A careful reconnoitre of the bridge entrance showed us that an alarm had been sent abroad, for a guard of police was waiting in the neighborhood to arrest suspicious characters. Had my original plan succeeded, we would have had none of this,--we would have been in the United States before the robbery was discovered. But that fact cut no figure in the present dilemma. To the American side we must get, and mighty soon, or we would find ourselves in a Canadian trap. The old suspension bridge, beyond doubt, was not a safe passage for us. It occurred to me that it might be worth while to examine the new bridge; perhaps we could pick our way across it. No one had made the attempt save a few workmen accustomed to that sort of climbing, as monkeys are used to gambolling in tree-tops. Verily workers on suspension bridges and the like, it seemed to me, were never quite at home unless they were dangling at the end of a wire many feet above water or _terra firma_.
We approached the entrance cautiously, and, fortunately, were soon convinced that there wasn’t a police guard in that neighborhood. Undoubtedly they believed that no sane man would attempt to travel the new bridge under the most favorable weather conditions, and certainly not on such a night as we confronted it. But escape we must, and somehow I determined we would. With this feeling we began an investigation. The wind was howling, and at intervals filled almost to suffocation with clouds of powdery snow that fairly beat its way through our clothing. It had rained the day before, a freezing temperature following, and every inch of the bridge work was covered with a veneering of ice, much of it as smooth as glass, rendering foothold extremely uncertain. The night, or rather the morning, for it was going on four o’clock, was dark, there being no moon above the storm. What little light there was to pierce the darkness came from the snow. As for the bridge, the wind swept it clean, as well it might, for at times we kept our feet with great difficulty when a powerful gust came upon us unawares.
It seemed that we were to have less trouble than anticipated, for we’d traversed something like three hundred feet toward the centre, with a well-laid flooring for our feet, and were pressing on farther, cheerfully, before we suddenly had these hopes toppled. I, being in the lead, came mighty near stepping through an opening down into the Niagara River. As I contemplate the experience at this late day, a chill runs through me. I had come to the end of the planking, where the workmen had ceased their labors, possibly on account of the storm in the afternoon. Beyond this, as far as I could discern, was a narrow path of planks laid end to end over the iron girders. The first plank was not more than a dozen inches in width. Further on, it was purely a matter of guessing as to what we would encounter. I got on my knees and felt of the plank. It proved to be what I expected--covered with ice. The only way we could get over it, with any degree of safety, would be to crawl on our hands and knees. The next thing in my mind was, whether or not we could, in the face of the gale, hold to the planking. More nerve-racking still was the uncertainty of what lay farther on in the darkness. I wondered if, and hoped that, the workmen on the American end of the bridge had laid more flooring, perhaps a great deal more, than we had found on this side. If that were the case, the skeleton which lay between us and the flooring on the other side might not be such a menace to our safety as it seemed. All this was mere conjecture, I said to Mark, and the only way to know what was before us was to proceed. It were better, I said, to make an attempt with the possibility of getting across than to remain on this side and fall into the hands of the police. While it has required considerable time to tell all this, it really happened in a very few minutes. Perhaps five minutes after we were face to face with the danger we had determined what to do.