Then he stormed away
to see if anything had gone wrong at the dredged channel.
"Well," said Tom North, "they've got the old man real good and mad
this time."
The crew went on driving piles, stringing cables, binding chains,
although, now that the inspiration of Orde's combative spirit was
withdrawn the labours seemed useless, futile, a mere filling in of
the time before the supreme moment when they would be called upon to
pay the sacrifice their persistence and loyalty had proffered for
the altar of self-respect and the invincibility of the human Soul.
At the dredged channel Orde saw the rivermen standing idle, and,
half-blind with anger he burst upon them demanding by this, that and
the other what they meant. Then be stopped short and stared.
Square across the dredged channel and completely blocking it lay a
single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it
was still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining
its cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a
jam, which, sinking rapidly to the bed of the channel, had dammed
back the water.
"Where in hell did that drop from?" cried Orde.
"Come down on top the jam," explained a riverman.
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