. These beams are heavy.”
“Trust us, Noah.” The man slapped Noah on the back. “We cut
and moved in the first set of stones. We can level the beams too.”
“I am impressed at how easily you moved those twelve-ton
rocks.”
“Those aren’t just rocks, Noah. These are precision-quarried
stones. We set them on firm foundations. They won’t move even if
you do drag a load across them. And I’ll guarantee that your little
eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch beams will fit perfectly into the set-
tings we tooled for them.”
Noah looked up, nodding toward the group of workers shout-
ing and guiding animals. A seventy-five-foot beam slowly inched
its way toward them. “Here’s your first test. The elephants are on
their way.”
“I still don’t see how you plan to build this, Noah. But judg-
ing from the derricks you’ve constructed, you know what you are
doing.”
“It’s simple enough. Once you finish the footings, we place
these beams across the top of them. These beams will support the
bottom of the hull. The hull boards are six-by-twelves, running
the full four-hundred-fifty-foot length of the vessel. Then we slide
a little twenty-four-by-forty-two-inch by four-hundred-fifty-foot
Next page: From Chapter Eighteen