They were to lay out there for the morning, and Haggerty started in to employ the two or three hours of leisure this gave him by looking over the work. It wasn’t much of a bridge as bridges go, for the Stony wasn’t much of a river; but the approaches were enough to pull the heart out of the stoutest bridge crew that ever toiled and sweated and slaved. Just rock, solid, gray, massive; and so it was blast, blast, blast, hour after hour all through the day, day after day. One span, resting on the shore abutments, was to bridge the canon that yawned six hundred feet below, where the Stony swirled and eddied, a foaming, angry, chattering, little stream.
On the eastern side, where Haggerty stood, the anchorage was pretty well under way, but over across on the western shore they were still pitting their blasting powder against the stubborn rock of the mountainside. Haggerty crossed over on the old bridge to take a look at this. Just as he reached the other side a stationary engine blew shrilly for a blast, and the men began to run for cover. Haggerty pulled his watch and marked the time—one minute and fifteen seconds. Then the blast thundered, echoed, reechoed, and died away through the mountains. He joined the men as they went back to their work.
“Holy Mac!” he exclaimed to the foreman, as he peered over the edge of the excavation and looked down some fifteen or twenty feet to the ledge where the men were already busy again. “Holy Mac! You’ve got to look sharp, eh?”
“Oh, I dunno,” replied the foreman. “We give ‘em plenty of time. When the whistle blows the men hump it. We don’t touch the button till the last one is crawlin’ over the top of the bank. Then, with the time fuse, there’s a minute, lots of time.”
Haggerty looked on for awhile, then he turned away, sat down by one of the shanties, and loaded his pipe. The pipe once alight, he settled himself in a more comfortable position by sprawling on his back, his hands under his head. From where he lay, he commanded a view of the other side of the river as well as the work before him. He could see Hale across there talking to one of the bridge engineers. He watched the two men lazily, in drowsy contentment, until he lost sight of them as they started to come over to his side, then his attention became riveted again on his immediate surroundings.
They were getting ready for another blast. Haggerty sat up. It was rather exciting to see the men come scrambling out of the hole. The whistle had just gone three toots. They were coming now, one head after another popping up over the edge, then the shoulders, and finally the men on their feet running like deers for shelter—not far, only a few yards, for the excavation itself afforded protection, once clear of it. Haggerty himself was not fifteen yards away.
He counted the men as they came out. It was the eighteenth who, just as his head and shoulders appeared, waved an arm and shouted: “All out. Let ‘er go!” He saw the foreman bend over the battery and make the connection that would spark the timefuse at the other end, and then a groan of horror went up around him. Number Eighteen, with a cry and a desperate effort to pull himself over the top, had slipped back and disappeared from sight!
Haggerty’s pipe dropped to the ground from between his teeth, his heart seemed to stop its beats, a cold sweat broke out upon his face. He was on his feet now, and the foreman’s words were ringing in his ears: “Then there’s a minute, lots of time! Then there’s a minute, lots of time!”
He began to run, and the seconds, as he ran, lengthened into years and cycles. “My God!” he muttered in a catchy way.
But fast as he ran, someone was faster than he. Five yards from the edge of the excavation, a figure, small, short, speeding like the wind, passed him. It was Hale—the super!