Next day the sappers joined the French pontoneers and English sailors, in throwing a bridge of boats across the main stream, at a place some 890 yards wide. A few boats had been laid when the sappers commenced. The pontoneers worked from one shore, the sappers from the other; whilst the sailors rowed up the boats and assisted to secure them in position. The boats, fixed with a clear bay of twenty feet between, gave for each of the series about forty feet of bridge. The breadth for the roadway was eighteen feet six inches. Wood was scarce at the spot, and the timbers for the superstructure in great part were obtained from Sistova and Widdin. Intended for heavy service the bridge was made of massive baulks and stout oak planking, strongly bolted, cramped, and racked. Much “difficulty was experienced in securing some of the boats in the more rapid part of the stream, but by mooring them with four anchors each, and the aid of heavy ordnance sunk above the boats and securely fastened to them,” they stood against wind and surge, firm and unbroken.[149] “It was completed on the 4th August, and on the 5th received some damage from the first Austrian steamer that passed during the war. This was soon repaired,”[150] and to obviate a similar casualty, an opening was contrived to permit the navigation to continue, which, when not required, was closed up again by a moveable raft to make good the bridge. In appearance it was as artistic and elegant as useful. The longest boats occupied the centre, from which the smaller craft gradually fell away to the two shores. Like ancient galleys they were shaped with stems and prows curving gracefully upwards from the water.[151] The bridge was no unworthy rival of the celebrated one formed by Xerxes, in his passage of the Hellespont at Abydos. “On the 10th, Omar Pacha opened it in person, and complimented the officers and men for the zeal and ability they had shown in its construction. Captain Bent was in command of the sappers.”[152] For the ceremony two triumphal arches of evergreens were run up, one at each end of the bridge, and above them proudly waved the allied banners of England, France, and Turkey. To crown the service, both French and English met in unmixed cordiality and friendship, at a costly repast provided by Omar Pacha.