"Bravo, Captain! We'll be up to the summit by Christmas. 'No graft! No incompetence! The utmost publicity in corporate affairs!'—that's our platform. We're destined for a glorious success. Glorious success!"
"Go aboard and lie down," Brennan said, gently. "You need a good sleep." Then, calling a steward, he ordered, "Show Mr. Gordon to my cabin and give him what he wants."
He watched the tall figure stumble up the gang-plank, and shook his head:
"'The utmost publicity,' is it? Well, it's you that's getting it now. And to think that you're the man with the mines and the railroads and the widow! I'm afraid you'll be in irons when she sees you, but—that's as good a finish as you deserve, after all."
XXV
PREPARATIONS
The building of the Salmon River bridge will not soon be forgotten by engineers and men of science. But, while the technical features of the undertaking are familiar to a few, the general public knows little about how the work was actually done; and since the building of the bridge was the pivotal point in Murray O'Neil's career, it may be well to describe in some detail its various phases—the steps which led up to that day when the Salmon burst her bonds and put the result of all his planning and labor to the final test.
Nowhere else in the history of bridge-building had such conditions been encountered; nowhere on earth had work of this character been attended with greater hazards; never had circumstances created a situation of more dramatic interest. By many the whole venture was regarded as a reckless gamble; for more than a million dollars had been risked on the chance not alone that O'Neil could build supports which the ice could not demolish, but that he could build them under the most serious difficulties in record-breaking time. Far more than the mere cost of the structure hinged upon his success: failure would mean that his whole investment up to that point would be wiped out, to say nothing of the twenty-million-dollar project of a trunk-line up the valley of the Salmon.
Had the Government permitted the Kyak coal-fields to be opened up, the lower reaches of the S. R. & N. would have had a value, but all activity in that region had been throttled, and the policy of delay and indecision at headquarters promised no relief.
Careful as had been the plans, exhaustive and painstaking as had been the preparations, the bridge-builders met with unpreventable delays, disappointments, and disasters; for man is but a feeble creature whose brain tires and whose dreams are brittle. It is with these hindrances and accidents and with their effect upon the outcome that we have to deal.