St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 5/Ice Came Down
The Ice-jam at the Bridge.
(See page 389.)
When the Ice Came Down
By Agnes Louise Provost.
Whistling and with a strapful of books slung across his shoulder, Jack Parker turned a little out of his homeward way to go down to the river, where the great piers of the new railroad bridge were rising higher each day.
All around the bridge the air was full of clanging and grinding and creaking noises. Several men were working near him, and Jack looked up to find another man watching him in quiet amusement. He did not have to be told that this was Mr. George Heath, the civil engineer under whose watchful eye the bridge was being built, and Mr. Heath remembered that nearly every day he ran across this bright-looking boy somewhere around the bridge.
“Well, young man, what do you think of it?”
Taken by surprise, Jack reddened suddenly. What he had been thinking was not entirely complimentary, “Oh, I—I like it pretty well,” he said slowly.
“Then you don’t like it altegether? What seems to be wrong?”
The engineer seemed interested and rather entertained. “What is it?” he repeated encouraginely, and Jack told him.
“I was just wondering what will happen in the spring, with all that stonework to fill the channel up. I don’t know mach about bridges, but it seems as if there were a great many piers for this kind of a river.”
“You mean when the ice breaks up?”
“Yes,” said Jack, eagerly, all enthusiasm in telling the idea which had been simmering in his brain for several weeks. “It seems funny that the railroad company should want a fifteen-pier bridge, which will catch the ice and jam it, and force the water back over its own tracks. This end of the city is pretty low, and when the ice comes down it comes in an awful hurry, and wants lots of room to get through.”
Jack stopped, half embarrassed, as he remembered that this was a strange way to talk to the engineer who was responsible for the building of this bridge; but Mr. Heath seemed rather to enjoy it. His eyes twinkled behind his glasses.
“We don’t expect the ice to jam,” he explained kindly. “If this city were in a colder part of the country, your criticism would be all right. Since you are interested, I will tell you that there are engineering reasons why a fifteen-pier bridge is better adapted to the company’s uses at this point. Circumstances might give us trouble with the ice, such as a break-up on the upper river and its tributaries before the ice began to move here, but it would take such a winter as you have n’t had in twenty years,”
Jack said nothing. He knew that his knowledge of bridge construction was limited, but he had grown up beside this river and felt that he knew its habits pretty well.
“Perhaps you will be a civil engineer yourself some day,” Mr. Heath added, turning away as his foreman came up to him.
“I ’d like to,” said Jack, soberly, “but I ’ll have to go to work as soon as I leave school, and it takes a long time to be a C.E.”
“Oh, don’t mind that,” the engineer called after him, “Remember that what is n’t worth working for is n't worth having,”
In another moment he was deeply engaged in giving orders to the foreman, Jack swung his book-strap over his shoulder and made rapid strides to get home and out again to a practice game of base-ball.
For Jack the summer sped by quickly, and the autumn opened his senior year at the High School. He was taking the commercial course there, and when the school year ended he was to get a position as soon as possible.
Of course it was all right, Jack thought ruefully. He had no wish to shirk his part, especially with four smaller brothers and sisters coming after him, to be fed, clothed, and properly educated for their start in life; but his old dream of a course in some good polytechnic institute grew dearer as it grew fainter. He wished above all things to be a civil engineer; but this would take time and money, and for the present he must put aside his ambition and take whatever kind of position he could pet.
Meanwhile he was a senior, High School ’04, and too busy with studies and debates and basket-ball to think long about the future. When the railroad bridge was completed in the autumn, Jack stood in the crowd on the bank and cheered with them as the first train went across.
By Christmas-time the bridge was an old story. But at the end of January people began to complain that the winter was uncommonly severe, and to wander what the ice would do in the spring. The river was frozen from shore to shore, and had been since early December. Heavy snows and rains, followed by zero weather, had raised the ice far above the river’s average winter level.
It was a “record winter.’ February came and went, and the ice crept a little higher. It was late in March before the thaw came, and then it came suddenly—three days of hard, warm rain, royting the ice and swelling the upper courses of the stream, On the afternoon of the third day Jack went down to the river.
As he neared the bank, an old riverman whom he knew well jerked his thumb expressively toward the middle arch of the bridge.
“Oh, it ’s jamming!” exclaimed Jack, as he craned his neck eagerly and looked. The ice under the bridge arches was two feet higher than it had been the day before. Across the river, and up and down as far as he could see, the ice-feld stretched out under the driving rain, not smooth skating-ice, but ragged, tumultuous heaps, rough and dirty with the mud and debris carried down by high waters. It lay in great cakes, pushed and heaped up by the enormous pressure behind it, and looking as if an earthquake had heaved it into confusion. There was not a sign of motion in the whole length and breadth of it, yet it had risen, as all could see,
“If the gorge on the Lehigh should bust and get down here before this ice goes—” said the riverman.
“What will happen?” Jack inquired.
“Well, it may take some of this bridge along for a souvy-neer, and it may leave it here for us; but it would be cheaper for folks in this town if they ’d start that jam down-stream with a blast o’ dynamite. These here fifteen big piers do jam that ice awful.”
Jack went home quite disturbed. It had not occurred to him that the ice on the Lehigh, many miles away, might break and come down before the river was cleared here. It had never done that before. His own home was only three blocks from the river, and he felt anxious. His father was night operator in a telegraph office, and after supper the responsibility of the house would rest on Jack.
He whistled softly as he took off his wet coat, but he kept his thoughts to himself until supper was over and his father had started off for his might duty. Then he put on his hip boots and went down cellar for work.
“It ’s a little higher than it was,” he said to himself, as his mother, looking troubled, stood on the cellar stairs and held a lamp high for him. “I ’ll move things ‘way up and out of its way.”
When this was done, Jack said: “If you don’t mind, mother, I ‘ll run down and see how things are getting on. I ‘ll be right back.”
Outside he found that the rain had ceased, and a strong wind was blowing, As he came down to the river his feet splashed in shallow 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, He could see it, too, in the dimness, an irresistible rush of water sweeping up the sloping street, and bearing with it great cakes of ice. He heard them bump and jar clumsily against the houses, piling over one another at the first obstruction or spinning ahead with the violence of the current. Then came the swish and slap of water against their own steps, and bump! bump! as a heavy ice cube slammed its weight against the house.
“Jack, are you awake?”
Oh, yes, mother! Don’t worry; we ‘re all right. The house is strong, and it can’t hurt us unless it comes up to this floor.”
“Don't wake the children until it is absolutely necessary,” she warned him.
The bumping of ice cakes against their own house was not pleasant. Jack and his mother huddled close and watched and listened. Morning was coming, and a strange-looking street was being unfolded to their view.
“Is it any higher, Jack?”
“Well, yes; I ‘m afraid so. Perhaps—listen!”
From the river, in the direction of the bridge, came a sudden crash and roar, and then the steady grating rush of tons of freed ice. Jack jumped to his feet.
“There she goes!” he shouted excitedly, forgetting the sleeping children. “Do you hear that? The jam’s burst! Look at the water! Hurray!”
Its natural channel once more free, the water was draining out of the sloping street almost as rapidly as it had come, leaving masses of ice stranded high and dry. Jack leaned out of the window and saw one huge cake balanced neatly on the projection above their own front door, while a score of others lay on the sidewalk. In fifteen minutes their end of the street was quite clear, save for the ice cakes and the mud streaks on houses and pavements. Around the next corner he saw a man come, running excitedly. Jack pulled off his coat and waved it.
“Hello, father! We ’re all right!”
It being Saturday morning, Jack went down to the river as soon as he had finished what breakfast they could get in a wet kitchen. His brother Jimmy was at his heels, wild with excitement.
All the way down they saw dampness and mud on every side, the water line running to the second floor and above, as the street sloped lower. Ice cakes were stranded in the most unlikely places, piling ten and fifteen feet high when obstructed, and the tracks of the railroad had received their full share, although by this time the workmen had nearly cleared them away. Crowds of sight-seers were about the drenched streets and the muddy river, which flowed free for the first time in months.
When they came to the bridge Jack caught sight of a well-remembered face. It was Mr. Heath, who had come down on the first train through, and as he saw Jack, he smiled.
“Well, the ice jammed, did n’t it?” he said.
Jack laughed, rather proud to be recognized, but he quickly warmed into a different sort of enthusiasm.
“Yes, it did, but that must be a splendid bridge to stand the pounding it got last night, and never show it. Id be proud of that.”
Mr. Heath smiled again. He took out his card-case, wrote something on a card, and handed it to Jack.
“If you still want to be an engineer when you leave school, bring this to my office, and I will give you a position. We have a fine polytechnic in our city, and if you are in earnest you can work through. I did. Good-by.”
Jack looked from the card to the disappearing back of the engineer, and from that to Jimmy, who was staring at him in breathless admiration. He felt-almost stunned.
“Whew!” he said slowly. “Glory! What luck!” he exclaimed, and leaving the river and its sight-seers, he ran post-haste for home, the devoted Jimmy close on his heels.