At the actual block the situation was better. The left-hand lane on the upper side had been cleared. Then the truck-drivers had got together—the way they always did—to help the truck that was in trouble. They had brought forward another truck and got a chain from it to the one which was slewed across the road. There was not much room to maneuver, and the darkness and flying snow impeded the work and slowed it down. Still, they were moving the stalled truck a foot at a time, and would have it out of the jam and back on the road in a few minutes. Working with the truck-drivers and really directing the show was the man with the city overcoat who had volunteered to help; but he was so covered with snow that now you couldn’t have told what he was wearing.

The Superintendent took charge, but there was nothing much more for him to do. Thank God for truck-drivers! It’s the professionals that keep going in time of trouble. But the man in the city overcoat and the others who had come up to help were all right too.

As soon as the left-hand lane was cleared below the block, the truck-drivers and some others got their shoulders at one of the stalled cars and pushed it out of the snow-bank. It was without chains, of course, and its driver had lost his nerve; the man in the city overcoat backed it down-hill a few yards, out of the way.

The other stalled car belonged to the man who had been digging in the snow with his jack-handle; he had not managed to get even one chain on. But the trouble was that he had been trying to go forward up-grade, and all the while he could have eased his car, crumpled fender and all, downgrade without much difficulty, and got it to some easy spot where he could have got started forward again without chains. With a few directions that was exactly what he did, and once he got going he went right on, without even a thank-you, up the cleared lane above the block, and around the curve out of sight, right on for wherever he was going. He even left his jack-handle lying in the snow. The truck-drivers were so mad they could have lynched him, but the Superintendent thought it was good riddance. You could hear the car-horns from above tooting in triumph because one car had gone through, and the people knew the block must be breaking.

Next the Superintendent got rid of the east-bound cars. They were all pointed downgrade, and so had no trouble to get going. The man with the city overcoat drove away in one of them, but before he got into his car, he asked the Superintendent if there was anything more he could do.