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Next thing is to connect the span." "Huh?" ejaculated McGraw. "Ain't goin' t' tackle that, Mr. Blake, 'fore reinforcin' bottom-chords?" "What! Wait for auxiliary bracing to come on from the mills? Not on your life! Once connected, she'll be unbreakable all strains and stresses will be so altered as to give a wide margin of safety, spite of that damned skunk!" "Huh?" queried McGraw.
There was only the vast upcurve of the top-chords and the stupendous down-curve of the bottom-chords and the line between that stood for the foreshortened sixteen hundred feet of bridge-floor level extending from the north shore to the swaying tip of that unanchored north third of the central span.
"Only scratch off an order! There's no time to lose! I'll do the work. For God's sake, hurry! You've a hundred men out there on that deadfall a million dollars' worth of steel-work! Those bottom-chords may buckle any second!" From eager pleading, Blake burst out in an angry roar: "Damn you! Get busy! Write that order!"
From across the broad gap, the eye followed the curve of the bottom-chords of the north cantilever away down into the abyss toward the far shore of the strait, where the lofty towers upreared upon their massive piers. From this viewpoint there was no relieving glimpse of the shoreward curving anchor-arm that balanced the outer half of the north cantilever alike in line and weight.
Here every chink and crevice was packed with snow and ice. But all the titanic steel structure above and the unfloored bottom-chords and girders of the outer, or extension, arm of the cantilever had been swept bare of snow by the winter gales and left glistening with the glaze of the last shower of sleet. Blake swung steadily along after the others, his face impassive.
"You've got that outer arm loaded down with material 'way beyond the margin of safety. You damned fool, you made an error here in the figures over the bottom-chords and posts. They'll hold anything, once the suspension span is completed, but now! Lord! McGraw is a mule he'll insist on a written order. Weather report says wind.
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