There was light talk of a deputation to the dike, followed by the

resignation of travellers, cards afterward, and ping-pong. With the

deepening of the night the rain fell harder, and the wind rising in

gusts drove it against the glass. When the women retired to their

compartments the train had been set over above the bridge where the

wind, now hard from the southeast, sung steadily around the car.

Gertrude Brock could not sleep. After being long awake she turned on

the light and looked at her watch; it was one o'clock. The wind made

her restless and the air in the stateroom had become oppressive. She

dressed and opened her door. The lights were very low and the car was

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silent; all were asleep.

At the rear end she raised a window-shade. The night was lighted by

strange waves of lightning, and thunder rumbled in the distance

unceasingly. Where she sat she could see the sidings filled with cars,

and when a sharper flash lighted the backwater of the lakes, vague

outlines of far-off bluffs beetled into the sky.

She drew the shade, for the continuous lightning added to her disquiet.

As she did so the rain drove harshly against the car and she retreated

to the other side. Feeling presently the coolness of the air she

walked to her stateroom for her Newmarket coat, and wrapping it about

her, sunk into a chair and closed her eyes. She had hardly fallen

asleep when a crash of thunder split the night and woke her. As it

rolled angrily away she quickly raised the window-curtain.

The heavens were frenzied. She looked toward the river. Electrical

flashes charging from end to end of the angry sky lighted the bridge,

reflected the black face of the river and paled flickering lights and

flaming torches where, on vanishing stretches of dike, an army of dim

figures, moving unceasingly, lent awe to the spectacle.

She could see smoke from the hurrying switch engines whirled viciously

up into the sweeping night and above her head the wind screamed. A

gale from the southwest was hurling the Spider against the revetment

that held the eastern shore and the day and the night gangs together

were reinforcing it. Where the dike gave under the terrific pounding,

or where swiftly boiling pools sucked under the heavy piling, Glover's

men were sinking fresh relays of mattresses and loading them with stone.

At moments laden flat cars were pushed to the brink of the flood, and

men with picks and bars rose spirit-like out of black shadows to

scramble up their sides and dump rubble on the sunken brush. Other men

toiling in unending procession wheeled and slung sandbags upon the

revetment; others stirred crackling watchfires that leaped high into

the rain, and over all played the incessant lightning and the angry

thunder and the flying night.




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