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Out of the Primitive, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 21. The Bridge |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. THE BRIDGE At dawn they roused him out of his drugged sleep and gave him a showerbath and rubdown that brought a healthy glow to his cold skin. He turned pale at the mere mention of food, but after a drink of quassia, Griffith induced him to take a cup of clear coffee and some thickly buttered toast. After that the three hastened in a cab to the station, stopping on the way to buy half a case each of grapefruit and oranges. Aboard the train Blake was at once set to eating grapefruit and chewing the bitter pith to allay the burning of his terrible thirst. Throughout the trip, which lasted until mid-afternoon, one or the other of the two friends was ever at his side, ready to urge more of the acid fruit upon him and continually seeking to divert and entertain him by cheerful talk. Until after the noon hour they were on the main line and had the benefit of the dining-car. Griffith ordered a hearty meal, more dinner than luncheon, and Blake was able to eat the greater part of a spring chicken. The most trying and critical time during the trip was the short wait at the junction, where they transferred to the old daycoach that was attached to the train of structural steel for the Michamac Bridge. Blake caught sight of a saloon, and the associations roused by it quickened his craving to an almost irresistible fury. When, none too soon, the train pulled out of the little town, he sank back in his seat morose and almost exhausted by his struggle. Though Lord James made every effort to rouse him to a more cheerful mood, his face was still sullen and heavy when the train clanked in over the switches of the material yards at the bridge. Before they left the car Griffith made certain that Blake was wrapped about in overcoat and muffler and had on the arctics that he had bought for him. Having directed one of the trainmen to bring the boxes of fruit to the office, Griffith led the way up the path formed by the bridge-service track. The rails had been kept shovelled clear from the February snowdrifts and ran straight out through the midst of the bleak unlovely buildings grouped near the edge of Michamac Strait, at the southern terminus of the bridge. Hardly had the three passengers stepped from the train, when Blake lifted his head for a clear view of the big electric derricks, the vast orderly piles of structural steel, floor beams, and planking, the sheds containing paint, machinery, and other stores, the gorged coal- bins, and all the other evidences of a vast work of engineering. His gaze followed the bridge-service track past the cookhouse and bunkhouse and the storehouses, out across the completed shore span to the gigantic structure of the south cantilever. Far beyond, between its lofty skeleton towers and upsweeping side webs, appeared, in seemingly reduced proportions, the towers and webs of the north cantilever, across on the north edge of the channel of the strait. Blake drew in a deep breath, and stared at the titanic structure, eager-eyed. There was no need for Lord James to nudge Griffith. The engineer had not missed a single shade of the great change in Blake's expression. He asked casually, "Well, how does the first sight strike you, Tommy?" "You didn't say she was so far along," replied Blake. "Didn't I? H. V., you know, has a pull with the Steel Trust. We've had our material delivered in short order, no matter who else waited. North cantilever is completed; ditto the south, except for part of the timbering and flooring. The central span is built out a third of the way from the north 'lever. But several miles of the feed track on that side the strait have been put into such bad shape by the weather that we'll have the central span completed from this side before the road over there is open again." "That so?" said Blake. "I want to see about that span." "We'll go out for a look at once, soon as we dump our baggage in on Laffie," said Griffith. "Is that thing here?" growled Blake. "Now, just you keep on your shirt, Tommy," warned Griffith. "He may be here, or he mayn't. You are here to look at the Michamac Bridge and hold on to yourself. Understand?" Blake scowled and stared menacingly toward a snow-embanked, snow- covered building, the verandahs of which distinguished it as the office and quarters of the Resident Engineer. "I want your promise you'll do nothing or say nothing to him till after you've made good on the Zariba Dam," went on Griffith. "You don't want your blast to go off before you've tamped the hole." Blake's scowl deepened, and he clenched his fist in its thick fur glove. But after a long moment he answered morosely, "Guess you're right. He holds the cards on me now and has the drop. But if I find he slipped the aces out of my hand, it won't be long before I get the drop on him." "And then something will drop!" added Lord James. "I'll smash him--the dirty sneak!" growled Blake. "Now, now, Tommy; you're not sure yet," cautioned Griffith. "That so?" replied Blake in a tone that brought a glint of excitement into the worn eyes of the older engineer. But before he could speak, a silk-robed figure stepped out onto the verandah of the Resident Engineer's office, and called delightedly, "Ah, Lord Avondale!--welcome to Michamac! You escaped my hospitality in town, but you can't here!" "Thanks. Very good of you, I'm sure," replied Lord James dryly. "I see you've come with old Grif," Ashton gayly rattled on. "Hello, Griffith! Hurry in, all of you. It's cold as the South Pole. I'll have a punch brewed in two shakes. Who's the other gentleman?" At the question, Blake, who had been staring fixedly at the bridge, turned his muffled face full to the effusive welcomer. Before his hard, impassive look Ashton shivered as if suddenly struck through to the marrow by the cold. "Blake!" he gasped. "Here?" "No objections, have you?" asked Blake in a noncommittal tone. "Just thought I'd run up with Mr. Griffith and take a look at your bridge. He says it's worth seeing. But of course, if you don't allow visitors--" "Just the opposite, Tommy," put in Griffith, quick to catch his cue. "Mr. Ashton is always glad to have his bridge examined by those who know what's what. Isn't that so, Mr. Ashton?" "Why, of--of course--I--" stammered Ashton, his teeth chattering. "Sure," went on Griffith. "Any man who's invented such a modification of the truss as this bridge shows, ought to have all the fame he can get out of it. In England he'd be made a lord, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Scarbridge?" "Er--we've knighted brewers and soap-boilers. But then, y'know, with us beer and soap are two of the necessities," drawled Lord James. "W-won't you come in?" urged Ashton. "It's chi-illy out here! I'll have that punch brewed in half a s-second." "My God!" gasped Blake, his jaws clenched and face black with the agony of his temptation. All unintentionally Ashton had turned the tables on his tormentors. Griffith scowled at him and demanded: "Where's McGraw?" "B-bunkhouse," answered Ashton. Griffith spoke to Lord James in a low tone. "Go in and keep him there, will you? Might stay with him all night. We'll stop at the bunkhouse." "I'm on," said Lord James. Griffith raised his voice. "Well, then, if you prefer it that way, Mr. Scarbridge. It's true Ashton can make you more comfortable, and I'll be busy half the night checking over reports and so forth with McGraw. Ashton, if you'll send over your report, it'll leave you free to entertain Mr. Scarbridge. And say, send over the boxes that'll be coming along in a little while. I'm trying a diet of grapefruit." He turned to Blake. "Come on. We don't want to keep Mr. Ashton out here, to shiver a screw loose." Blake uttered an inarticulate growl, but turned away with Griffith as Lord James sprang up the verandah steps and blandly led the vacillating Resident Engineer into his quarters. The visiting engineers crossed over to the big ungainly bunkhouse, and entered the section divided off for the bosses and steel workers and the other skilled men. Within was babel. Kept indoors by the cold that enforced idleness on all the bridge force, the men were crowded thickly about their reading and card tables or outstretched in their bunks, talking, laughing, grumbling, singing, brooding--each according to his mood and disposition, but almost all smoking. At sight of Griffith a half-hundred voices roared out a rough but hearty welcome that caused Blake's face to lighten with a flush of pleasure. The greeting ended in a cheer, started by one of the Irish foremen. Griffith sniffed at the foul, smoke-reeking air, and looked doubtfully at Blake. He held up his hand. Across the hush that fell upon the room quavered a doleful wail from the Irish foreman: "Leave av hivin, Misther Griffith, can't ye broibe th' weather bur-r-reau? Me Schlovaks an' th' Eyetalians'll be afther a-knifin' wan another, give 'em wan wake more av this." "There are indications that the cold snap will break within a week," replied Griffith. "You'll be at it, full blast, in two or three days. Where's McGraw?" A big, fat, stolid-faced man ploughed forward between the crowded tables. As he came up, he held out a pudgy hand, and grunted: "Huh! Glad t' see you." Griffith shook hands, and motioned toward Blake. "My friend Mr. Blake. Trying to get him to take charge here--nominally as Assistant Engineer--in case I have to go to Florida." McGraw's deep-set little eyes lingered for a moment on the stranger's mouth and jaw. "Good thing," he grunted. "The company is offering him double what Mr. Ashton gets; but he's not anxious to take it as Assistant." The big general foreman was moved out of his phlegmatic stolidity. "Huh? He's not?" "Not under that thing," put in Blake grimly. "Must know him." "He may change his mind," said Griffith. "The company has authorized me to make it a standing offer. So if he turns up any time--" McGraw nodded, and offered his hand to Blake. "Hope you'll come. C'n do m' own work. Bridge needs an engineer, though--resident one." "H'm,--Mr. Ashton might call that a slap on the wrist," remarked Griffith. "Get on your coat. We're going out to the bridge." McGraw headed across for his separate room. While waiting for him, Griffith introduced Blake to the engine-driver of the bridge-service train, two or three foremen, and several of the bridge workers. But the moment McGraw reappeared in arctics and Mackinaw coat, Griffith hurriedly led the way out of the smother of smoke and foul air. As the three started bridgeward along the clean-shovelled service- track Blake fell in behind his companions. Seeing that he did not wish to talk, Griffith walked on in the lead with McGraw. They were soon swinging out across the shore, or approach, span of the bridge. This extended from the high ground on the south side of the strait to an inner pier at the edge of the water, where it joined on to the anchor arm of the south cantilever. Almost all the area of the bridge flooring, which had been completed to beyond the centre of the cantilever, was covered with stacked lumber and piles of structural steel and rails, and kegs of nails, rivets, and bolts. Here every chink and crevice was packed with snow and ice. But all the titanic steel structure above and the unfloored bottom-chords and girders of the outer, or extension, arm of the cantilever had been swept bare of snow by the winter gales and left glistening with the glaze of the last shower of sleet. Blake swung steadily along after the others, his face impassive. But his eyes scrutinized with fierce eagerness the immense webs of steel posts and diagonals that ran up on either side, under the grand vertical curves of the top-chords, almost to the peaks of the cantilever towers. He had to tilt back his head to see the tops of those huge steel columns, which reared their peaks two hundred and fifty feet above the bridge-floor level and a round four hundred feet above the water of the strait. Presently the three were passing the centre of the cantilever, between the gigantic towers, whose iron heels were socketed far below in the top-plates of the massive concrete piers, built on the very edge of deep water. From this point the outer arm of the cantilever extended far out over the broad chasm of the strait, where, a hundred and fifty feet beneath its unfloored level, the broken ice from the upper lake crashed and thundered on its wild passage of the strait. Blake looked down carelessly into the abyss of grinding, hurtling ice cakes. The drop from that dizzy height would of itself have meant certain death. Yet without a second glance at the ice-covered waters, he followed his companions along the narrow walk of sleeted planks that ran out alongside the service-track. Though his gaze frequently shifted downward as well as upward, it went no farther than the ponderous chords and girders and posts of the bridge's framework. Striding along the narrow runway of ice-glazed planks with the assurance of goats, the three at last passed under the main traveller, a huge structure of eleven hundred tons' weight that straddled the bridge's sides and rose higher than the towers. Its electromagnetic cranes were folded together and cemented in place by the ice. A few yards beyond they came to the end of the extension arm of the cantilever and out upon the uncompleted first section of the central, or suspension, span. It was poised high in space, far out over the dizzy abyss. Many yards away, across a yawning gap, the completed north third of the suspension span reached out, above the gulf, from the tip of the north cantilever, like the arm of a Titan straining to clasp hands with his brother of the south shore. Yet the mid-air companionship of this outreaching skeleton-arm served only to heighten the giddiness and seeming instability of the south- side overhang. From across the broad gap, the eye followed the curve of the bottom-chords of the north cantilever away down into the abyss toward the far shore of the strait, where the lofty towers upreared upon their massive piers. From this viewpoint there was no relieving glimpse of the shoreward curving anchor-arm that balanced the outer half of the north cantilever alike in line and weight. There was only the vast upcurve of the top-chords and the stupendous down-curve of the bottom-chords and the line between that stood for the foreshortened sixteen hundred feet of bridge-floor level extending from the north shore to the swaying tip of that unanchored north third of the central span. Few even among men accustomed to great heights could have stood anywhere upon the outer reach of the overhang without a feeling of nausea and vertigo. Not only did the gigantic structure on the far side of the gap seem continually on the verge of toppling forward into the abyss, but the end of the south cantilever likewise quivered and swayed, and the mad flow of the roaring, ice-covered waters beneath added to the giddiness of height the terrifying illusion that the immense steel skeleton had torn loose from its anchorage to earth and was hurtling up the strait through mid-air, ready to crash down to destruction the instant its winged driving-force failed. Yet Griffith and Blake followed McGraw out to the extreme end of the icy walk and poised themselves, shoulder to wind, on narrow sleet- glazed steel beams, as unconcerned as sailors on a yardarm. Griffith and McGraw were absorbed in a minute inspection of the bridge's condition and in estimating the time it would take to throw forward the remaining sections of the central, or suspension, span, upon the termination of the irksome spell of extreme frosty weather. Blake looked, as they looked, at post and diagonal, eyebolt and bottom-chord, and across the gap at the swaying tip of the north cantilever. But his face showed clearly that his thoughts were not the same as their thoughts. His eyes shone like polished steel, and there was a glow in his haggard face that told of an exultance beyond his power of repression. At last Griffith roused from his absorption. He immediately noticed Blake's expression, and dryly demanded: "Well?" "Well your own self!" rejoined Blake, striving to speak in an indifferent tone. "Something of a bridge, eh?" "It's not so bad," admitted Blake. He glanced at McGraw, who had paused in his ox-like ruminating. Griffith addressed the general foreman. "Mr. Blake is a bit off his feed. A friend that came with us will occupy my room in Mr. Ashton's quarters. I'd like a room in the bunkhouse for Mr. Blake and myself, with a good stove and a window that'll let in lots of fresh air." "C'n have mine," grunted McGraw. "Extra bunk in yardmaster's room," "It'll be a favor," said Griffith. "You might get it ready, if you will. Mr. Blake must have clean air when he goes inside. He and I will take our time going back. There are two or three things I want another look at." McGraw at once started shoreward, without making any verbal response, yet betraying under his dull manner his eagerness to oblige the Consulting Engineer. When he had gone well beyond earshot, Griffith turned upon Blake with a quizzical look. "So!" he croaked. "It's a certainty." "Knew that soon's I got the first look," said Blake. Griffith's forehead creased with an anxious frown. "You promise not to mix it with him." "Don't fash yourself," reassured Blake. "I've waited too long for this, to go off at half-cock now." "That's talking! You'll wait till you're sure you can settle him--the skunk! Come on, now. We'll start inshore before you get chilled." "How about yourself?" chuckled Blake, as he led back along the runway. "Won't take the frost two shakes to reach the centre of your circumference, once it gets through that old wolfskin coat." "Huh! I can still go you one better, young man. I'll soon be thawing out in Florida, while you'll be trotting back here to boss the completion of T. Blake's cantilever--largest suspension span cantilever in the world." "God!" whispered Blake, staring incredulously at the titanic structure born of his brain. "But it's mine--it is mine!... I sweat blood over those plans!" "Doggone you, Tommy, you're no engineer--you're an inventor, Class A-1!" exulted Griffith. "First this; then the Zariba Dam. After that, the Lord only knows what! Trouble with you, you're a genius." "And a whiskey soak!" added Blake, with a sudden upwelling of bitterness. "Hey! what!--after this?" demanded Griffith, his voice sharp with apprehension. He could not see the face of his companion, but the manner in which Blake's head bent forward between his hunching shoulders was more than enough to confirm his alarm. "Come, now, Tommy!" he reproached. "Don't be a fool--just when things are coming your way." "Think so?" muttered Blake. "What d'you suppose I care for what I'd get out of this or the dam? Good God! You can't see it--yet you had Mollie!" For a moment the older man was forced to a worried silence. It ended in an outflashing of hope. "I told you what she said about you--almost her last words. You'll win out--she said it!" Blake halted and turned about to his friend, his face convulsed with doubt and a despondency that verged on despair. They were still half way out on the overhang of the extension arm. He pointed down to the crashing, tumbling ice far beneath his feet. "Do you know what I'd do if I had any nerve?" he cried. "I'd step over ... end it! ... You could tell her I slipped. There wouldn't be any need to tell her about--yesterday. She would remember me as she knew me there in Mozambique. After a time she'd make Jimmy happy--and be happy herself. Trouble is, I'm what she suspected. I haven't the nerve, when it comes to the real showdown." "Damnation!" swore Griffith. "Have you gone clean dotty? You're not the kind to quit, Tom!--to slide out from under because you haven't the grit to hang on!" "That's it. I'm booked for the D. T. route," muttered Blake. "Wasn't born for a watery end. Whiskey for mine!" "Rats! You're over the worst of this bump already. You're going back to-morrow and dig in to make good on the dam." "The dam! What's it to me now?" "Fifty thousand dollars, the credit for your bridge, and a place among the top-notchers." "Much that amounts to--when I've lost her!" retorted Blake. He turned about again and plodded heavily shoreward, his chin on his breast and his big shoulders bowed forward. _ |
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