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Out of the Primitive, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 33. Above The Abyss |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIII. ABOVE THE ABYSS A train loaded with steel was backing out to the bridge. Blake ran down the track to the engine and swung up into the cab. "Stop her!" he shouted. The engine-driver was among the men who had been introduced to Blake on his visit with Griffith. He recognized the engineer at the first glance. "Hello, Mr. Blake!" he sang out. "You here?" "Brakes!" cut in Blake so incisively that the driver closed his throttle and applied the airbrakes with emergency swiftness. Anticipating his questions, Blake tersely explained: "Bridge in danger. I'm in charge. Have you a lot of empties handy?" "How?--bridge?" queried the fireman, peering around at the stranger. "Dozen empties--" began the driver. "Good!" said Blake. "Clear these cars and--" "What's this?" demanded the yardmaster, who had run up at the sudden stoppage of the train. "Back on out, Jones. There's the coal to switch." "Damn your coal!" swore Blake. "Get a big string of empties out the bridge, quick as you can!" "Who the hell are you?" blustered the yardmaster. "Engineer in charge," answered Blake, holding out Ashton's order. "Bridge in danger--error in plans--overloaded--and weather report says wind! Jones, toot up your whistle--fire-call--anything! I want every man of every shift out here in two shakes." Without waiting for orders from the yardmaster, Jones signed to his fireman, reversed, and threw open his throttle. The fireman clutched the whistle-cord and began jerking out a succession of wild shrieks and toots. As the train started away from the bridge, Blake swung to the ground to meet the excited men who came running from all directions. He held Ashton's order close under the nose of the yardmaster, and shouted above the din of the engine whistle: "See that? She'll go when the wind rises. Hustle out those empties, with every man you have." Impelled by the engineer's look, the yardmaster sprang about and sprinted alongside the train, waving signals to his switch crew. Blake no less swiftly sprang into the midst of the mob of off-shift men streaming from the bunkhouse. "I'm Blake--engineer in charge--from Griffith!" he shouted. "Bridge overloaded--will go down when wind rises. We've got to clear her. She may go down when the empties back out. Any yellow cur that wants to quit can call for his pay-check. I'm going out. Come on, boys!" He started along the service-track at a quick jog-trot. The men, without a single exception, followed him in a mass, jostling each other for the lead. Near the outer end of the approach span they met the morning shift of carpenters and laborers, who were hurrying shoreward in response to the wild alarm of the engine whistle. Blake waved them about. "Bridge in danger!" he shouted. "Volunteers to clear material." Few of the carpenters and none of the chattering Slovaks and Italians caught anything except the word "danger." But zeal and fearlessness are sometimes as contagious as fear. A half-dozen or so drew aside to slink on shoreward. All the others joined the silent eager crowd behind Blake. Before they had gone a hundred feet every man in the crowd knew that at any moment the huge cantilever might crash down with them to certain destruction in the chasm, yet not one turned back. A short distance beyond the cantilever towers they came to the foremost of the on-shift steel workers, who had halted in their shoreward run when they saw that the outcoming party showed no sign of halting. But those in their rear and McGraw, who had been left behind farthest of all in the race, were still moving forward. Blake waved his pad to McGraw and called out to him over the heads of the others: "Here's my order! I'm in charge. Take every man you can handle, and work the main traveller to the towers. Hustle!" "Your order!" wheezed McGraw stubbornly. Blake was already close upon him. He had dealt before with men of McGraw's character. He tore off Ashton's order, thrust it into the other's pudgy hand, and paused to scribble an order to hold the train on the shore span. On occasion McGraw could be nimble both in mind and body. The moment he had read Ashton's order, he wheeled about to rush back the way he had come, and let out a bull-like bellow: "Hi, youse! clear f'r trav'ller! Out-shift, follow me!" The steel workers who had been on shift raced after and past him to the main traveller. He followed at a surprisingly rapid pace, bellowing his instructions. Blake, holding back in the lead of his far larger party from the shore, began to issue terse orders to the gangs of carpenters and laborers. They strung along the extension arm, outward from the point where the floor-system was completed. Before Blake could pass on ahead, tons of beams and stringers, iron fittings and kegs of bolts and nails began to rain down into the abyss. Having detailed half of the two shore shifts of steel workers to clear the way for the inrolling of the huge traveller, Blake took the other half out with him to the extreme end of the overhang. As soon as the main traveller began its slow movement shoreward, he ordered the smaller traveller run back several yards, in readiness to load the heavier pieces of structural steel. All his own men being now engaged in the most effectual manner, he turned about to quiet McGraw, who, for once shaken out of his phlegmatic calm, had been reduced to a state of apoplectic rage by the inability of his men to perform miracles. Blake's cool manner and terse directions almost redoubled the efficiency of the workers. The main traveller began to creep toward the towers with relative rapidity. Blake walked ahead of it, to steady and encourage the gangs that toiled and sweat in the frosty sweep of the rising wind. He came back again to the overhang and stood for a few moments gazing across at the outstretched tip of the north cantilever. Suddenly his face lightened. He glanced over his shoulder at the lofty towers behind him, nodded decisively, and hastened back to where McGraw, once more his usual stolid taciturn self, was extracting every ounce of working energy out of the men who swarmed about the main traveller. "Goin' some!" he grunted, as Blake tapped his arm. "Stop her fifty feet this side towers," ordered Blake. "How many central-span sections have you stacked up out here?" "All 'cept four north-side 'uns. Last come this mornin'. In yards yet." "How long'll it take us to rig a cable tram from the traveller across to the north 'lever?" "Huh?" demanded McGraw blankly. "We'll run the north-side steel across by tram, and push the work from both ends. Once the central span's connected, this bridge'll stand up under any load that can be piled on her." "Wind risin'--an' you figurin' on construction work!" commented McGraw. "If she doesn't go to smash in the next half-hour, we'll be O.K.," answered Blake coolly. "That train has waited long enough. You look to the steel. Load the first sections for this end on the outermost car. We can cut it off the train at the towers." At McGraw's nod, he scratched off an order and sent a man running with it to the waiting train. Very shortly the three outermost cars came rolling toward him, pushed by the switch crew and a gang of laborers. Their weight was several times offset by the weight of flooring material that had already been hurled from the bridge. Blake tested the force of the wind, noted the distance that the main traveller had moved shoreward, and promptly ordered the work of destruction to cease. Some forty or fifty thousand dollars' worth of material had already gone over into the strait, and he was too much of an engineer to permit unnecessary waste. The electro-magnetic crane of the smaller traveller was already swinging up a number of pieces of structural steel to load on the cars as they rolled out to the extreme end of the service-track. McGraw came hurrying to take charge of the eager loading gang. Blake went out past them to the end of the overhang, and perching himself on a pile of steel, began to jot down figures and small diagrams on the back of his pad. He was still figuring when a cheer from the carloaders caused him to look up. The cars, which had been stacked with steel to their utmost capacity, were being connected with the rear of the train by means of a wire rope. In response to the signals of McGraw, the engine started slowly shoreward. Before the train had moved many yards the slack of the steel rope was taken up. It tautened and drew up almost to a straight line, so tense that it sang like a violin string in the sharp wind gusts. Then the steel-laden cars creaked, started, and rolled shoreward after the train, groaning under their burden. The men all along the bridge raised a wild cheer. Blake stepped back beside McGraw. "Well, Mac, guess we've turned the trick," he said. "Close,--huh?" replied the general foreman, holding up his hand to the wind. "Close enough," agreed Blake. "She might have gone any minute since we came out. Whee!--if I hadn't headed off that train of steel! Well, a miss is as good as a mile. She'll stand now. Next thing is to connect the span." "Huh?" ejaculated McGraw. "Ain't goin' t' tackle that, Mr. Blake, 'fore reinforcin' bottom-chords?" "What! Wait for auxiliary bracing to come on from the mills? Not on your life! Once connected, she'll be unbreakable--all strains and stresses will be so altered as to give a wide margin of safety, spite of that damned skunk!" "Huh?" queried McGraw. Blake's lips tightened grimly, but he ignored the question. "We'll drive the work on twelve-hour shifts,--double pay and best food that can be bought. Divide up the force now, and turn in with your shift--those who most need sleep." _ |
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