The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-02

Early on the following morning Eliza was awakened by d sound of shouting outside her window. She lay half dazed for moment or two until the significance of the uproar made itself apparent; then she leaped from her, bed.
 Men were crying:
 #t There she goes!"
 Shes going out!'
 Doors were slaElming, there w1s the 2 rustic and scuf of flying feet, aEI In the next room Dan was evidently throwing himself into his clothes like freman. Eliza called to him, but he did not answer, and the next moment he had fed, upsetting some article of furniture in his haste. Drawing her curtains aside, the girl saw in the brightening dawn men pouring down the street. dressing as they went. They seemed half demented. They were yelling at one another, but she could not gather from their words whether it was the ice which was moving or the bridge. The bridge! That possi- bility set her to dressing with tremu- Ious fingers, her heart sick with fear. She called to Natalie, but scarcely rec ognized her own voice.
 ssI-don't know came the muff1ed reply to her question. ssIt sounds like something terrible. I'm afraid Dan will fall in or-get hurt'' The eonfu- sion in the street was growing. "Eliza!'' .Natalie's voice was ytra gic.
 .sWhat is it, dear?''
 -eH-help me- quick!'
 ''How ?'
 s.I can't fn1 my other shoe.''
 But Eliza vas sitting on the floor, laciHg up her own stout boots, and an instant later she followed her broth CT, pursued by wall of dismay from the adjoining chamber. Through the chill morning light she hurried, asking many questions but receiving no CO herent reply from the racing men. Then, after endless moments of sus- pense, she saw with relief that the massive superstructure of the bridge was still standing. Above the shout ing she heard another sound, indis- tinct, but insistent. It filled the air with whispering movement; it was punctuated at intervals by a dull r91m- bling and grinding. She found the river bank black with forms, but like cat she wormed her way through the crowd until the whole panorama lay before her
 The bridge stood as she had seen it on the yesterday strong, su- perb in the simplicity of it's splendid outline, but beneath it and as far as her eyes could follow the river she saw, not the solid spread of white to which she had become accustomed, but a moving expanse of foes. At first the winter burden slipped past in huge masses. acres in extent, but soon these began to be rent apart; irregular black seams ran through them, opened, clos ed and threw up ridges of ice shavings as they ground together. The foes were rubbing against the banks, they came sliding out over the dry shore like tremendous sheets of cardboard manipulated by unseen hands, and not until their nine foot edges were expos ed to view did the mind grasp the ap- pal1ing significance of their movement They swept down in pha1anxes upon the wedgelike ice breakers which stood guard above the bridge piers, then they halted, separated, and the armored cut ting edges sheared through them like blades.
 A half mile below, where the Salmon dung itself headlong against the upper 5, wing of Jackson glacier, the floating ice was checked by the narrowed pas sageway. There a jam was forming, and as the river heaved and tore at it's growing burden a spectacular struggle went on. The sound of it came faintly but impressively to the watchers-a grinding and crushing of bergs, a roar of escaping waters. Fragments were upended, masses were rearing them selves edgewise into the air, were over turning and collapsing. They were wedging themselves into every conceiv- able angle, and the crowding process sion from above was adding to the bar rier momentar1ly. As the passageway became blocked the waters rose; the river piled itself up so swiftly that the eye could note it's rise along the. banks.
 But the attention of the crowd was divided between the jam and some thing far out on the bridge itself. At first glance Eliza did not comprehend; i; then she heard man explaining:
 t'He was going out when we got here and now he won't come back
 The girl gasped, for she recognized the distant figure of a man, dwarfed to puny proportions by the bulk of the structure in the mazes of which he stood. The man was O'NeiI; he was perched upon one ef the girders near the center of the longest span, where