Puslapio vaizdai
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'Upwards of five hundred husky Serbs can do a deal of work; but it did n't take more than three days of logrolling and rock-packing to show that - even at the gait we were hitting it -that hundred-yard-long, thirty-foothigh dam would n't be finished before the next season, and that, even if we did get it done some time, the stuff we were putting in it was too loose to stop water. It was at this stage of things that I had my big idea. I had worked in hydraulic mines in the West, and while we had nothing to rig up a pipe and nozzle from, there was a chance to divert a little mountain torrent that came tumbling down from the snows only a few yards below our dam site. Why not, I suggested, build up only a narrow crib of boulders and pine logs to act as a barrier, and then bring over this little torrent, it was flowing about a hundred miner's inches at this time, and let it sluice down the loose "conglomerate" from the fourhundred-foot-high cliff through which it flowed? Because no one had anything else to offer, we decided to try the thing.

'We used up a good half of our poor little store of powder in making the cut to bring over the stream, but the job was mostly easy digging and we finished it in three days. My young “hydraulic" sure tore down a lot of rock and gravel; but, as we could n't rig up anything to confine it properly, it only spread out in a big "fan," which, in turn, was sluiced away by the river. That stumped us for fair, and when on top of it a big storm came on, bringing down a flood that washed away all our cribbing, we chucked up in disgust our project of "harnessing nature" against the Austrian, and began to plan raids again.

'All that night it rained cats and dogs, and when I looked out of my hut the next morning the river was over its

banks and humping it like a locoed mustang. But the funny thing was that the cascade from the little stream we had diverted seemed to have disappeared. At first I thought it had bucked its way back into its old channel, but when I went down to look, I found that it had been "swallowed" up by the cliff. Five times as big as on the night before, it came tumbling down over an up-ended stratum of slate to disappear in a foamy yellow-white spout into a deep crack it had sluiced into the soft conglomerate. At the bottom of the cliff it came boiling out from under the angling slate-layer in a stream that looked to be about equal parts of gravel and water. My baby hydraulic had evidently undermined a sloping section of the cliff for a hundred feet or more, and only the tough slate stratum was staving off a big cave-in. How big a cave-in it was going to be, and what it was going to lead to, I never so much as guessed.

"The warm rain kept plugging down all day and was still pelting hard when I went to sleep that night. Toward morning I was waked up with a roar a hundred times louder than any snowslide I ever heard, and then came a jar that rocked the whole valley. I felt sure a piece of the cliff had come down, but did n't have the least hunch that anything like what the first daylight showed up had come off. The first thing I saw as the dark slacked off was the shimmer of a flat stretch of water in the bottom of the valley, a lake- just as if it had been dropped from the skyright where we'd been trying to start one ourselves.

"The cliff had broken back a couple of hundred feet or more, all the way to the top, and in falling had piled up clear across the head of the gorge. On the near side it was about a hundred and fifty feet high; on the further side something like sixty.

'With the rain still pouring pitchforks and the snow melting all over the mountains, water was coming down at a rate that had the lake rising at the rate of two feet an hour all morning, and better than half that speed even when it began to spread out over the valley floor in the afternoon. The storm kept right on for three days. The second morning there was twenty-five feet of water at the dam, on the third forty feet, and on the fourth near to fifty. The lake by this time was both bigger and deeper than the one we'd planned to make ourselves.

'By good luck the stream ramping down from the mountains into the gorge below the slide kept two or three times its average flow in the river, and so the Austrians who did n't know its habits very well - failed to notice that anything unusual had come off up stream. Our scouts reported that the water in the lower lake had not risen much, and that it seemed to stand at about fifteen feet above the dangermark. The Austrians, they said, did not appear to be paying any more attention to the dam than usual.

'We were hoping that the storm would hold until enough water was backed up to bust the dam on its own; but when it began to clear on the fourth day, it was plain the best way out of it was to give the thing a push on our own account. We did n't have a hundredth of enough "giant" to do the job, so had to rig the best make-shift we could by turning the still husky stream of my hydraulic right along the sloping top of the slide and off down into the gorge.

'It was about midday when we set it sluicing, and all afternoon it licked off the loose earth as if it was sugar. By dark half the near end of the slide had slushed away, and the wall that still held was beginning to bulge and cave with the seep forced through from the other side. Half an hour later our

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"I've been in "Yankee Jim's" Cañon of the Yellowstone when the flood behind the break-up of the ice-jam in the lake came down, but that was a mere rat-a-tat to the roar that sounded now. The mountains themselves were shaking, and the movement started the "hanging" snow-slides all the way down the gorge. It must have been a racket like that when the world was made. The lake was drained of all but mud in ten minutes, and it must have been about twice that long before a new sound broke in a roar so deep that it seemed almost to be a rumbling from under the earth. But we knew that it was the big dam going-that our work was done for that night.

"The next morning at daybreak every man in shape to stand the climb over a mountain path we knew—the road down the gorge had been scoured out clean dropped down from three sides on the little Austrian force in the village where the dam had been, and killed or captured the whole bunch. Then we pushed on to the top of the foothills looking down to the plain. Where the main Austrian camp had been was a slither of smooth mud dotted with the stumps of snappedoff trees, and just that, and no more, was all we could see as far as our eyes could reach.

'And just so,' cried Radovitch, leaping to his feet and shaking a fist toward the serrated sky-line to the northeast, beyond which ran the roads to Monastir and Prilep and Uskub, ‘just so, when the time comes, will the whole herd of the swine be swept

out of Serbia!'

THE SEARCH

BY WILLIAM TOWNSEND PORTER

I

WE were off the coast of France. It was a caressing day. The sun sank into. the western wave with a splendid competence, the result of long practice. Our last sunset, perhaps. The ports were sealed. No lights were shown. The boats were swung out, their covers off, the davits greased, food and the precious water-keg in place. The gun crew stood to quarters. Full speed ahead.

I decided to stay on deck until we reached the mouth of the Gironde. Many of the passengers were of the same mind. My cabin was in the lowest tier, and if we should hit a mine, minutes might count. At 4 A.M., we picked up a magnificent revolving light; before long, two other first-class lights, turning on the horizon from the top of ghostly towers. Presently, we saw a powerful beam searching the waves. Its dazzling glare rested on the ship, moving with us. For many minutes we endured an almost shameful publicity. The east was now lighted for the coming of the day. Anchored vessels bordered the fairway. Their hulls were black against a tone of silver gray; admirable motive for the etched plate. So lay the black ships of the Greeks, on another sea, in those Trojan days when the causes of war were easier to understand.

The approach to the river is very fine; the Gironde is handsomely dressed for her bridal with the sea. At 7 A.M. we were gliding along the narrow stream

through fields green with the promised harvest.

It was time for the dreaded inquisition. Were our papers correct? Should we be allowed to land? The passengers were much disturbed. We were packed, some hundred of us, in the vestibule leading to the dining saloon. There we stood, the strong and the infirm, for two long hours. I was jammed against two young girls who were going out for the Red Cross. Conversation began, due to the strong play of natural forces.

You remember my Uncle Toby. He found the Widow Wadman's eye very compelling. But Laurence Sterne was a clergyman. Had he been a scientist, he would have observed that the power of the Widow Wadman's eye varied inversely with the distance of the object. Now, the distance of these ladies from my ear was the same as the distance of the Widow Wadman's eye from my Uncle Toby - about five inches. The power exerted was therefore twenty times as great as if the social insulation had been the usual hundred inches. There can be no doubt that distance, mathematically speaking, is a 'function' of behavior.

But this verges dangerously on reflection; to mix thinking with conversation is to spoil two very good things. Well, nature could not be denied; the ladies began to talk. At a range of five inches, the execution was considerable. They told me, in these two hours, their opinion of Shelley and much of their past history; though, to be sure, when a woman talks of her past, she has n't

any. It was a curious friendship; it began, it ran its intimate, almost clandestine course, and was finished, within a radius of fifteen inches.

From time to time, while these measurements were being collected, the door into the dining-saloon would open a crack and a wilted suspect would be dragged in to confront five officials who spoke torrential French and dribbling English. By that hour, the more feebly engined passengers were suffering from what at the front would have been called shell shock. One man, born in Smyrna, a Greek by nationality, said that he was a manufacturer in America. 'What do you make?' he was asked. 'I make sickles.' 'Sickles! -'Sickles! Qu'est-ce que c'est que çà? Can you show us one?' 'But certainly,' replied the flustered passenger. Whereupon he reaches into his pocket and fetches out not a sickle, but a pack of playing cards, which it is forbidden to bring into France. Behold a Greek in a cold sweat! The bystanders grin largely, and even the officials relax their severe gloom.

The train from Bordeaux to Paris should leave at 8.30 A.M. I arrive at the station at 7.45. Already even the first-class compartments are almost full. There is much confusion. The train finally leaves twenty-five minutes behind the schedule.

Opposite me is a man evidently in poor health—an intelligent kindly face, lined by premature old age. He has two collapsed air-cushions, but breath only for one. I blow up the second cushion. We fraternize.

'You must know,' says he, 'that I am a Frenchman living in Canada. I have come over to be ready for my call. They have called the class of fortyseven. My age is fifty. Soon they will need me. Of course,' he adds, carefully adjusting the air-cushions to support his ailing back, of course, I cannot

hope for the first line, but perhaps I can slip in just behind.' It is the celebrated French esprit.

I got to Paris at sunset. My wife and daughter were at the Gare d'Orléans

a joyful reunion. Along the quai d'Orsay, under the plane trees beside the gleaming Seine, we walked to our rooms on the quai Voltaire. The river. lay like a broad band of pale-green watered silk between the Louvre and the Quartier Latin. The moving waters softly lapped the Royal Bridge, which was raised by Louis le Grand in the fate ful year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; its noble arches were mirrored in the mocking stream. Faintly shot with gold and crimson, the evening light faded to a luminous haze. The marchands de livres locked their begging wares in the little cases on the parapet. The gardens of the Place du Carrousel breathed like the sweet south upon the dying day.

In Paris, even the homely midday meal is touched with art. Once, at the lunch hour, I found myself in the rue Cambon. An elaborate commissionnaire stood before a small restaurant. Curtains of some thin stuff guarded the rites within from the sacrilegious glance. I entered. The proprietor, with effusive dignity, bowed and shook my hand. I was in a room perhaps twenty feet square in which there were six small tables and five elderly waiters. Several apoplectic old gentlemen, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, were slowly gorging. From a raised dais, defended by a desk, two formidable old women surveyed the scene. When one of the old gentlemen had finished his poulet rôti, these secretaries recorded the fact upon their tablets, with frequent consultation, so that no important detail might be omitted. Evidently, I had unwittingly broken into a temple de gourmets.

One of the attendant priests pre

sented a paper on which were written a few hints as to the mysteries, without mention of the pecuniary consequences. 'What does monsieur desire?' Monsieur desires a plain omelette. Consternation, with a camouflage of grief! Monsieur is encore jeune, yet so depraved? There is hot-house melon, thin soup, of an excellence, and old, but very old wine.

Monsieur will not relent. A long and ghastly pause, while the pariah sips from a glass of water, forgetful that in such places water is a symbol and not a beverage. At length the omelette arrives, assisted by three grieving men. It is shrunken and plaintive. It is furtively and hastily swallowed. The old women note the fact in their smallest hand. Five francs. Monsieur dies game, with a handsome tip to Alphonse. Alphonse weeps for monsieur, and prays that light may break on this misguided

man.

II

The mysteries of nature usually present themselves as mass problems. In this form they cannot be answered. They must first be resolved into their elements. But each mass problem can be so resolved only by minds specially trained in the particular field in which that problem lies. The layman cannot do this. It is for this reason that even a great scientist can rarely give a useful answer to a question put to him by a layman. The layman presents a dozen questions in one package. It is as if one should ask, What is the cause of the Great War?

What causes shock is also not a practical question. It is too vague. It is necessary to extract from it a series of questions, and then to devise for each of these a method by which it can be answered yes or no. The observation that shock often follows fraç

ture of the thigh-bone is an obvious point d'appui. The femur, or thighbone, is the largest in the body. When it is broken by a shell fragment, the rich bone-marrow is exposed. Perhaps some potent chemical substance is thereby set free, to be absorbed into the blood-vessels, through which it might reach the brain and spinal cord, and by poisoning the nerve-cells produce the phenomena of shock. But my efforts to bring on shock by the injection into the blood-vessels of chemical substances known to exist in the bonemarrow had no effect. It was necessary to pose another question.

Since the fracture of the bone is apparently a factor in shock, and since the absorption of a chemical substance was excluded, the mischief might be due to a mechanical agent. Now, the bone-marrow is very rich in fat, and it has long been known that after fractures of the femur large numbers of fatglobules appear in the blood, in which the globules circulate until they enter the capillaries in the brain and other organs. When a large fat-globule enters one of these small, hair-like vessels, it sticks fast, the blood can no longer flow through that capillary, and the cells supplied by that blood can no longer get food and oxygen.

All this is well understood. For more than two centuries observations have been made by pathologists on changes in the tissues, following the injection of fat into the blood-vessels of animals. Indeed, a condition suggesting shock has incidentally been observed here and there in the course of these studies, though I did not know of these chance observations until long after my own experiments. No one, however, had declared or attempted to prove that the entrance of fat into the blood-vessels was the cause of shock as seen on the battlefield. The pathologists were after other game. They were interested in

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