14 
Land & Water 
April 
1 1 
1918 
who got such unsatisfactorj' answers to his questions that 
he talked the matter over witli a fellow workman in the 
roundhouse, though without results. -So Werner Horn 
marched out alone upon the bridge -alone except for his 
cigar and his suit-case, the spirit of the Fatherland upon 
him and the lying words of von Papen in his ears. 
He had need of the fire of patriotism to warm his blood 
and to steel his courageous spirit. It was a black, winter 
nifeht. The mercury was at thirty degrees below zero, the 
wind was blowing at eighty miles an hour, the ice was thick 
upon the cross-ties beneath his stumbhng feet. The fine 
snow, like grains of flying sand, cut his skin in the gale. 
The Vanceboro Bridge 
rhe suit case, full of dynamite, was placed beiide a beam (X) at the Canadian 
end of the bridge. 
But Werner Horn was a patriot and a brave man. Von 
Papen had told him that over these rails flowed a tide of 
death to Germans— not only guns and shells, but dum-dum 
bullets that added agony to death. He must do his bit 
to save his fellow soldiers ; must help to stop the tide. 
Destroy this bridge, and for a time at least the cargoes would 
be kept from St. John and Halifax, It was a short bridge, 
but a strategic one, and the most accessible. So Horn 
stumbled on. He must get beyond the middle. Von Papen 
had not urged it, but Werner Horn had balked about this 
business from the first — not through lack of courage (he would 
go as a soldier upon the enemy's territory and there fire his 
single shot at any risk against their millions), but he would 
not commit a crime for anybody, not even for the Kaiser ; 
nor would he trespass on the soil of hospitable America. 
Hence on each sleeve he wore the colours of his country : 
three bands, of red and white and black. Von Papen had 
beguiled him into thinking these transformed him from a 
civihan to a soldier. Twice as he struggled through the 
darkness, he slipped and fell, barely saving himself from 
death on the ice below. Each time he clung doggedly to 
his suit-case full of dyrwamite. 
Suddenly a whistle shrieked behind him, and in a moment 
the glaring eyes of an express train's locomotive shone upon 
him. Horn clutched with one hand at a steel rod of the 
bridge and swung out over black nothingness, holding the 
suit-case safe behind him with the other. The train thun- 
dered by, and left him painfully to recover his uncertain 
footing on the bridge. The second of von Papen 's lies had 
been disproved. 
He had promised Horn that the last train for the night 
would have been gone at this hour, for Horn had said he 
would do nothing that would put human lives in peril. But 
Horn thought only that von Papen had misunderstood the 
time-tables. 
A few moments after he had got this shock another whistle 
screamed at him from the Canadian shore, and again he 
made his quick, precarious escape by hanging out above 
the river by one hand and foot. He now decided that all 
time-tables had been put awry, and that he must change 
his plans to be sure of not endangering human beings. To 
accomplish this, he cut off and threw away most of the 
ftfty-minutc fuse that he had brought along, and left only 
enough to burn five minutes. No train would come sooner 
than this, and then the explosion would warn everybedy 
of the danger. 
In doing this, Horn deliberately cut himself off from 
hope of escaping capture. He had planned such an escape 
-an ingenious plan, too, except that it was traced on a 
railroad time-table map of the Maine woods in winter by a 
strange (ierman fresh from the tropics. He had meant to 
walk back one station westward, then cut across the open 
country to the end of a branch line railroad, and then ride 
hack to Boston on another line than that on which he came 
east to Vanceboro. It was a clever scheme, except that it 
missed all the essentials, such as the thirty miles of trackless 
woods, the snow feet-deep upon the level, the darkness of 
winter nights, and the deadly cold. Still, Horn childishly 
believed it feasible, and he did a brave and honorable thing 
to throw it overboard rather than to cause the death «f 
innocent people. 
He fixed the dynamite against a girder of the bridge above 
the Canadian bank of the river, adjusted the explosive cap, 
and touched his cigar to the end of the five-minute fuse. 
Then he stumbled back across the gale-swept, icy bridge, 
made no effort to escape, and .walked back into the hotel in 
Vanceboro, with both hands frozen, as well as his ears, his 
feet, and his nose. A moment after he entered the hotel, the 
dynamite exploded with a report that broke the windows in 
half the houses in the town and twisted rods and girders on 
the bridge sufficiently to make it unsafe, but not enough 
to ruin it. 
Everybody in Vanceboro was aroused. Host Tague, of 
the Exchange Hotel, leaped from his bed and looked out of 
the window. Seeing nothing, he struck a light and looked 
at his watch, which said i.io, and then he hurried into the 
hall, headed for the cellar, to see if his boiler had exploded. 
In the hall he faced the bath-room. There stood Werner 
Horn, who mildly said "Good morning" to his astonished 
host. Tague returned the greeting and went back to get his 
clothes on. He had surmised the truth, and Horn's connec- 
tion with it. When he came back out into the hall, H»m 
was still in the bath-room, and said : " I freeze my hands." 
Small wonder, after five hours in that bitter gale I Tague 
opened the bath-room window and gave him some snow to 
rub on his frozen fingers, and then hurried to the bridge to 
see the damage. He found enough to make him press on to 
the station on the Canadian side, and then come back to 
Vanceboro, so that trains would be held from attempting 
to cross the bridge. 
When he got back to his hotel, Horn asked to- have again 
the room he had given up that evening. Tague had let it 
to another guest, but gave Horn a room on the third floor. 
There the German turned in and went to sleep. 
Meanwhile, human nature as artless as Werner Horn's 
was at work in Vanceboro. The chief officer of law there- 
abouts was "John Doe," a deputy sheriff, chief fish and 
game warden, and licensed detective for the State of Maine. 
His later testimony doubtless would have had a sympathetic 
reader in the Man in Lower 3 (if only he had known I) ; "I 
was asleep at my home, which is about three or four hundred 
feet from the bridge ; heard a noise about i.io a.m., which 
I thought was an earthquake, a collision of engines, or a 
boiler explosion in the heating plant. The noise disturbed 
me so that I could not get to sleep. (And the Man in Lower 3 
slept on !) I got up in the morning about half-past five ; 
met a man who said they had blown up the bridge." 
But while Mr. Doe was about his disturbed slumbers, the 
superintendent of the Maine Central Railroad was making a 
Sheridan's Ride through the night by special train from 
Mattawamkeag, fifty miles away. He, at least, was on the 
job — he had brought along a claim agent of the road, to take 
care of suits for damages. When they reached the Vanceboro 
station they sent for Mr. Doe, and when he arrived at seven 
o'clock, Canada also was represented by two constables in 
uniform. This being a case of law, and not for commerce, 
Mr. Doe took charge. He told the others that the first thing 
to do was to cover all the stations by telegraph and arrest all 
suspicious parties. Then he led his posse to the hotel. 
There Mr. Tague told them about the German peacefully 
a.sleep upstairs. He led them to the upper floor and pointed 
out the room, but went no farther, as he thought there might 
be shooting. His sister, being of the same mind, sought the 
cellar. Doe knocked upon the door. 
"What do 3'ou want ?" called Werner Horn. 
