The cold Atlantic rain turned to salt-sleet by four in the morning, stinging the faces of the rail workers at Point Sentinel.
Along the curved granite sea-wall, three hundred men from District Twelve moved with practiced, silent efficiency. They didn't speak; they didn't chant. They wore heavy oiled canvas coats stiffened by sea spray, their work boots thudding rhythmically against the stone ballast. In their hands were heavy iron wrenches, sledgehammers, and fat spools of heavy copper cable as thick as a man's wrist.
Foreman Haddon stood on the cowcatcher of a idling seventy-ton yard locomotive, his leather apron stiffened with dried mud and coal soot. He held a brass oil lantern in one hand and a set of rolled rail schematics in the other.
