Eliza Appleton. From his evident anxiety she gathered that the matter
was of graver consequence than she could well understand.
"Thirteen inches in fifteen hundred feet can't amount to much," she
said, vaguely.
Blaine smiled in spite of himself. "You don't understand. It's as bad
as thirteen feet, for the work can't go on until everything is in
perfect alignment. That whole forest of piles must be straightened."
"Impossible!" she gasped. "Why, there are thousands of them."
He shook his head, still smiling doubtfully. "Nothing is impossible to
Mellen and Parker. They've begun clearing away the ice on the up-stream
side and driving new anchor-piles above. They're going to fit tackle to
them and yank the whole thing up-stream. I never heard of such a thing,
but there's no time to do anything else." He cast a worried look at the
smiling sky. "I wonder what will happen next. This is getting on my
nerves."
Out on the river swift work was going on. Steam from every available
boiler was carried across the ice in feed-pipes, the night shift had
been roused from sleep, and every available man was busied in relieving
the pressure. Pile-drivers hammered long timbers into the river-bed
above the threatened point, hydraulic jacks were put in place, and
steel cables were run to drum and pulley. The men worked sometimes
knee-deep in ice-water; but they did not walk, they ran. In an
incredibly short time the preparations were completed, a strain was put
upon the tackle, and when night came the massive false-work had been
pulled back into line and the traveler was once more swinging steel
into place. It was a magnificent feat, yet not one of those concerned
in it could feel confident that the work had not been done in vain; for
the time was growing terribly short, and, although the ice seemed
solid, it was rotting fast.
After the southern half of the span had been completed the warmth
increased rapidly, therefore the steel crew lengthened its hours. The
men worked from seven o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at
night.
On the 13th, without warning of any sort, Garfield Glacier began moving
forward. It had lain inactive even during the midwinter thaw which had
started its smaller brother, but that warm spell had evidently had its
effect upon the giant, for now he shook off his lethargy and awoke. He
stirred, gradually at first and without sound, as if bent upon
surprising the interlopers; then his speed increased. As the glacier
advanced it thrust the nine-foot blanket of lake ice ahead of it, and
this in turn crowded the river ice down upon the bridge. The movement
at the camp site on the first day was only two inches, but that was
sufficiently serious.
The onset of Garfield at this time was, of course, unexpected; for no
forward motion had ever been reported prior to the spring break-up. The
action of the ice heretofore had been alarming; but now consternation
spread, a panic swept the ranks of the builders, for this was no
short-lived phenomenon, this was the annual march of the glacier itself
which promised to continue indefinitely. A tremendous cutting-edge,
nine feet in thickness, like the blade of a carpenter's plane, was
being driven against the bridge by an irresistible force.
Once again the endless thawing and chopping and gouging of ice began,
but the more rapidly the encroaching edge was cut away the more swiftly
did it bear down. The huge mass began to rumble; it "calved," it split,
it detonated, and, having finally loosened itself from its bed, it
acquired increased momentum. As the men with chisels and steam-points
became exhausted others took their places, but the structural gang
clung to its perch above, augmenting the din of riveters and the
groaning of blocks and tackle. Among the able-bodied men sleep now was
out of the question, for the ice gained in spite of every effort. It
was too late to remove the steel in the uncompleted span to a place of
safety, for that would have required more time than to bridge the
remaining gap.
Piling began to buckle and bend before that irresistible push; the
whole nicely balanced mass of metal was in danger of being unseated.
Mellen cursed the heavens in a black fury; Parker smiled through white
lips; O'Neil ground his teeth and spurred his men on.
This feverish haste brought its penalty. On the evening of the 14th,
when the span was more than three-quarters finished, a lower chord
section fouled as it was lifted, and two loading-beams at the top of
the traveler snapped.
On that day victory had been in sight; the driving of the last bolt had
been but a question of hours, a race with the sliding ice. But with the
hoisting apparatus out of use work halted. Swiftly, desperately,
without loss of a moment's time, repairs began. No regrets were voiced,
no effort was made to place the blame, for that would have caused
delay, and every minute counted. Eleven hours later the broken beams
were replaced, and erection had recommenced.
But now for those above there was danger to life and limb. During the
pause the ice had gained, and no effort could relieve the false-work of
its strain. All knew that if it gave way the workmen would be caught in
a chaos of collapsing wood and steel.
From the morning of May 14th until midnight of the 16th the
iron-workers clung to their tasks. They dropped their tools and ran to
their meals; they gulped their food and fled back to their posts. The
weaker ones gave out and staggered away, cursed and taunted by their
companions. They were rough fellows, and in their deep-throated
profanity was a prayer.
The strong ones struggled on, blind with weariness, but upheld by that
desperate, unthinking courage that animates a bayonet charge. It seemed
that every moment must see the beginning of that slow work of
demolition which would send them all scurrying to safety; but hour
after hour the piling continued to hold and the fingers of steel to
reach out, foot by foot, for the concrete pier which was their goal.
At midnight of the 16th the last rivet was driven; but the ice had
gained to such an extent that the lower chord was buckled down-stream
about eight inches, and the distance was growing steadily. Quickly the
traveler was shifted to the false-work beyond the pier, and the men
under Mellen's direction fell to splitting out the blocking.
As the supports were chopped away the mass began to crush the last few
wedges; there was a great snapping and rending of wood; and some one,
strained to the breaking-point, shouted:
"Look out! There she goes!"
A cry of terror arose, the men fled, trampling one another in their
panic. But Mellen charged them like a wild man, firing curses and
orders at them until they rallied. The remaining supports were removed;
the fifteen hundred tons of metal settled into place and rested
securely on its foundations.
O'Neil was the last man ashore. As he walked the completed span from
Pier Three the barricade of piling beneath him was bending and tearing;
but he issued no orders to remove it, for the river was doing that. In
the general haste pile-drivers, hoists, boilers, and various odds and
ends of machinery and material had been left where they stood. They
were being inundated now; many of them were all but submerged. There
was no possibility of saving them at present, for the men were half
dead from exhaustion.
As he lurched up the muddy, uneven street to his quarters Murray felt
his fatigue like a heavy burden, for he had been sixty hours without
sleep. He saw Slater and Appleton and the rest of his "boys"; he saw
Natalie and Eliza, but he was too tired to speak to them, or to grasp
what they said. He heard the workmen cheering Mellen and Parker and
himself. It was very foolish, he thought, to cheer, since the river had
so nearly triumphed and the final test was yet to come.
He fell upon his bed, clothed as he was; an hour later the false-work
beneath Span Three collapsed.
Although the bridge was not yet finished, the most critical point of
its construction had been passed, for the fourth and final portion
would be built over shallow water, and no great difficulties were to be
expected even though the ice went out before the work was finished. But
Murray had made his promise and his boast to complete the structure
within a stated time, and he was determined to live up to the very
letter of his agreement with the Trust. As to the result of the
break-up, he had no fear whatever.
For once Nature aided him: she seemed to smile as if in approval of his
steadfastness. The movement of the channel ice became irregular,
spasmodic, but it remained firm until the last span had been put in
place.
Of this dramatic struggle Eliza Appleton had watched every phase with
intensest interest; but when at last she knew that the battle was won
she experienced a peculiar revulsion of feeling. So long as O'Neil had
been working against odds, with the prospect of ruin and failure
forever imminent, she had felt an almost painful sympathy, but now that
he had conquered she felt timid about congratulating him. He was no
longer to be pitied and helped; he had attained his goal and the fame
he longed for. His success would inevitably take him out of her life.
She was very sorry that he needed her no longer.
She did not watch the last bridge-member swung, but went to her room,
and tried to face the future. Spring was here, her book was finished,
there was the need to take up her life again.
She was surprised when Murray came to find her.
"I missed you, Eliza," he said. "The others are all down at the
river-bank. I want you to congratulate me."
She saw, with a jealous twinge, that exultation over his victory had
overcome his weariness, that his face was alight with a fire she had
never before seen. He seemed young, vigorous, and masterful once more.
"Of course," he went on, "the credit belongs to Parker, who worked the
bridge out in each detail--he's marvelous--and to Mellen, who actually
built it, but I helped a little. Praise to me means praise to them."
"It is all over now, isn't it?"
"Practically. Blaine has cabled New York that we've won. Strictly
speaking, we haven't as yet, for there's still the break-up to face;
but the bridge will come through it without a scratch. The ice may go
out any minute now, and after that I can rest." He smiled at her
gladly. "It will feel good to get rid of all this responsibility, won't
it? I think you've suffered under it as much as I have."
A little wistfully she answered: "You're going to realize that dream
you told me about the day of the storm at Kyak. You have conquered this
great country--just as you dreamed."
He acquiesced eagerly, boyishly. "Yes. Whirring wheels, a current of
traffic, a broad highway of steel--that's the sort of monument I want
to leave."
"Sometime I'll come back and see it all completed and tell myself that
I had a little part in making it."
"Come back?" he queried. "Why, you're going to stay till we're through,
aren't you?"
"Oh no! I'm going south with the spring flight--on the next boat,
perhaps."
His face fell; the exultant light gradually faded from his eyes.
"Why--I had no idea! Aren't you happy here?"
She nodded. "But I must try to make good in my work as you have in
yours."
He was looking at her sorrowfully, almost as if she had deserted him.
"That's too bad, but--I suppose you must go. Yes; this is no place for
you. I dare say other people need you to bring sunshine and joy to them
just as we old fellows do, but--I've never thought about your leaving.
It wouldn't be right to ask you to stay here among such people as we
are when you have so much ahead of you. Still, it will leave a gap.
Yes--it certainly will--leave a gap."
She longed desperately to tell him how willingly she would stay if he
only asked her, but the very thought shocked her into a deeper reserve.
"I'm going East to sell my book," she said, stiffly. "You've given me
the climax of the story in this race with the seasons."
"Is it a--love story?" he asked.
Eliza flushed. "Yes. It's mostly love."
"You're not at all the girl I thought you when we first met. You're
very--different. I'm sure I won't recognize myself as the hero. Who--or
what is the girl in the story?"
"Well, she's just the kind of girl that would appeal to a person like
you. She's tall and dark and dashing, and--of course, she's remarkably
beautiful. She's very feminine, too."
"What's her name?"
Miss Appleton stammered: "Why--I--called her Violet--until I could
think of a better--"
"What's wrong with Violet? You couldn't think of a better name than
that. I'm fond of it."
"Oh, it's a good book-name, but for real life it's too--delicate."
Eliza felt with vexation that her face was burning. She was sure he was
laughing at her.
"Can't I read the manuscript?" he pleaded.
"Heavens! No! I--" She changed the subject abruptly. "I've left word to
be called the minute the ice starts to go out. I want to see the last
act of the drama."
When O'Neil left her he was vaguely perplexed, for something in her
bearing did not seem quite natural. He was forlorn, too, at the
prospect of losing her. He wondered if fathers suffered thus, or if a
lover could be more deeply pained at a parting than he. Somehow he
seemed to share the feelings of both.
XXVII
HOW A DREAM CAME TRUE
Early on the following morning Eliza was awakened by a sound of
shouting outside her window. She lay half dazed for a moment or two,
until the significance of the uproar made itself apparent; then she
leaped from her bed.
Men were crying:
"There she goes!"
"She's going out!"
Doors were slamming, there was the rustle and scuff of flying feet, and
in the next room Dan was evidently throwing himself into his clothes
like a fireman. Eliza called to him, but he did not answer; and the
next moment he had fled, upsetting some article of furniture in his
haste. Drawing her curtains aside, the girl saw in the brightening dawn
men pouring down the street, dressing as they went. They seemed half
demented; they were yelling at one another, but she could not gather
from their words whether it was the ice which was moving or--the
bridge. The bridge! That possibility set her to dressing with tremulous
fingers, her heart sick with fear. She called to Natalie, but scarcely
recognized her own voice.
"I--don't know," came the muffled reply to her question. "It sounds
like something--terrible. I'm afraid Dan will fall in or--get hurt."
The confusion in the street was growing. "ELIZA!" Natalie's voice was
tragic.
"What is it, dear?"
"H--help me, quick!"
"How?"
"I can't find my other shoe."
But Eliza was sitting on the floor, lacing up her own stout boots, and
an instant later she followed her brother, pursued by a wail of dismay
from the adjoining chamber. Through the chill morning light she
hurried, asking many questions, but receiving no coherent reply from
the racing men; then after endless moments of suspense she saw with
relief that the massive superstructure of the bridge was still
standing. Above the shouting she heard another sound, indistinct but
insistent. It filled the air with a whispering movement; it was
punctuated at intervals by a dull rumbling and grinding. She found the
river-bank black with forms, but like a cat she wormed her way through
the crowd until the whole panorama lay before her.
The bridge stood as she had seen it on the yesterday--slender, strong,
superb in the simplicity of its splendid outline; but beneath it and as
far as her eyes could follow the river she saw, not the solid spread of
white to which she had become accustomed, but a moving expanse of
floes. At first the winter burden slipped past in huge masses, acres in
extent, but soon these began to be rent apart; irregular black seams
ran through them, opened, closed, and threw up ridges of ice-shavings
as they ground together. The floes were rubbing against the banks, they
came sliding out over the dry shore like tremendous sheets of cardboard
manipulated by unseen hands, and not until their nine-foot edges were
exposed to view did the mind grasp the appalling significance of their
movement. They swept down in phalanxes upon the wedge-like ice-breakers
which stood guard above the bridge-piers, then they halted, separated,
and the armored cutting-edges sheared through them like blades.
A half-mile below, where the Salmon flung itself headlong against the
upper wing of Jackson Glacier, the floating ice was checked by the
narrowed passageway. There a jam was forming, and as the river heaved
and tore at its growing burden a spectacular struggle went on. The
sound of it came faintly but impressively to the watchers--a grinding
and crushing of bergs, a roar of escaping waters. Fragments were
up-ended, masses were rearing themselves edgewise into the air, were
overturning and collapsing. They were wedging themselves into every
conceivable angle, and the crowding procession from above was adding to
the barrier momentarily. As the passageway became blocked the waters
rose; the river piled itself up so swiftly that the eye could note its
rise along the banks.
But the attention of the crowd was divided between the jam and
something far out on the bridge itself. At first glance Eliza did not
comprehend; then she heard a man explaining:
"He was going out when we got here, and now he won't come back."
The girl gasped, for she recognized the distant figure of a man,
dwarfed to puny proportions by the bulk of the structure in the mazes
of which he stood. The man was O'Neil; he was perched upon one of the
girders near the center of the longest span, where he could watch the
attack upon the pyramidal ice-breakers beneath him.
"He's a fool," said some one at Eliza's back. "That jam is getting
bigger."
"He'd better let the damned bridge take care of itself."
She turned and began to force her way through the press of people
between her and the south abutment. She arrived there, disheveled and
panting, to find Slater, Mellen, and Parker standing in the approach.
In front of them extended the long skeleton tunnel into which Murray
had gone.
"Mr. O'Neil is out there!" she cried to Tom.
Slater turned and, reading the tragic appeal in her face, said
reassuringly:
"Sure! But he's all right."
"They say--there's danger."
"Happy Tom's" round visage puckered into a doubtful smile. "Oh, he'll
take care of himself."
Mellen turned to the girl and said briefly:
"There's no danger whatever."
But Eliza's fear was not to be so easily quieted.
"Then why did he go out alone? What are you men doing here?"
"It's his orders," Tom told her.
Mellen was staring at the jam below, over which the Salmon was hurling
a flood of ice and foaming waters. The stream was swelling and rising
steadily; already it had nearly reached the level of the timberline on
the left bank; the blockade was extending up-stream almost to the
bridge itself. Mellen said something to Parker, who shook his head
silently.
Dan Appleton shouldered his way out of the crowd, with Natalie at his
heels. She had dressed herself in haste: her hair was loose, her jacket
was buttoned awry; on one foot was a shoe, on the other a bedroom
slipper muddy and sodden. Her dark eyes were big with excitement.
"Why don't you make Murray come in?" Dan demanded sharply.
"He won't do it," muttered Slater.
"The jam is growing. Nobody knows what'll happen if it holds much
longer. If the bridge should go--"
Mellen whirled, crying savagely: "It won't go! All hell couldn't take
it out."
From the ranks of the workmen came a bellow of triumph, as an unusually
heavy ice-floe was swept against the breakers and rent asunder. The
tumult of the imprisoned waters below was growing louder every moment:
across the lake came a stentorian rumble as a huge mass was loosened
from the front of Garfield. The channel of the Salmon where the
onlookers stood was a heaving, churning caldron over which the slim
bridge flung itself defiantly.
Eliza plucked at her brother's sleeve imploringly, and he saw her for
the first time.
"Hello, Sis," he cried. "How did you get here?"
"Is he in--danger, Danny?"
"Yes--no! Mellen says it's all right, so it must be, but--that dam--"
At that moment Natalie began to sob hysterically, and Dan turned his
attention to her.
But his sister was not of the hysterical kind. Seizing Tom Slater by
the arm, she tried to shake him, demanding fiercely:
"Suppose the jam doesn't give way! What will happen?" "Happy Tom"
stared at her uncomprehendingly. Her voice was shrill and insistent.
"Suppose the water rises higher. Won't the ice sweep down on the bridge
itself? Won't it wreck everything if it goes out suddenly? Tell me--"
"It can't hold. Mellen says so." Slater, like the others, found it
impossible to keep his eyes from the river where those immeasurable
forces were at play; then in his peculiar irascible manner he
complained: "I told 'em we was crazy to try this. It ain't a white
man's country; it ain't a safe place for a bridge. There's just one
God-awful thing after another--" He broke into a shout, for Eliza had
slipped past him and was speeding like a shadow out across the
irregularly spaced ties upon which the bridge track was laid.
Mellen whirled at the cry and made after her, but he might as well have
tried to catch the wind. As she ran she heard her brother shout in
sudden alarm and Natalie's voice raised in entreaty, but she sped on
under an impulse as irresistible as panic fear. Down through the
openings beneath her feet she saw, as in a nightmare, the sweeping
flood, burdened with plunging ice chunks and flecked with foam. She
seemed to be suspended above it; yet she was running at reckless speed,
dimly aware of the consequences of a misjudged footstep, but fearful
only of being overtaken. Suddenly she hated her companions; her mind
was in a furious revolt at their cowardice, their indecision, or
whatever it was that held them like a group of wooden figures safe on
shore while the man whose life was worth all theirs put together
exposed himself to needless peril. That he was really in danger she
felt sure. She knew that Murray was apt to lose himself in his dreams;
perhaps some visionary mood had blinded him to the menace of that
mounting ice-ridge it front of the glacier, or had he madly chosen to
stand or fall with this structure that meant so much to him? She would
make him yield to her own terror, drag him ashore, if necessary, with
her own hands.
She stumbled, but saved herself from a fall, then gathered her skirts
more closely and rushed on, measuring with instinctive nicety the
length of every stride. It was not an easy path over which she dashed,
for the ties were unevenly spaced; gaping apertures gave terrible
glimpses of the river below, and across these ghastly abysses she had
to leap.
The hoarse bursts of shouting from the shore ceased as the workmen
beheld her flitting out along the steel causeway. They watched her in
dumb amazement.
All at once O'Neil saw her and hurried to meet her.
"Eliza!" he cried. "Be careful! What possessed you to do this?"
"Come away," she gasped. "It's dangerous. The jam--Look!" She pointed
down the channel.
He shook his head impatiently.
"Yes!" she pleaded. "Yes! Please! They wouldn't come to warn you--they
tried to stop me. You must go ashore." The frightened entreaty in her
clear, wide-open eyes, the disorder that her haste had made affected
O'Neil strangely. He stared at her, bewildered, doubtful, then steadied
her and groped with his free hand for support. He could feel her
trembling wretchedly.
"There's no danger, none whatever," he said, soothingly. "Nothing can
happen."
"You don't know. The bridge has never been tried. The ice is battering
at it, and that jam--if it doesn't burst--"
"But it will. It can't last much longer."
"It's rising--"
"To be sure, but the river will overflow the bank."
"Please!" she urged. "You can do no good here. I'm afraid."
He stared at her in the same incredulous bewilderment; some impulse
deep within him was struggling for expression, but he could not find
words to frame it. His eyes were oddly bright as he smiled at her.
"Won't you go ashore?" she begged.
"I'll take you back, of course, but I want to stay and see--"
"Then--I'll stay."