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
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.