Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-03-10

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With a strange thrill Rowland bent
ver the battery. his eyes turned to the
mass of rock looming sullen and black
half a mile away, as IL bidding do
fance In the face Of impending fate.
Tremblingly his finger pressed on the
little white knob, and a silence like
that of death fell on those who
watched. One minute-two-three-fve
passed, while In the bowels of the
mountain the fuse was sizzling to its
end. Then there came a puff, some
thing like a cloud of dust rising sky
ward, but without sound; and before
Its upward belching had ceased q
tongue of flame spurted out Of its crest
land after that, perhaps W Sec
onds later, came the explosion
There was a rumbling and a Earring,
as II the earth were convulsed under
foot; volumes of dense black smoke
shot upward, shutting the mountain in
an impenetrable pail of gloom; and in
an instant these rolling, twisting vol
umes of black became lurid, and an
explosion like that of a thousand great
guns rent the air. AS fast as the eye
could follow sheets of flame shot out Of
the sea Of smoke. climbing higher and
higher, In lightning flashes, until the
lurid tongues licked the air a quarter
of a mile above the startled wilderness.
Explosion followed explosion, some OF
them coming in hollow. reverberating
booms, others sounding as If in mid
air. The heavens were filed with hurt
ling rocks; solid masses of granite ten
feet square were thrown a hundred
feet away; rocks Weighing a ton were
hurled still farther, as if they were no
more than stones flung by the hand of
a giant; chunks that would have
crashed from the roof to the basement
of a ~sky-scraper dropped a third and
nearly a half a mile away. For three
minutes the frightful commissions o n
tinued. Then the lurid lights died out
IF the pail Of smoke, and the pail it.
self began to settle. Rowland felt a
grip on his arm. Dumbly he turned
and looked into the white, staring face
of the superintendent. His ears tingled.
every fiber In him seemed unstrung.
MacDonald's voice came to him strange
and weird.
What do you think OF that, How
land?"
The two men gripped hands, and
when they looked again they saw dim
ly through dust and smoke only torn
and shattered masses of rock where
had been the giant ridge that barred
the path Of the new road to the bay.
Rowland talked but little on their
way back to camp. The scene that he
had jlst witnessed affected him
strangely: 1t stirred once more within
him all OF his old ambition. all of his
old enthusiasm, and yet neither found
voice in words. He was glad when the
dinner was over at Thorne's. and with
the going OF the mail sledge and the
senior engineer there came over him a
still deeper sense of Joy. Now he
was in charge; 1t was his road from
that hour on. He crushed MacDonald's
hand in a grip that mean more
than words when they parted. In his
own cabin he threw off his coat and
hat, lighted his pipe, and tried to
realize just what this all meant for
him. He was in charge-in charge of
the greatest railroad building Job on
earth-he, Jack Rowland, who less
than twenty years ago was a bare
footed, haif-starved urchin peddling
papers in the streets where he vas
now famousi And now what was this
black thing that had come up to
about won his great tight? He
clenched his hands as he thought again
OF what had already happened-the