The Dermott news., 1917-07-19
cHAPT ER VI.
The Failure.

In spite of himself and his confidence in the bridge. Abbott felt a little un- easy the next morning. At bottom ne had more respect for Meade's tech uical knowledge than he had displayed or even admitted to himself. The younger engineers terrified alarm, ms utter forgetfulness of the amenities be- tween them, his frantic but futile ef- forts to telephone, of which the op- erator told Abbott in the morning. ms hurried departure to New York, were to say the least, somewhat disQuieting, much more so than he was fain to ad- init to himself.
 Although it involved hard and somewhat dangerous climb downward and took upwards of half hour of his valuable time. the first thing the erect ing engineer did in the morning was to go down ,o the pier head and make thorough and careful examination or the buckled member. C-1O-R was, of CO -se, part of the great lower chord U of the huge diamond-shaped truss, which, with its parallel sixty feet away on the other side of the bridge and its two opposites across the river. support ed the whole structure. If anything were wrong. seriously, irreparably wrong. with the member and 1t gave way. the whole truss would go. The other truss would inevitably follow euit, and the cantileyer would immedi- ately collapse. Abbott realized that. of course. as he climbed carefully down to the pier head and stood on the 0hoe.
 Abbott. as he stood by the member and surveyed 1t throughout Its length, could easily see that 1t had buckled. al- though the deviation was slight, about two Inches at Its maximum in sixty feet. He brought with him line and. with infinite care and pains. he drew if taut across the slight concavity like a bow-string. He had estimated the camber. or the distance between the center of the bow and the string at one and half Inches. AS he made more careful measurements. he discov- cred that 1t was slightly over one and three-uuarter inches. In seven hun dred and twenty that was scarcely mo- ttceable, and 1t did not seem very much to Abbott. As he stood there feeling himself an insignificant figure amid this great interwoven mass of steel, again the sense of it's strength and stability came to him overpowering- ly, so much so that he laughed aloud fin rather grim fashion at the un- ed nervousness which had been induced in his mind by Meades words and actions.
 But he was conscientious man, so he pursued his vestigations further. He climbed up on top of the member, which was easy enough by means of the criss-crossed lacing. and carefully inspected the lacings at the center of the concavity, or sidewise spring from che right line.
 He noticed. by getting down on his face and surveying the lacing bars closely, number of fine hair-line cracks in the paint. surface traceries apparently. running here and there from the rivet holes. The rivets them selves had rather strained look. Some of the outer rivets seemed slightly ,,s pose. where before they must have ,.}een tight. for the members, like all other parts of the bridge, had been carefully inspected at the shop and any looseness of the rivets would cer- tainly have been noticed there. But Abbott's obsession as to the strength of the bridge had grown stronger. Lin ing 1t cut. crawling over 1t, feeling Its gtgidity. he decided that these evident strains were to be expected. Of course the lacings that held the webs together would have to take up terrific stress. They had been designed for that pur- pose. Largely because he did not find anything very giaring. and because he wanted to believe what he believed. the chief of construction left the pier head and clambered up to the floor with more satisfaction in his heart than his somewhat surprising anticipation. which had so unwillingly grown under the stimulus cf Meade's persistence, had led him to expect.
 A. The whistle was just blowing for the N Commencement of work when he got back to the bridge floor. He could not but reflect, as he men came swarming along the tracks to begin their days work. that she responsibility for their lives lay wth him. We'll. Abbott was . big man {n his way. he had assumed responsibili es befor% and was per fectly Hilll to do sd again, both for