water in the middle of the street. Several wagons and carts passed him, laden with hastily piled household goods. People along the river front were moving to higher ground.
Just enough moonlight drifted through the parting clouds to show Jack the roughly heaped. ice-field, the dark bulk of the bridge, with its massive piers, and knots of curious sight-seers, picking their way along the bank.
At the bridge the ice was a choked mass, piled high under the arches, and dangerously near the tracks. He could hear the grinding and creaking of the great cakes, the suck and gurgle of the water beneath them, pushing to get down the river and threatening to spread out to land if an outlet were not provided soon. Even a few boats were in the wreckage.
Jack caught from a group of men the words: “They ’re dynamiting the ice on the upper Lehigh.” “I heard that the gorge there burst about four o’clock,” one man in the group was saying. “If that is true, it ’s coming down here with a rush, and I ’m just as well satisfied that I don’t live in this part of town.”
Jack sped home. He told his mother what he had seen, but said nothing yet about the reported bursting of the Lehigh gorge. There was no use in worrying her any more, and besides, the jam might give way before the Lehigh ice reached them. When the younger children were in bed he said:
“Now, mother, we ‘re all right, and it ’s time you had some rest.”
She went to bed, more to please Jack than to sleep; but the boy carried to the second floor, piece by piece, such articles as would be ruined by a possible rush of water. He had to be quiet, for fear of alarming his mother and the sleeping children, and when he finished it was after midnight. Then he sat down by his window and stared out into the halflit darkness toward the river, too excited to close his eyes.
Two hours passed. His head began to nod, and presently he awoke from an uncomfortable nap to hear a clock strike four. There were other sounds in the air, Jack opened the window wide and leaned out. Yes, it must be the ice. Harsh grinding noises came up from the river, as though the gorged mass was struggling to get free, and under it all was a distant murmur which grew louder as he listened.
In a few moments it was a sullen roar, born of rushing waters and crashing ice, tons of it, hurled down from the upper river to pile against the jam at the bridge. The jam held, and with a rush the water sought a new channel, and spread out over the southern end of the city.
Jack held his breath as he heard it coming,