Out of the Primitive Part 42

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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant."

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 sh.o.r.e, 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 c.h.i.n.k and crevice was packed with snow and ice. But all the t.i.tanic 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 impa.s.sive. 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 pa.s.sing the centre of the cantilever, between the gigantic towers, whose iron heels were socketed far below in the top-plates of the ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 a.s.surance of goats, the three at last pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 t.i.tan straining to clasp hands with his brother of the south sh.o.r.e.

Yet the mid-air companions.h.i.+p 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 sh.o.r.e of the strait, where the lofty towers upreared upon their ma.s.sive piers.

From this viewpoint there was no relieving glimpse of the sh.o.r.eward 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 sh.o.r.e to the swaying tip of that unanch.o.r.ed 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 sh.o.r.eward, 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," rea.s.sured Blake. "I've waited too long for this, to go off at half-c.o.c.k now."

"That's talking! You'll wait till you're sure you can settle him--the skunk! Come on, now. We'll start insh.o.r.e 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 circ.u.mference, 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."

"G.o.d!" whispered Blake, staring incredulously at the t.i.tanic 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, Cla.s.s 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.