After grasping the problem in all its details, he threw himself flat upon his face, crawled under the machine, and called for a light.

A moment later his voice issued again, in a call for a hammer.

Several minutes of sharp hammering; then the mass of iron began to heave.

It rose at the upward pressure of Ranger's powerful arms and legs, shoulders and back; it crashed over on its side; he stood up and, without pause or outward sign of his exertion of enormous strength, set about adjusting the gearing to action, with the broken machinery cut out.

"And he past sixty!" muttered one workman to another, as a murmur of applause ran round the admiring circle.