Careers of Danger and Daring
by Cleveland Moffett · English · Gutenberg #33146 · 580,446 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Careers of Danger and Daring
Author: Cleveland Moffett
Illustrator: Jay Hambidge
George Varian
Release date: July 13, 2010 [eBook #33146]
Language: English
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CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
[Illustration: "DIVERS AT WORK NEAR A WRECK."]
CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
BY
CLEVELAND MOFFETT
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JAY HAMBIDGE AND GEORGE VARIAN
AND OTHERS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1903
Copyright, 1900, 1901, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1898, by
S. S. MCCLURE CO.
Copyright, 1901, by
CLEVELAND MOFFETT.
* * * * *
_Published October, 1901_
THE DEVINNE PRESS.
Dedication
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO
MY TWO LITTLE CHILDREN
ANNE EUNICE
AND
CLEVELAND LUSK
IN LOVE AND THE HOPE THAT
IT MAY HELP THEM, AS THEY
GROW UP, TO FORM HABITS OF
COURAGE AND USEFULNESS.
AUGUST, 1901. C. M.
CONTENTS
THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER PAGE
I In Which We Make the Acquaintance of "Steeple Bob" 3
II How They Blew Off the Top of a Steeple with Dynamite 14
III The Greatest Danger to a Steeple-Climber Lies in Being
Startled 21
IV Experience of an Amateur Climbing to a Steeple-top 29
THE DEEP-SEA DIVER
I Some First Impressions of Men Who Go Down Under the Sea 40
II A Visit to the Burying-ground of Wrecks 54
III An Afternoon of Story-telling on the Steam-pump
_Dunderberg_ 63
IV Wherein We Meet Sharks, Alligators, and a Very Tough
Problem in Wrecking 71
V In Which the Author Puts on a Diving-suit and Goes
Down to a Wreck 78
THE BALLOONIST
I Here We Visit a Balloon Farm and Talk with the Man
Who Runs It 87
II Which Treats of Experiments in Steering Balloons 99
III Something About Explosive Balloons and the Wonders of
Hydrogen 110
IV The Story of a Boy Who Ran Away in a Big Balloon 117
THE PILOT
I Some Stirring Tales of the Sea Heard at the Pilot's
Club 130
II Which Shows How Pilots on the St. Lawrence Fight the
Ice-floes 141
III Now We Watch the Men Who Shoot the Furious Rapids at
Lachine 148
IV What Canadian Pilots Did in the Cataracts of the Nile 160
THE BRIDGE-BUILDER
I In Which We Visit a Place of Unusual Fears and Perils 173
II The Experience of Two Novices in Balancing Along
Narrow Girders and Watching the "Traveler" Gang 182
III Which Tells of Men Who Have Fallen from Great Heights 197
THE FIREMAN
I Wherein We See a Sleeping Village Swept by a River of
Fire and the Burning of a Famous Hotel 209
II What Bill Brown Did in the Great Tarrant Fire 222
III Here We Visit an Engine-house at Night and Chat with
the Driver 233
IV Famous Rescues by New York Fire-boats from Red-hot
Ocean Liners 241
THE AERIAL ACROBAT
I Showing That it Takes More Than Muscle and Skill to
Work on the High Bars 255
II About Double and Triple Somersaults and the Danger of
Losing Heart 264
III In Which the Author Tries His Hand with Professional
Trapeze Performers 272
IV Some Remarkable Falls and Narrow Escapes of Famous
Athletes 284
THE WILD-BEAST TAMER
I We Visit a Queer Resort for Circus People and Talk
with a Trainer of Elephants 293
II Methods of Lion-tamers and the Story of Brutus's
Attack on Mr. Bostock 304
III Bonavita Describes His Fight with Seven Lions and
George Arstingstall Tells How He Conquered a Mad
Elephant 317
IV We See Mr. Bostock Matched Against a Wild Lion and
Hear About the Tiger Rajah 328
V We Spend a Night Among Wild Beasts and See the
Dangerous Lion Black Prince 339
THE DYNAMITE WORKER
I The Story of Some Millionaire Heroes and the World's
Greatest Powder Explosion 348
II We Visit a Dynamite-factory and Meet a Man Who Thinks
Courage is an Accident 358
III How Joshua Plumstead Stuck to His Nitro-Glycerin-Vat
in an Explosion and Saved the Works 367
THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER
I How it Feels to Ride at Night on a Locomotive Going
Ninety Miles an Hour 377
II We Pick Up Some Engine Lore and Hear About the Death
of Giddings 388
III Some Memories of the Great Record-breaking Run from
Chicago to Buffalo 395
IV We Hear Some Thrilling Stories at a Round-house and
Reach the End of the Book 406
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
About one half the chapters in this book appeared
serially in "St. Nicholas Magazine," the other
half in the "New York Herald," and two chapters on
the Locomotive Engineer, and one on the Wild-Beast
Tamer appeared in "McClure's Magazine." Thanks are
extended to all these for permission to republish.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
DIVERS AT WORK NEAR A WRECK _Frontispiece_
"I HAD TO CRAWL AROUND AND OVER IT" 5
AT THE TOP OF ST. PAUL'S, NEW YORK 10
"THEN MY PARTNER STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS" 12
"SOMETIMES IN HARD PLACES YOU HAVE TO THROW YOUR NOOSES
AROUND THE SHAFT" 16
PICTURE OF THE FALLING STEEPLE, PHOTOGRAPHED JUST AFTER
THE DYNAMITE EXPLODED. THE FALLING SECTION WAS 35
FEET IN LENGTH AND WEIGHED 35 TONS 20
LOOKING FROM THE GROUND UPWARD AT ST. PAUL'S SPIRE,
BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY 25
GILDING A CHURCH CROSS, ABOVE NEW YORK CITY 30
HOW THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER GOES UP A FLAGPOLE 37
PORTRAIT OF A DIVER. DRAWN FROM LIFE 43
"THE DIVER'S HELMET SHOWED LIKE THE BACK OF A BIG TURTLE" 46
DIVER STANDING ON SUNKEN COAL BARGE 51
THE MEN AT WORK WITH THE AIR-PUMP 57
"I STAYED DOWN UNTIL THAT CHAIN WAS UNDER THE SHAFT" 60
THE MAN WHO ATTENDS TO THE DIVER'S SIGNALS 65
A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT'S PROPELLER 75
THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER'S SUIT 80
THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN
UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET 83
"BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS" 88
"FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE" 89
"A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK--WHICH,
ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY" 91
PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE" 93
HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE MILE.
(Photographed from a Balloon.) 96
MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE FOOT-BOARD 100
"IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND
THEMSELVES PRESENTLY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND
ALL" 103
MME. CARLOTTA CALLS FOR ASSISTANCE FROM ANOTHER BALLOONIST
THREE MILES AWAY 107
A BALLOON-PICNIC AT THE AERONAUTS' HOME 112
"STEVENS CAME DOWN ONCE WITH A PARACHUTE TWO MILES OUT IN
THE ATLANTIC OCEAN--AND WAS PROMPTLY RESCUED" 119
THE RESCUE OF THE "OREGON'S" PASSENGERS 132
A PILOT-BOAT RIDING OUT A STORM 138
RIVER-BUOYS ON THE BANK FOR THE WINTER 145
"BIG JOHN" STEERING A BOAT THROUGH THE LACHINE RAPIDS 150
By permission of William Notman & Son
FRED OUILLETTE, THE YOUNG PILOT 153
THE INDIAN PILOTS RESCUE PASSENGERS FROM THE STEAMER ON
THE ROCKS 156
"MAN OVERBOARD!" AN INDIAN CANOE TO THE RESCUE 158
THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN" 162
HAULING A STEAMER UP THE NILE RAPIDS 165
CUTTING THE LINE--A MOMENT OF PERIL 167
"OVER THEY WENT, THE WHOLE BLACK LINE OF THEM" 169
HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS 170
THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS. A TOWER OF THE NEW EAST
RIVER BRIDGE. THIS PHOTOGRAPH ALSO ILLUSTRATES THE
NARROW ESCAPE OF JACK MCGREGGOR ON THE SWINGING
COLUMN 175
"THERE WAS PAT, FAST ASLEEP, LEGS DANGLING, HEAD NODDING,
AS COMFORTABLE AS YOU PLEASE" 179
"THE IRON STREET LOOKED DELICATE, NOT MASSIVE" 184
WARMING THEIR LUNCHES AT THE BOILER-FIRE 186
A STRANGE WAY TO GO TO MEALS 186
"ITS MASCOT KITTEN, CURLED UP THERE BY THE ASH-BOX" 189
RIDING UP ON AN EIGHTEEN-TON COLUMN 191
ON THE "TRAVELER." HOISTING A STRUT 195
WALKING A GIRDER TWO HUNDRED FEET IN AIR 203
BURNING OIL-TANKS 210
"SNYDER, WHITE AS A GHOST, RACED AHEAD OF THE FIRE" 213
"THE VERY STREETS ARE BURNING" 215
USE OF THE SCALING LADDERS 218
A HOT PLACE 224
A FALLING WALL 231
A RESCUE FROM A FIFTH STORY 234
AT FULL SPEED 239
"INTO THE STREET OF FIRE, BETWEEN THE TWO PIERS, STEAMED
THE BIG FIRE-BOAT, STRAIGHT IN, WITH FOUR STREAMS
PLAYING TO PORT AND FOUR TO STARBOARD, ALL DOING
THEIR PRETTIEST" 243
GALLAGHER'S RESCUE OF A SWEDE FROM THE BURNING BARGE 245
SAVING THE MEN OF THE "BREMEN" 250
FIRE-BOATS WORKING ON THE "BREMEN" AND THE "SAALE" 253
"AS THEY SHOOT TOWARD THE MAN HANGING FOR THE CATCH FROM
THE LAST BAR" 259
"FOUR ELEPHANTS WAS ENOUGH FOR ANY MAN TO LEAP OVER" 267
CIRCUS PROFESSIONALS PRACTISING A FEAT OF BALANCING 279
THROUGH A PAPER BALLOON AT THE END OF A GREAT FEAT 289
HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE 295
MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS 301
BEGINNING THE TRAINING 305
COMING TO CLOSE QUARTERS 307
THE LION DESTROYS THE CHAIR 308
THE TAMER'S TRIUMPH. READING HIS NEWSPAPER IN THE LION'S
CAGE 310
BIANCA RESCUES BOSTOCK FROM "BRUTUS" 315
BONAVITA'S FIGHT WITH SEVEN LIONS IN THE RUNWAY 320
"RAJAH'S" ATTACK UPON BONAVITA IN THE RUNWAY 331
THE TIGER "RAJAH" KICKED BY THE QUAGGA 334
PUTTING THE TIGER "RAJAH" AGAIN UPON THE ELEPHANT'S BACK 337
A ROYAL BENGAL TIGER 345
YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL 351
EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER 354
THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL 356
"EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES" 361
"HE WENT TO WORK THROWING WATER ON THE BURNING BOXES" 365
"A SWIFT, HEAVY CAR WAS PLUNGING TOWARD THE OPEN DOOR" 372
"HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY
MOMENT" 375
"A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS" 379
AT THE THROTTLE 385
"THEY STRUCK THE MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE AT FULL SPEED" 390
"AS THE DRIVERS BEGAN TO TURN I JUMPED ON THE
COW-CATCHER" 397
A RECORD-BREAKING RUN 401
"DRAWN BY THE IDEA OF ITS GOING SO BLAMED FAST AND BEING
SO STRONG" 409
"CONVICTS HAD REVOLVERS ALL RIGHT THAT TRIP AND DENNY
THREW UP HIS HANDS" 413
CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
[Illustration]
THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER
I
IN WHICH WE MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF "STEEPLE BOB"
DURING the summer months of 1900--what blazing hot months, to be
sure!--people on lower Broadway were constantly coming upon other people
with chins in the air, staring up and exclaiming: "Dear me, isn't it
wonderful!" or "There's that fellow again; I'm sure he'll break his
neck!" Then they would pass on and give place to other wonderers.
The occasion of this general surprise and apprehension was a tall man
dressed entirely in white, who appeared day after day swinging on a
little seat far up the side of this or that church steeple, or right at
the top, hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, or, higher still,
working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching movement, up various
hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from the heaven-challenging office
buildings down near Wall Street. At these perilous altitudes he would
hang for hours, shifting his ropes occasionally, raising his swing or
lowering it, but not doing anything that his sidewalk audience could see
very well or clearly understand. Yet thousands watched him with
fascination, and a kodak army descended upon neighboring housetops, and
newspapers followed the movements of "Steeple Bob" in thrilling
chronicle.
That is what he was called in large black letters at the head of
columns--"Steeple Bob"; but I came to know him at his modest quarters on
Lexington Avenue, where he was plain Mr. Merrill, a serious-mannered and
an unpretentious young man, very fond of his wife and his dog, very fond
of spending evenings over books of adventure, and quite indifferent to
his day-time notoriety. I call him a young man, yet in years of service,
not in age, he is the oldest steeple-climber in the business, ever since
his teacher, "Steeple Charlie," fell from his swing some years ago in
New Bedford, Massachusetts, and died the steeple-climber's death.
I often saw books of the sea on Merrill's table, and accounts of whaling
voyages; and he told me, one evening (while through an open door came
the snores of his weary partner), about his own adventurous boyhood,
with three years' cruising in Uncle Sam's navy on the school-ships
_Minnesota_ and _Yantic_ (he shipped at the age of twelve) and two years
at whale-fishing in the North Sea. Quite ideal training, this, for a
steeple-climber; he learned to handle ropes and make them fast so they
would stay fast; he learned to climb and keep his head at the top of a
swaying masthead; he learned to bear exposure as lads must who are
washed on deck every morning with a hose, and stand for inspection,
winter and summer, bare to the waist. And he gained strength of arm and
back swinging at the oar while whale-lines strained on the sunk harpoon;
and patience in long stern-chases; and nerve when some stricken monster
lashed the waters in agony and the boat danced on a reddened sea.
Merrill laughed about the climb up old Trinity's spire, the first climb
when he carried up the hauling-rope and worked his way clear to the
cross, with nothing to help him but the hands and feet he was born
with, and did it coolly, while men on the street below turned away
sickened with fear for him.
"I'm telling you the truth," said Steeple Bob, "when I say it was an
easy climb; any fairly active man could do it if he'd forget the height.
I'm not talking about all steeples--some are hard and dangerous; but the
one on Trinity, in spite of its three hundred-odd feet, has knobs of
stone for ornament all the way up (they call them corbels), and all you
have to do is to step from one to another."
"How much of a step?"
"Oh, when I stood on one the next one came to my breast, and then I
could just touch the one above that."
[Illustration: "I HAD TO CRAWL AROUND AND OVER IT."]
He called this easy climbing!
"The only ticklish bit was just at the top, where two great stones,
weighing about a ton apiece, swell out like an apple on a stick, and I
had to crawl around and over that apple, which was four feet or so
across. If it hadn't been for grooves and scrollwork in the stone I
couldn't have done it, and even as it was I had two or three minutes of
hard wriggling after I kicked off with my feet and began pulling myself
up."
"You mean you hung by your hands from this big ball of stone?"
"I hung mostly by my fingers; the scrolls weren't deep enough for my
hands to go in."
"And you drew yourself slowly up and around and over that ball?"
"Certainly; that was the only way."
"And it was at the very top?"
"Yes, just under the cross. It wasn't much, though; you could do it
yourself."
I really think Merrill believed this. He honestly saw no particular
danger in that climb, nor could I discover that he ever saw any
particular danger in anything he had done. He always made the point that
if he had really thought the thing dangerous he wouldn't have done it.
And I conclude from this that being a steeple-climber depends quite as
much upon how a man thinks as upon what he can do.
"A funny thing happened!" he added. "After I got over this hard place, I
slid into a V-shaped space between the bulging stone and the
steeple-shaft, and I lay there on my back for a minute or so, resting.
But when I started to raise myself I found my weight had worked me down
in the crotch and jammed me fast, and it was quite a bit of time before
I could get free."
"How much time? A minute?"
"Yes, five minutes; and it seemed a good deal longer."
Five minutes struggling in a sort of stone trap, stretched out helpless
at the very top of a steeple where one false move would mean
destruction--that is what Merrill spoke of as a funny thing! Thanks, I
thought, I will take my fun some other way, and lower down.
"You would be surprised," he went on, "to feel the movement of a
steeple. It trembles all the time, and answers every jar on the street
below. I guess old Trinity's steeple sways eighteen inches every time an
elevated train passes. And St. Paul's is even worse. Why, she rocks like
a beautifully balanced cradle; it would make some people seasick.
Perhaps you don't know it, but the better a steeple is built the more
she sways. You want to look out for the ones that stand rigid; there's
something wrong with them--most likely they're out of plumb."
"Isn't there danger," I asked, "that a steeple may get swaying too much,
say in a gale, and go clear over?"
"Gale or not," said Merrill, "a well-made steeple must rock in the wind,
the same as a tree rocks. That is the way it takes the storm, by
yielding to it. If it didn't yield it would probably break. Why, the
great shaft of the Washington Monument sways four or five feet when the
wind blows hard."
Then he explained that modern steeples are built with a steel backbone
(if I may so call it) running down from the top for many feet inside the
stonework. At Trinity, for instance, this backbone (known as a dowel) is
four inches thick and forty-five feet long, a great steel mast
stretching down through the cross, down inside the heavy stones and
ornaments, and ending in massive beams and braces where the steeple's
greater width gives full security.
"What sort of work did you do on these steeples?" I asked.
"All kinds; stone-mason's work, painter's work, blacksmith's work,
carpenter's work--why, a good steeple-climber has to know something
about 'most every trade. It's painting flagpoles, and scraping off shale
from a steeple's sides, and repairing loose stones and ornaments, and
putting up lightning-rods, and gilding crosses, and cleaning
smoke-stacks so high that it makes you dizzy to look up, let alone
looking down, and a dozen other things. Sometimes we have to take a
whole steeple down, beginning at the top, stone by stone--unless it's a
wooden steeple, and then we burn her down five or six feet at a time,
with creosote painted around where you want the fire to stop; the
creosote puts it out. Once I blew off the whole top of a steeple with
dynamite; and, by the way, I'll tell you about that some time."
Conversing with a steeple-climber (when he feels like telling things) is
like breathing oxygen; you find it over-stimulating. In ten minutes'
matter-of-fact talking he opens so many vistas of thrilling interest
that you stand before them bewildered. He starts to answer one question,
and you burn to interrupt him with ten others, each of which will lead
you hopelessly away from the remaining nine.
"Did you ever have any experiences with lightning?" I asked Merrill, one
day.
"Oh, a few," he said. "A thunderbolt struck the Trinity steeple the very
day we finished our work. We had just taken down our tackle and staging
after gilding the cross when--by the way, they say there's a hundred
dollars in gold under that cross."
"Really?" I exclaimed. "How did it get there?"
"Somebody ordered it put there when the steeple was built. People often
do queer things like that. I painted a flagpole on a barn up in
Massachusetts where there was four hundred dollars in gold hidden under
the weather-vane. Everybody knew it was there, because the farmer who
put it there told everybody, and my partner was crazy to saw off the end
of that pole some night and fool 'em, but of course I wouldn't have it."
Here was I quite off my thunderbolt trail, and although curious about
that farmer, I came back to it resolutely.
"Well," resumed Merrill, "this lightning stroke came down the new rod
all right until it reached the bell-deck, and there it circled round and
round the steeple four or five times, wrapping my assistant in
bluish-white flame. Then it took a long jump straight down Wall Street,
smashed a flagpole to slivers, and vanished. Say, there are things about
lightning I've never heard explained. I know of a steeple-climber, for
instance, who was killed by lightning--it must have been lightning,
although no one saw it strike. There were two of them working on a
scaffolding when a thunder-storm came up, and this man's partner started
for the ground, as climbers with any sense always do. But this fellow
was lazy or out of sorts or something, and said he wouldn't go down,
he'd stay on the steeple until the storm was over. And he did stay
there, without getting any harm, so far as anybody on the ground could
see, except a wetting. Just the same, when his partner went up again, he
found him stretched out on the scaffolding, dead."
"Frightened to death?" I suggested.
[Illustration: AT THE TOP OF ST. PAUL'S, NEW YORK.]
Merrill shook his head. "No, they said it was lightning; but it's
queer how lightning could kill a man without being seen, isn't it?"
Then Merrill gave an experience of his own with a thunderbolt. It was
during this same busy summer of 1900, while he and his partner were
scraping the great steel smoke-stack that rises from ground to roof
along one side of the American Tract Society Building, that towering
structure which looks down with contempt, no doubt, upon ordinary church
steeples.
"We were in our saddles," Merrill explained, "swung down about two
thirds of the smoke-stack's length, when some black clouds warned us of
danger, and we hauled ourselves up to the roof. My partner, Walter
Tyghe, got off his saddle and stood there where my wife was waiting (she
often goes to climbing-jobs with me--she's less anxious when she can
watch me); but I thought the storm was passing over, and kept on
scraping, sort of half resting on the cornice, half on my saddle.
Suddenly a bolt shot down from a little pink cloud just overhead, and
splintered a big flagpole I had just put halyards on, and then jumped
past us all so close that it knocked Walter over, and made me sick and
giddy so that I fell back limp on my saddle-board, and swung there
helpless until my wife pulled the trip-rope that opens the lock-block
and drew me in from the edge. That's not the first time she's been on
deck at the right minute. Once she came up a steeple to tell me
something, and found the hauling-line smoldering from my helper's
cigarette. If that line had burned through it would have dropped me to
the ground from the steeple-top, saddle, lock-block, and all. The man
with the cigarette was so scared he quit smoking for good and all."
Here, in reply to my question, Merrill explained the working of a
lock-block, which is simply a pulley that allows a rope to pass through
it, but will not let it go back. With this block the steeple-climber can
be hauled up easily, but cannot fall, even if the man hauling should let
go the rope. When it is necessary to descend, a pull on the trip-rope
releases a safety-catch and the saddle goes down.
"Do steeple-climbers always work in pairs?" I asked him.
[Illustration: "'THEN MY PARTNER STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS.'"]
"Usually. It would be hard for one man to do a steeple alone. There are
lots of places where you must have some one to fasten a rope or hold the
end of a plank or pass you something. Besides, it wouldn't be good for a
man's mind to be spending days and days upon steeples all alone. It's
bad enough with a partner to talk to. That makes me think of poor old
Dan O'Brien. If I hadn't been up with him one day--" Merrill checked
himself and changed the subject.
"I'll give you a case where a man alone could never have done the thing,
I don't care how clever a steeple-climber he might be. It was on St.
Paul's, New York, after we had finished the job and taken everything
down. Then somebody noticed that the weather-vane on top of the ball
wasn't turning properly. I knew in a minute what the matter was; it was
easy enough to fix it, but the thing was to reach the weather-vane. I
don't mean that the climb up the steeple was anything; we had done that
before; but if I tried to climb around that big ball again (it was the
same sort of a wriggling business as that over the bulging stones at
Trinity) I would be sure to scrape off a lot of the fine gilding we had
just put on. And yet I couldn't get at the weather-vane without getting
over the ball. I studied quite a while on this little problem, and
solved it with my partner's help. We both climbed the steeple as far as
the ball; we went up the lightning-rod; then we roped ourselves on the
steeple-shaft by life-lines, and then my partner, that was Joe Lawlor,
stood on my shoulders and did the job. You see it was easy enough that
way."
"Easy enough!" Think of it! Two men clinging to the point of a steeple.
One of them braces himself with the toes of his rubber shoes in crannies
of the stone, and the other, balancing on his shoulders like a circus
performer, does a piece of work, no matter what, with a reeling abyss
all around (what is looking over a precipice compared to this?), and all
the time the spire swaying back and forth like a forest tree. And then
you hear that, instead of getting a large sum for such an achievement,
these men, taking it through the year, get scarcely more than ordinary
workmen's wages.
II
HOW THEY BLEW OFF THE TOP OF A STEEPLE WITH DYNAMITE
KNOWN over all Connecticut was the Congregational Church in Hartford,
that stood for years on Pearl Street, and was famous alike for the
burning words spoken beneath its roof, and the tall, straight spire that
reached above it; two hundred and thirty-eight feet measured the drop
from cross to pavement. But churches pass like other things, and near
the century-end came the decision by landowners and lease interpreters
that this graceful length of brownstone and the pile beneath it must
move off the premises, which meant, of course, that the steeple must
come down, the time appointed for this demolition being August, 1899.
Now, the taking down of a steeple two hundred and thirty-eight feet
high, that rises on a closely built city street, is not so simple a
proceeding as might at first appear. If you suggest pulling the steeple
over, all the neighbors cry out. They wish to know where it is going to
strike. Are you sure it won't smash down on their housetops? Can you
make a steeple fall this way or that way, as woodmen make trees fall?
How do you know you can? Besides, how are you going to hitch fast the
rope that will pull it over? And who will climb with such a rope to the
steeple-top? It must be said that there is usually some young man at
hand, some dare-devil character of the vicinity, who is ready to try
the thing and is positive he can succeed at it. But, luckily, he seldom
gets a chance to try.
"It's queer," said Merrill, telling me the story, "how people ever built
a steeple like this one without a window in it, or an air-passage, or
anything for ventilation. Between the bell-deck and the cross there
wasn't a single opening from the inside out, so I had to break my way
through up near the top. What a place for a man to work, squeezed in the
point of a stifling funnel, with no swing for his hammer, and no air to
breathe, and the scorch of an August sun! After fifteen minutes of it,
my wrists and temples would be pounding so I'd have to come down and
rest.
"Of course the purpose of this hole that I knocked through the
steeple-top was to make fast ropes and pulleys, so my partner and I
could hoist ourselves along the outside, and not have to climb up the
inside cross-beams, which, I can tell you, is a lively bit of athletics.
Well, we got our ropes fixed all right, about twenty-five feet below the
top, and the 'bosun's saddle' swung below for us to travel up and down
in, and then we made fast another set of ropes and pulleys about fifteen
feet higher up; this was for hoisting timber and stuff that we needed."
"How did you get up that fifteen feet?" I inquired.
"Worked up on the stirrups--that is, two nooses around the steeple, each
ending in a loop, one for the right foot, one for the left. You stand in
the right stirrup and work the left loop up, then you stand in the left
stirrup and work the right loop up. Sometimes in hard places you have to
throw your nooses around the shaft as a cowboy casts a rope. Come down
some day and watch us work; you'll see the whole thing."
To this invitation I gave glad acceptance; I certainly wished to see
this stirrup-climbing process.
[Illustration: "SOMETIMES IN HARD PLACES YOU HAVE TO THROW YOUR NOOSES
AROUND THE SHAFT."]
"The next thing," continued Merrill, "was to make another hole in the
steeple through a keystone a little below our first hole. In this hole
we set a block of Norway pine resting on an iron jack. The block was
about a foot square and twenty-two inches high, a big tough piece, you
see, and by screwing up the jack we could make that part as solid as the
keystone was. We made this hole on the east side of the steeple, which
was the side we wanted her to fall on, the only side she could fall on
without injuring something; and we had it figured out so close that we
dug a trench on that side straight out from the steeple's base, ten feet
wide and four feet deep, and told people we intended to have the whole
top of that steeple, say a length of thirty-five feet and a weight of
thirty-five tons, come off at one time and land right square in that
trench and nowhere else. That's what we intended to do.
"Now began the hoisting of materials; first a lot of half-inch wire
cable, enough for four turns around the steeple, then eight sixteen-foot
timbers, two inches thick and a foot wide, then a lot of maple wedges.
We bandaged the steeple with the cable and drew it tight with tackle.
Then we lowered the timbers lengthwise inside the cable, which we could
do because the steeple was an octagon with ornamented corners, and these
left spaces where the wire rope was stretched around. Then we wedged
fast the eight timbers so that they formed a sixteen-foot half-collar on
the west side of the steeple just opposite our hole where the jack was.
In other words, we had the steeple shored in so that when we let her go
no loose stones could fall on the west side; everything must fall to the
east.
"Last of all, we widened our hole on the east side, stripping away
stones until that whole side lay open in a half-circular mouth about
four feet high. And in this mouth were two teeth, one might say, that
held the stone jaws apart, the iron jack biting into the block of Norway
pine. On those two now came the steeple's weight, or, anyhow, one half
of it. To knock out one of these teeth would be to leave the east side
of the steeple unsupported, with the result that it must topple over in
that direction and fall to the ground. Anyway, that was our reasoning,
and it seemed sound enough; the only question was how we were going to
knock out that block of Norway pine.
"Well the day of the test came, and I guess five thousand people were
there to see what would happen. Everybody was discussing it, and farmers
had driven in for miles just as they do for a hanging. You understand I
was under the orders of the contractor, and he had his own plan about
getting the block out. He proposed to hitch a rope to it, drop this rope
to a donkey-engine in the yard, and set the engine winding up the rope.
He said the block would have to come out then and the steeple fall. I
agreed that the block might come out, but was afraid it would tip up
through the strain coming at an angle, and throw the steeple over to the
west, just the way we didn't want it to go. And if that steeple ever
fell to the west, there was no telling how many people it would kill in
the crowd, without counting damage to houses.
"However, the contractor was boss, and he stuck to it his way was right,
so we hitched the engine to the block and set her going. She puffed and
tugged a little, and then snapped the rope. We got another rope, and she
broke that too. Then we got a stronger rope, and the engine just kicked
herself around the yard and had lots of fun, but the block never budged.
All that morning we tried one scheme after another to make that engine
pull the block out, but we might as well have hitched a rope to the
church; the steeple's weight was too much for us. And all the time the
crowd was getting bigger and bigger, until the police could hardly
manage it.
"Finally the contractor, being very mad and quite anxious, said he'd be
hanged if he could get the block out, and for me to try my scheme, and
do it quick, for some men were going about saying the thing was
dangerous and ought to be stopped. He didn't have to speak twice before
I was on my way up that steeple carrying an inch auger, a fifty-foot
fuse, and a stick of dynamite--I'd had them ready for hours. It's queer
how people get wind of a thing; the crowd seemed to know in a minute
that I was going to use dynamite, and before I was twenty feet up the
ladder a police officer was after me, ordering me down. I went right
ahead, pretending not to hear, and when I got to the bell-deck he was
puffing along ten yards below me. I swung into my 'bosun's saddle' and
began pulling myself up outside the steeple, and I guess the whole five
thousand people around the church bent back their heads to watch me.
"As soon as I began to rise in the saddle I knew I was all right, for I
coiled up the hauling-line on my arm so the officer couldn't follow me.
All he could do was stand on the bell-deck and gape after me like the
rest and growl.
"When I reached the block I bored a six-inch hole into her at a downward
slant, and in this I put some crumbs of dynamite,--not much, only about
half a teaspoonful,--and then I stuck in the fuse and tamped her solid
with sand. Then I lit the other end, dropped it down inside the steeple,
and slid down the rope as fast as I could, yelling to the officer that
I'd touched her off. You ought to have seen him get out of that steeple!
He never waited to arrest me or anything; he had pressing business on
the ground!
"By the time I got down you could see a little trail of bluish smoke
drifting away from the hole, and there was a hush over the crowd, except
for the police trying to make them stand back behind the ropes. I don't
know as I ever saw a bigger crowd; the street was jammed for blocks
either way. Well, sir, that was a queer acting fuse. It smoked and
smoked for about ten minutes, and then the smoke stopped. The people
began to laugh--they said it had gone out; and the contractor was nearly
crazy: he was sure I had made another failure. I didn't know what to
think; I just waited. We waited ten minutes, twelve minutes; it seemed
like an hour, but nobody dared go up to see what the matter was. Then
suddenly the explosion came--no louder than a pistol-crack, for
dynamite isn't noisy, but it stirred me more than a cannon.
"'Start your engine!' I shouted, and the little dummy had just time to
wind up half a turn of the hitch-line when the old steeple-top swayed
and broke clean in two, right where the block was, and the whole upper
length fell like one piece, fell to the east just as we had planned it,
and landed in the trench, every stone of it; there wasn't a piece as big
as your fingernail, sir, outside that trench. And while she was falling
I don't know how many kodaks were snapped in the hope of getting a
picture; men and women with cameras had been waiting for hours on the
roofs of high buildings, and two or three of them actually caught a
picture of the steeple-top as it hung in the air for a fraction of a
second at right angles to the base."
[Illustration: PICTURE OF THE FALLING STEEPLE, PHOTOGRAPHED JUST AFTER
THE DYNAMITE EXPLODED. THE FALLING SECTION WAS 35 FEET IN LENGTH AND
WEIGHED 35 TONS.]
III
THE GREATEST DANGER TO A STEEPLE-CLIMBER LIES IN BEING STARTLED
IT appears that professional steeple-climbers are quiet-mannered men,
with a certain gentleness of voice (like deaf people) that impresses one
far more than any strident boasting. This habit of silence they form
from being silent so much aloft. And when they do speak it is in a low
tone, because that is the least startling to a man as he swings over
some reeling gulf. Next to an actual disaster (which usually kills
outright and painlessly) what a steeple-climber most dreads is being
startled. This was explained to me in one of our many talks by "Steeple
Bob," famous over the land for daring feats, but never reckless ones.
How plainly I call up his pale, serious face and the massive shoulders,
somewhat bent, and the forearm with muscles to impress a prize-fighter!
Pleasant to note that Merrill uses excellent English.
"Did you ever have an impulse to jump off a steeple?" I questioned,
recalling the sensations of many people in looking down even from a
housetop.
"I've kept pretty free from that," said he; "but there's no doubt
climbing steeples does tell on a man's nerves. Now, there was Dan
O'Brien; he had an impulse to jump off a steeple one day, and a strong
impulse, too. He went mad on one of the tallest spires in Cincinnati;
right at the top of it."
"Went mad?"
"Yes, sir, raving mad, and I was by him when it happened. I forget
whether the church was Baptist or Presbyterian, but I know it stood on
Sixth Street, near Vine, and there was a big hand on top of the steeple,
with the forefinger pointing to heaven. We were putting fresh gilding on
this hand. I was working on the thumb side and O'Brien on the
little-finger side, both of us standing on tiny stagings about the size
of a chair-seat, and both of us made fast to the steeple by life-lines
under our arms. That's an absolute rule in climbing steeples--never to
do the smallest thing unless you're secured by a life-line. It was
coming on dark, and I was hurrying to get the gold leaf on, because we'd
given the hand a fresh coat of sizing that would be dry before morning.
We hadn't spoken for some time, when suddenly I heard a laugh from
O'Brien's side that sent a shiver down my spine. Did you ever hear a
crazy man laugh? Well, if ever you do, you'll remember it. I looked at
him and saw by his face that something was wrong.
"'What are you doing?' said I.
"He answered very polite and steady like, but his tone was queer: 'I'm
trying to figure out how long it would take a man to get down if he went
the fastest way.'
"I thought I had better keep him in a good humor, so I said: 'I'll tell
you what, Dan, you brace up and get this gold on, and then we'll race to
the ground in our saddles.'
"'That's a fair idea,' said he in a shrill voice, 'but I've got a better
one. We'll race down without any saddles; yes, sir, without any lines,
without a blamed thing.'
"'Don't be a fool, Dan. What you want to do is to get that gold
on--quick.' I tried to speak sharp.
"'No, sir; I'm going to jump, and so are you.'
"I caught his eye just then and saw it wasn't any time to bother about
gold leaf. I reached up and eased the hitch of my line around the hand
so I could swing toward him. I knew if I once got my grip on him he
wouldn't make any more trouble. But I'd never had a crazy man to deal
with, and I didn't realize how tricky and quick they are. While I was
working around to his side and thinking he didn't notice it, he was
laying for me out of the corner of his eye, and the first thing I knew
he had me by the throat and everything was turning black. I let go of
the line and dropped back on my saddle-board helpless, and if it hadn't
been for blind luck I guess the people down below would have got their
money's worth in about a minute. But my hand struck on the tool-box as
he pressed me back, and I had just strength enough left to shut my
fingers on the first tool I touched and strike at him with it. The tool
happened to be a monkey-wrench, and when a man gets a clip on the head
with a thing like that he's pretty apt to keep still for a while. And
that's what O'Brien did. He keeled over and lay there, and I did, too,
until my head got steady. Even then I guess we'd both have fallen if it
hadn't been for the life-lines.
"The rest was simple enough after I got my senses back. Dan was
unconscious, and all I had to do was fasten a rope to him and lower
away. They took care of him down below until the ambulance came, and he
spent that night in a hospital. And he's spent most of his years since
then in an asylum, his mind all gone except for short periods, when he
comes to himself again, and then he always starts out to put an end to
me. That last impulse to destroy me has never left him."
It was after this that I learned about that other danger to
steeple-climbers, of being startled. Merrill says that men of his craft,
whether they realize it or not, work under constant nervous strain.
However calm a steeple-climber may think himself, his body is always
afraid, his muscles are always tense, his clutch on ropes and stones is
always harder, two or three times harder, than the need is; his knees
hug what comes between them so tightly that it hurts, even when they
might safely be relaxed. That is the trouble, a steeple-climber cannot
relax his body or control its instinctive shrinking. It is not looking
down into the gulf around him that he minds (the climber who cannot do
that with indifference is unfit for the business); what he sees he can
cope with; it is what he cannot see that does the mischief--what he
fears vaguely. And a sudden noise, an unexpected movement may throw him
into all but panic. So the veteran climber, swinging at the steeple-top
opposite his partner, is careful to say in a low tone, "I'm going to
lower my saddle," before he does lower it; or, "I'm going to strike a
match," before he strikes it.
Sometimes a new helper at the hauling-line down on the bell-deck will
shift his place from weariness or thoughtlessness, and let the line move
up an inch or two, which drops the saddle an inch or two far
aloft--drops it suddenly with a jerk. It's a little thing, yet the
climber's heart would not pound harder were the whole steeple falling.
Merrill told me that one of his greatest frights came from the simple
brushing against his legs of a rope pulled without a word by a careless
partner. To Merrill's nerves, all a-quiver, this was not a rope, but
some nameless catastrophe to overwhelm him. He knew only that something
had moved where nothing had any business to move, that something had
touched him where nothing was. A steeple-climber is like a child in the
dark--in terror of the unknown. In all the world, perhaps, there is no
one so utterly alone as he, swinging hour after hour on his steeple-top.
The aeronaut has with him a living, surging creature--his balloon; the
diver feels always the teeming life of the waters; but this man, lifted
into still air, poised on a point where nothing comes or goes, where
nothing moves, where nothing makes a sound--he, in very truth, is alone.
[Illustration: LOOKING FROM THE GROUND UPWARD AT ST. PAUL'S SPIRE,
BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY.]
"It's always the little things that frighten you," reflected Merrill,
"not the big things. I'll give you an instance. When I went up inside
St. Paul's steeple the first time (I wanted to inspect the beams, and
see how the dowel was anchored) I got into a tight place that might well
frighten a man. I got squeezed fast between timbers that fill nearly all
the slender top space, and couldn't get up or down, but just hung there,
breathing air full of dust and calling for help. I called three quarters
of an hour before any one came, and then it was only by accident. But I
wasn't frightened. On the other hand, a day or two later, when I was
making fast a rope outside (I was just under the ball that holds the
weather-vane) I got a bad start from nothing at all. I had my arms
around the spindle of the steeple, making a hitch, and my head pressed
against the copper sheathing, when I heard a most unearthly screech. I
guess the shock of that thing did me five hundred dollars' worth of
harm--shortened my life days enough to earn five hundred dollars in. And
what do you think it was? The weather-vane had turned a little in the
wind and creaked on its bearings, that's all. It doesn't seem as if that
ought to scare a man, does it?"
There was something quite touching, I thought, in the humble frankness
of this big-shouldered man. Yes, he had been afraid, he whose business
it was to fear nothing, afraid of some squeaking copper, and his face
seemed to say that there are things about steeples not so easily
explained, things not even to be talked about. And abruptly, as by an
effort, he left this part of the subject and told a funny story of his
adventures coming home late one night without a key, and getting in by
way of the roof and an iron pipe; a simple enough climb had he not been
taken for a "purglaire" by an irate German lodger, who appeared in
nightgown and phlegmatic fright, and vowed he would "haf him a revolfer,
a skelf-skooter, in the morning."
This effort at diversion turned Merrill into gaiety for a moment, but
straightway memory brought back the somber theme.
"I'll give you another case," said he, changing again abruptly, "where I
wasn't frightened, but should have been. It was out in Chicago, and two
of us were on a staging hung down the front of a clothing factory. We
were painting the walls. My partner had made his end of the staging
fast, and I had made mine fast. Perhaps if I'd been longer in the
business I would have taken more notice how he secured his rope, for it
meant safety to me as well as him, and I knew he'd been drinking, but I
supposed it was all right. Well, it wasn't all right; his rope held for
three or four hours, and then, at just about eleven o'clock, it slipped,
and the staging fell from under us. We were six stories up, and right
below were the sidewalk flagstones. That's the time I ought to have been
frightened, but I only said to myself, 'Hello! this thing's going down,'
and caught the window-ledge in front of me. Then I hung there, wondering
if I could pull myself up or if any one would come to help me. I called
out not very loud, and I wasn't excited. Pretty soon I saw I couldn't
pull myself up, for I had a poor hold with my fingers, and the ledge was
smooth stone. Then I saw they'd have to hurry if they were going to pull
me in. Then I didn't care. I--I--"
"You fell?"
He nodded.
"What, six stories down?"
He nodded again. "The thing that saved me was an awning over the
sidewalk. Some man across the way saw me hanging from the window, and he
ran over quickly and let the awning down. I'd like to shake that man by
the hand, but I never knew who he was. When I came to myself I was at
the hospital done up in plaster, and I stayed there nine months."
"Badly hurt?" I asked, shrinking.
Merrill smiled. "It didn't do me any particular good. I'm a big, strong
fellow now, but I wasn't much after that fall. Both my legs were broken.
Both my arms were broken. My right shoulder and right wrist were
dislocated, and--let's see. Oh, yes, I had three ribs torn away from the
breast-bone."
"And your--"
"My partner? Poor lad! You wouldn't care to hear how they found him.
They laid him away kindly the next day."
He smiled in a sort of appealing way, and then came the worn, wistful
look I had noticed, and his forehead lines deepened. I fancy all men who
follow steeple-climbing get those strained, anxious eyes.
IV
EXPERIENCE OF AN AMATEUR CLIMBING TO A STEEPLE-TOP
IT came to my knowledge, one bracing day in October, that "Steeple Bob"
had agreed to "do" that famous Brooklyn Church of the Pilgrims, with its
queer, crooked spire and big brass ball, a landmark from the river on
Columbia Heights.
"It's one of those easy jobs that are the hardest," said Merrill. "If
you want to see us use the stirrups come over."
That was exactly what I did want to see, this puzzling stirrup process
which allows a man to lift himself by his boot-straps, as it were, up
the last and narrowest and most dangerous length of a steeple; so I
agreed to be there.
"If you like, you can go up on the swing yourself!" said Merrill, with
the air of conferring a favor. I expressed my thanks as I would to a
lion-tamer offering me the hospitality of his cages, then asked how he
meant that easy jobs are the hardest.
[Illustration: GILDING A CHURCH CROSS, ABOVE NEW YORK CITY.]
"Why, easy jobs make a man careless, and that gets him into trouble.
Another thing, little old churches look easy, but they're apt to be
treacherous. Now, this steeple on the Church of the Pilgrims is built of
wood, with loose shingles on it, and a tumble-down iron lightning-rod,
and rickety beams, and shaky ladders, and--well, you feel all the time
as if you were walking on eggs. It's just the kind of a steeple that
killed young Romaine about a month ago."
Of course I asked for the story of young Romaine, and was told of
certain climbers who advertise their skill by using a steeple-top for
acrobatic feats that have nothing to do with repairing. Upon such
Merrill frowned severely.
"Romaine was a fine athlete," said he, "and a fearless man, but he went
too far. He would stretch out on his stomach across the top of a
steeple, and balance there without touching hands or knees, and he'd do
all sorts of circus tricks on lightning-rods and weather-vanes and
flagpoles--anything for notoriety. I told him he'd get killed sure some
day, but he laughed at me. Well, it wasn't a week after I warned him
when he was killed. He climbed an old lightning-rod without testing it
(it was on a little church up at Cold Spring, New York), and just as he
was reaching the steeple-top, with a whole town watching him, the end of
the rod pulled out, and he swung off with it, ripping out every dowel,
like the buttons off a coat, right down to the ground--smash. Poor
fellow, when I read the news I left my job at Trinity and took the first
train up to bury him."
This sad story lingered in my mind that night, and was there still the
next afternoon as I drew near the Church of the Pilgrims to witness the
first day's climbing. Already, at a distance, I knew that the men were
at work from the upbent heads of people on the street who stared and
pointed. And presently I made out two white figures on the steeple, one
swinging about fifteen feet below the ball, the other standing against
the shingled side without any support that I could see. Up the old tower
(inside) I made my way, and two ladders beyond the "bell-deck" came upon
Walter Tyghe, "Steeple Bob's" assistant, astride of a stone saddle on
one of the four peaks where the tower ends and the steeple begins. There
was a clear drop of a hundred feet all around him. He was "tending" the
two men aloft, as witnessed a couple of ropes dangling by him. It was
two jerks to come down and one to go up. Were he to lose his balance and
let go the hauling-rope, the men on the swing would instantly be killed,
as they had no "lock-blocks" on.
"Come out here," said Walter, "there's plenty of room," and, thus
encouraged, I straddled the peak, and we sat face to face, as two men
might sit on a child's rocking-horse, while the tower pigeons circled
beneath us, alarmed at this intrusion. Far down on the sidewalk were
little faces of distorted people; far up at the steeple-top were legs
kicking at ropes. And off over red housetops was the river, and the
great towers of New York spread with silver plumes by the steam jets.
"Now you can see the stirrups working," said Walter, and, looking up, I
saw a figure swing back from the steeple, an arm shoot out, and a length
of rope go wriggling around the shaft, cast like a lasso. Then the rope
was drawn into a noose, and the noose hauled tight. The legs kicked, the
figure hitched itself up about a foot, and again the rope was cast
(another rope), and a second noose still higher made secure. That is all
there is to it. The steeple-climber stands in a stirrup held by one
noose while he lassoes the shaft above him with another noose,
supporting another stirrup on which he presently stands. And so, foot by
foot, the climber rises, shifting noose and stirrup at each change,
resting now on one, now on the other, and finally reaching the cross, or
ball, or weather-vane at the very top.
"That's Joe Lawlor chuckin' the rope," explained Walter; "Merrill, he's
on the swing. Say, Lawlor's a wonder at rigging. He can do anything with
ropes. He's the feller that climbs up the front of a house with suckers
on his feet."
Of this fact I took note, and then inquired if I couldn't get up further
inside the steeple, so as to be nearer the men. Walter said I could
climb ladders up to where they had punched a hole through for the rope
to hold the block and falls, and I tried it. Alas! when I got there,
after breathing dust and squeezing between beams, I found that I could
see nothing. I was almost at the steeple-top, and could hear Merrill,
through the wooden shell, humming a tune as he worked, but I was further
away than before.
"Hello in there!" came a voice. "Don't monkey with that line." And it
came to me that this rope, reaching down by me from yonder little hole
(the one knocked through), held the block which held the swing which
held the man. And an accident to this rope would mean instant death. I
touched it, and drew my hand away, as one might touch some animal
through the cage bars, and I felt like saying, "Good little rope!"
It was coming on to dark now, and we all went home together, over the
bridge and up the avenues, talking of steeples the while. And Lawlor
explained the action of his suckers in climbing walls, which is
precisely that of a boy's sucker in lifting a brick. The big
climbing-leathers, well soaked in oil, are pressed alternately against
the stones, the right leg resting on one while the left leg presses the
other against the wall a step higher. And so you walk right up the
building or church or flagpole, and the smoother the surface the easier
you go up. In fact, if the surface is rough you cannot use the suckers
at all, as the air gets under and prevents their holding.
Then the men spoke of various jobs aloft that called up memories.
Merrill told of cleaning the fifteen-foot Diana statue on the Madison
Square Garden tower. "It's hard getting over her," he said, "because
she's so blamed smooth. I guess I took three quarts of rust out of her
ball-bearings. You know she's a weather-vane, and turns with the wind."
I wondered how many New-Yorkers who see the Diana every day of their
lives have ever dwelt on the fact that she turns.
Talking of weather-vanes reminded my friends of a ticklish job they did
on St. Paul's steeple, in New York, when Merrill, standing under the
ball, held Lawlor on his giant shoulders so that Joe could lift off the
weather-vane on top and ease the shaft where it had jammed. With
Lawlor's weight and the weather-vane's weight, "Steeple Bob" held four
hundred pounds on his shoulders during those important minutes, and, it
might almost be said, stood on the dizzy edge of nothing while he did
it.
Finally, Lawlor expressed the opinion that there isn't any meaner job in
the business than a chimney.
"A chimney?" said I.
"That's what. I mean one o' them big ones you see on factories. We have
to scrape 'em and paint 'em just like steeples, and that means climbing
up the whole length inside. The climbing's easy enough on bolts and
braces, but it's something fierce the air you breathe. Why, I've gone up
a two-hundred-and-forty-foot chimney with a five-foot opening at the
bottom, and found the soot so thick about half-way up--so thick, sir,
that I've been almost stuck in it. Yes, sir, just had to shove my head
into an eight-inch hole and bore through black stuff, beds of it. And
mind, not a hole for air as big as a pin-head from bottom to top."
After bidding the men good night I reflected, with a kind of shame,
that I had drawn back from daring only once what they dare every day,
what they _must_ dare for their living. And I reasoned myself into a
feeling that it was my duty under the circumstances to go up that
steeple on the swing, as Merrill had proposed. Having begun this
investigation, I must see it through; and in this mind I went to the
church again the next day.
I found all hands on the "bell-deck" spreading out packets of patent
gilding for the ball which awaited its new dress, all sticky from a
fresh coat of sizing. Lawlor remarked that there was better gold in
these little yellow squares than in a wedding-ring. "It's twenty-four
carats fine," said he, "and about as thick as a cobweb."
As to my going up on the swing there was no difficulty. Lawlor would go
first, and be there to keep me in good heart, for they say it is not
well for a novice to be at a steeple-top alone. Merrill would see to the
lashings, and Walter would give a hand at the hauling-line. Thus all
conditions favored my ascent; even the sun smiled, and after taking off
coat and hat I was ready. There we were at the top of the tower, and at
the base of the steeple Lawlor, red-faced and red-shirted, preparing to
ascend; Merrill, pale, as he always is, but powerful, standing at the
ropes; and I, in shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, watching Walter make a
little harness for my kodak.
After a time Lawlor, having reached the top, called down something, and
Merrill answered. It was my turn now. I climbed out through a small
window and stood on the ledge, while "Steeple Bob" dropped the swing
noose over my head and proceeded to lash me fast to seat and ropes.
"That's in case a suicidal impulse should get hold of you!" he said,
smiling, but meaning it. "Now, keep this rope between your legs, and
work your hands up along it as we lift you. It's anchored to St. Peter."
Then he explained how I was to press my toes against the steeple side,
so as to keep my knees from barking on the shingles.
"And don't look down at all," he told me. "Just watch your ropes and
take it easy. Are you ready?"
At this moment Walter said something in a low tone, and Merrill asked me
to lend him my knife. I handed it out, and he stuck it in his pocket.
"You don't need this now," said he, and a moment later the pulley ropes
tightened and my small swing-board lifted under me. I was rising.
"Shove off there with your toes!" he cried. "Take short steps. Put your
legs wider apart. Wider yet. You don't have to pull on the rope. Just
slide your hands along. Now you're going!"
I saw nothing but the steeple side in front of me, and the life-line
hanging down like a bell-rope between my spread legs, and the pulley
block creaking by my head, and the toes of my shoes as I pressed them
against the shingles step by step. It struck me as a ridiculous thing to
be climbing a steeple in patent-leather shoes. I smiled to think of the
odd appearance I must present from below. And then for the first time I
let my eyes turn into the depths, and caught a glimpse of men on
housetops watching me. I saw Merrill's upturned face down where the
ropes ended. And I saw little horses wriggling along on the street.
[Illustration: HOW THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER GOES UP A FLAGPOLE.]
There were three places where the steeple narrowed into slenderer
lengths, and at each one was a sort of cornice to be scrambled over (and
loose nails to be avoided), and then more careful steering with legs and
toes to keep on one particular face of the steeple and not swing off
and come bumping back, a disconcerting possibility. "Hello!" called
Lawlor presently, from above. "You're doing fine. Come right along." And
before I knew it the swing had stopped. I was at the top, or as near it
as the tackle could take me. The remaining fifteen feet or so must be
made with stirrups. And there was Lawlor standing in them up by the
ball. There was not a stick of staging to support him (he had scorned
the bother of hauling up boards for so simple a job), and he was working
with both hands free, each leg standing on its stirrup, and several
hitches of life-line holding him to the shaft top by his waist.
This steeple-lassoing exploit was one of the things I certainly would
not attempt--would not and could not.
Strangely enough, as I hung here at rest I felt the danger more than
coming up. It seemed most perilous to rest my weight on the swing-board,
and I found myself holding my legs drawn up, with muscles tense, as if
that could make me lighter. Gradually I realized the foolishness of
this, and relaxed into greater comfort, but not entirely. Even veteran
steeple-climbers waste much strength in needless clutching; cannot free
their bodies from this instinctive fear.
I stayed up long enough to take three photographs (some minutes passed
before I could unlash my kodak), and here I had further proof of
subconscious fright, for I made such blunders with shutter and focus
length as would put the youngest amateur to shame. Two pictures out of
the three were failures, and the third but an indifferent success. There
is one thing to be said in extenuation, that a steeple is never still,
but always rocking and trembling. When Lawlor changed his stirrup
hitches or moved from side to side the old beams would groan under us,
and the whole structure rock. "She'd rock more," said Lawlor, "if she
was better built. A good steeple always rocks."
There wasn't much more to say or do up here, and presently we exchanged
jerks on the line for the descent. And Lawlor cried: "Lower away! Hang
on, now!" And I did over again my humble part of leg-spreading and
toe-steering, with the result that presently I was down on the
"bell-deck" again, receiving congratulations.
"Here's your knife," said Merrill, after he had unlashed me.
"What did you take it for?" I asked.
"Oh, men sometimes get a mania to cut the ropes when they go up the
first time. And that isn't good for their health. I was pretty sure
you'd keep your head, but I wasn't taking any chances."
After this came thanks and warm hand-grips all around, and then I left
these daring men to their duties, and went down the lower ladders. I am
sure I never appreciated the simple privilege of standing on a sidewalk
as I did, a few minutes later, when I left the Church of the Pilgrims
and came out into the pleasant autumn sunshine.
THE DEEP-SEA DIVER
I
SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MEN WHO GO DOWN UNDER THE SEA
IN old South Street, far down on the New York river-front, is a gloomy
brick building with black fire-escapes zigzagging across its face, and a
life-size diver painted over its door, in red helmet and yellow
goggle-eyes, to the awe and admiration of the young--to the awe and
admiration of anybody who comes through this wicked-looking street by
night, and smells the sea, and stares along miles of ships' noses that
reach right over the car-tracks, and finally stops at the black-lettered
announcement that wrecks are looked after here day or night, and
mysteries of the deep penetrated by gentlemen of the diving profession
in just such gigantic suits as this painted one.
None of this had I noticed, late one night (being occupied with the
silent, hungry ships, and the fire-cars trailing over the dim bridge),
until a brisk banjo-strumming caught my ear, and I paused at the house
of wrecks, whence the sounds came. Somebody back in these moldering
shadows was playing the "Turkish Patrol," and playing it remarkably
well.
I followed the light down a narrow passage, and presently came upon the
modern wrecker, in the person of Benjamin F. Bean, a large man smoking
contentedly at a table whereon rested a telephone and phonograph. The
phonograph was playing the "Turkish Patrol," and a single incandescent
lamp, swinging overhead, illumined the scene. There were coils of rope
about, and photographs of vessels in distress, and a bunk with tumbled
sheets at one side, where Mr. Bean slept, often with his clothes on,
while awaiting the ring of sundry danger-bells.
Divers fully expect to be objects of curiosity, for never do they work
except before wondering audiences; so this one found my visit natural
enough--was glad, I think, to talk a little and let the phonograph rest.
It must be rather lonely, after all, watching for wrecks hour after
hour, night after night, listening always for footsteps (the officer's
tramp or the thug's stealthy tread), listening always to the hoot of
passing vessels, listening always for bad news.
He explained to me what happens when the bad news comes, say a collision
up the Hudson, a ferry-boat on fire down the bay, a line of barges sunk
in the Sound, any one of a dozen ordinary disasters. In olden times such
tidings must have traveled from mouth to mouth, and the wreckers of
those days flashed their calls and warnings with beacon-fires. Now
electricity does all this much better with the click of a key; and
presently somebody, somewhere, has the office at the end of a wire
telling what the trouble is, and forthwith the man in charge puts
machinery in motion that will change this trouble into cash. _Br-r-r-r_
calls the telephone; up spring messenger-boys in distant all-night
stations, and in half an hour door-bells are ringing in Harlem or Jersey
City, and the men who ought to know things know them, and whistles are
sounding on big pontoons that can lift two hundred tons, and sleepy men
are tumbling out of their bunks, and great chains are clanking, and
tug-boats are sputtering forth for the towing of sundry hoisting-and
pumping-craft that go splashing along to the danger-spot with all
appliances aboard, pneumatic, hydraulic, not to mention savory hot
coffee served to the divers and the crew.
Most divers are poor story-tellers (perhaps because the marvelous grows
commonplace to them from over-indulgence in it), but the stories are
there in their lives, if only you can dig them out. I asked Bean if he
often went down himself, and found that he was still in active service,
after twenty-odd years of it, which certainly had agreed with him. He
was just back from a sad errand in Pennsylvania. A boy had gone swimming
in a slate-quarry, and been drowned; they had dragged for him, and fired
cannon over the water, but nothing had availed, and so, finally, a diver
was sent for from the city, the diver being Bean. The quarry was a great
chasm four or five hundred feet deep, with eighty feet of water filling
various galleries and rock shelves, in one of which the poor lad had
been caught and held. The question was in which one.
"Well," said Bean, coming abruptly to the end, "I went down and got
him."
That was his way of telling the story: he "went down and got him." There
was nothing more to say; nothing about the two days' perilous search
through every tunnel and recess of those rocky walls; nothing about the
three thousand excited people who crowded around the quarry's mouth,
awaiting the issue, nor the scene when that pitiful burden was hauled up
from the depths.
I asked Bean if he had ever been in great danger while under the water.
"Nothing special," he said, and then added, after thinking: "Once I had
my helmet twisted off."
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A DIVER. DRAWN FROM LIFE.]
"What, below?"
He nodded.
"How can a diver live with his helmet off?"
"He can't, usually. 'T was just luck they got me up in time. They say my
face was black as a coal." And he had no more to tell of this adventure.
With few exceptions, divers take their career in exactly this
phlegmatic, matter-of-fact way. I fancy a man of vivid imagination would
break under the strain of such a life. Yet often divers will go into
great details about some little incident, as when Bean described the
hoisting of a certain boiler sunk outside of Sandy Hook. It had been on
a tug-boat of such a name, it was so many feet long and wide, and other
things about the tide and the steam-derrick, and what the captain said,
the point being that this boiler had acted as an enormous trap for the
blackfish, of which they had found some hundreds of big ones splashing
about inside, unable to escape.
So our talk ran on, and all the time I was thinking how I would like to
see these things for myself. And it came to pass, as the subject kept
its hold on me, that I did see them. Indeed, I spent a whole summer
month--and found zest in it beyond ordinary summer pleasurings--in
observing the practical operations of diving and wrecking as they go on
in the waters about New York. I discovered other wrecking companies,
notably one on West Street, and from the head man here learned many
things. He took me out on a pier one day, where one of his crews was
rescuing thirty thousand dollars' worth of copper buried under the North
River. Every few minutes, with a _chunk-chunk_ of the engine and a
rattle of chains, the dredge would bring up a fistful of mud (an iron
fist, holding a ton or so) and slap it down on the deck, where a strong
hose-stream would wash out little canvas bags of copper ore, each worth
a ten-dollar bill in the market.
"This will show you," said the expert, "what a diver has to contend with
at the bottom of a river. He often sinks four or five feet in the mud,
just as those bags sink, and sometimes the mud suction holds him down so
hard that three men pulling on the life-line can scarcely budge him. And
when the mud lets go the diver comes out of it like a cork from a
bottle. You can feel him flop over, clean tuckered out with kicking and
working his arms. They let him lie there a minute or two to rest, and
then pull him up. Why, vessels will sink ten or twelve feet in the mud,
so that the diver has to take a hose down, and wash a tunnel out below
the keel, to get a lifting-chain under."
"Wash a tunnel out?" I inquired.
"That's what they do. You know how you can bore a hole in a sand-bank,
don't you, with a stream of water? Well, it's just the same with a
mud-bank down below, only you need more pressure. Sometimes we use a
stream of compressed air. The diver steers the hose just as a fireman
steers the fire-hose, and once in a while gets knocked over by the force
of it, just as a fireman does."
Tunneling mud-banks under water, with streams of water or streams of
compressed air, struck me as decidedly a novelty. I was to hear of
stranger things ere long.
My guide presently pointed out a splendidly built young man who was
shoveling mud off the deck, not far from us.
"There," said he, "is a case that illustrates the worst of this
business. That fellow is made to be a diver; he's intelligent, he's not
afraid, and he can stand having the suit on; he's been down two or three
times and done easy jobs of patching. If he'd keep straight for a year
or two, he could earn his ten dollars a day with the best of them. But
he won't keep straight. The poor fellow drinks. We can't depend on him.
And here he is, shoveling mud for a dollar and a quarter a day, and no
steady work at that."
[Illustration: "THE DIVER'S HELMET SHOWED LIKE THE BACK OF A BIG
TURTLE."]
Ten dollars a day seemed a handsome wage, and I asked if divers
generally earn so much.
"Good ones do, and a diver's day is only four hours' long, or less when
they go to great depths. And they draw a salary besides, and often
receive handsome presents. You ought to see our chief diver, Bill
Atkinson; he lives in a brownstone house." He paused a moment, and then
added: "But I guess they earn all they get."
A few days later I made Mr. Atkinson's acquaintance on board the
steam-pump _Dunderberg_, then busy raising a coal-barge sunk off
Fourteenth Street in the East River.
Atkinson was down doing carpenter-work on holes stove in her, and I
stood on deck beside the man "tending" him, and watched the bubbles boil
up from the diver's breathing, and the signals on a rubber hose and a
rope. It was less air or more air, by jerks on the hose. It was rags for
a leak, or a heavier hammer, or a piece of batten so-and-so long, with
nails ready driven at the corners--all were indicated by pulls on the
life-line or the startling appearance of hands or fingers (Atkinson's),
that would now and then reach above water and move impatiently. The
wreck was only five or six feet under, and the diver's helmet showed
like the back of a big turtle whenever he stood up straight on the
sunken deck.
Suddenly there is a scurry of barefoot youths along the pier timbers.
The diver is coming up. Now he lifts himself slowly under the crushing
weight, one short step at a time up the ladder. No man at all is this,
but a dripping three-eyed monster of rubber and brass, infinitely
fascinating to wharf loungers. The "tender" twists off the face-glass,
and Atkinson says something with a snap in it, and explains what he is
trying to do at the forward hatch. Then he leans over the rail on his
stomach and rests. Then he goes down again.
"He's the best-natured man I know, Bill is," remarked Captain Taylor,
commander of the _Dunderberg_; "but all men get irritable under water.
Why, I've had men who wouldn't swear for the world up in the air tell
me they rip out cuss words something terrible down on the bottom. Just
seems like they can't help it."
I noticed that the tender did not join in our talk, but stood with hands
on his lines and eyes on the water, absorbed in his responsibility; he
looked like an angler about to land a big fish. Neither did the men at
the air-pump talk. This feeding breath to a diver is serious business.
"How long would he live, do you think," I asked, "if the pump should
stop?"
"Mebbe a minute, mebbe two," said Captain Taylor. "I knew a Norwegian
who was down in fifty feet of water when the hose busted. It busted on
deck, where the tender heard it, and he started to lift, right away. It
couldn't have been over a minute before they had him up, but he was so
near dead the doctors worked three hours on him before he came around.
That'll give you an idea of how far gone he was."
The captain told of other desperate chances faced by divers in his
experience: of a hose and life-line fouled in a wreck; of an
escape-valve frozen shut, in winter-time, by the diver's congealed
breath; of a helmet smashed through by a load of pig-iron falling from
its sling; of a diver dragged off a wreck by a drifting pontoon--such a
record of thrilling escapes and tragedies as any wrecking-master could
run over. One realized why insurance companies refuse to take risks on
divers' lives, and why the diver's pay is large.
Before long Atkinson came up again, and announced that everything was
ready, holes stopped and suction length in place. Two men helped undress
him, while the others set the big eight-inch pipe to pumping out the
wreck, and soon it was spurting a thick stream over her side like a
fire-tower.
Presently the dinner-bell rang from a tiny cabin below, and I had the
honor of breaking bread with the crew of the _Dunderberg_ and two of the
company's stanchest divers, Atkinson and Timmans, both small, thin men
with wrinkled faces, both the heroes of many adventures. Here was indeed
a chance to find out things!
One of my first questions turned upon the effect of diving on a man's
hearing. Was it true, as I had read, that divers often have one or both
of their ear-drums ruptured by the water-pressure?
Both men thought not; most divers of their acquaintance had good
hearing.
"Diving often kills a man straight out," said Timmans; "but, aside from
that, I don't think it injures his health. Ain't that right, Bill?"
Atkinson nodded. He had observed that divers almost never take cold or
have trouble with their lungs, although they are constantly exposed to
all weathers, and often live and sleep in wet clothes for days and
nights. As a young man, he himself had been a bookkeeper, in delicate
health. People thought he had consumption. So he gave up bookkeeping
and, by accident, became a diver. He had never had a sick day since, and
he had worn the suit now for twenty-nine years.
"About a man's ears," said he; "there's no doubt you get a pressure in
'em when you go down, and the pressure gets harder and harder the deeper
you go, that is, until your ears crack."
"Crack?" said I.
"Well, that's what we call it, but I don't suppose anything really
cracks. After you get down, say, thirty feet, your ears hurt a good
deal, especially if by chance you have a little cold; and you keep
opening your mouth and swallering to make the crack come, and the first
thing you know, you hear a sound inside your head like striking a match;
that's the crack, and then you can go on down as far as you please, and
you won't feel any more pain in your ears until you're coming up again;
then you get a reverse crack. They say it's the air working in and out
of your head. I don't know what it is, but I know some men's ears won't
crack, and those men can't never make divers."
"How deep can a diver go down?" I inquired.
The company smiled at this, and turned to Atkinson, who smiled back, and
then referred modestly to one of the deepest dives on record, one
hundred and fifty feet, made by himself some years before up the Hudson.
He had a pressure of six atmospheres on him at that depth, and could
stay down only twenty minutes. "I'll tell you about that some other
day," said he. "It's pretty near time now for me to be sweeping up this
coal."
Then, answering my look of surprise at the word "sweeping," he explained
how they lessen the weight of a sunken barge by first pumping out the
water in her, and then pumping out the coal. The same suction-pipe does
both, and will discharge thirty-five or forty tons of coal an hour, on a
chute which holds the coal while the water streams through. During this
operation the diver is down in the barge, moving the suction-end back
and forth, up and down--the "sweeping" in question--until no more coal
is left for its hungry mouth.
"We pump grain out of wrecks in the same way," said Atkinson, "tons and
tons of it! and they dry it in ovens and sell it. A man must look sharp,
though, and not get himself caught. We had a diver--he was new at the
business--who got his knee against the suction-pipe one day while he was
pumping coal, and it held him as if he was nailed there. He was so
scared he tore himself loose; but he had to rip a piece out of his suit
to do it. He stayed down, though, just the same."
[Illustration: DIVER STANDING ON SUNKEN COAL BARGE.]
"What!--with a hole in his suit?"
"That doesn't matter, as long as it's only in the leg. You see, the air
in the helmet presses down hard enough to keep the water below a man's
neck. But he mustn't bend over so as to let his helmet get lower than
the hole."
"I should say not!" put in Timmans.
"Why, what would happen if he did?"
"He'd be killed quicker than you can wink. The air from the helmet would
rush out at the hole, and he'd be crushed by the weight of the water."
I don't know whether Mr. Atkinson realized the full truth of his words,
but I found, on consulting the authorities, that a diver's body at
thirty-two feet is subjected to a pressure of water amounting to forty
tons, at sixty-four feet to eighty tons, at ninety-six feet to one
hundred and twenty tons, etc. And it is only the great counter-pressure
in the helmet of air from the air-pump that enables the diver to endure
this otherwise deadly weight. It follows that the deeper a diver goes,
the harder work it is for the air-pump men to drive air down to him; and
at great depths as many as four men are sometimes needed at the pump to
conquer the water resistance and keep open the escape-valve (for air
breathed out) at the helmet-top.
Here ended this day's talk, for the coal would wait no longer; Atkinson
must go down again to his "sweeping". But there were other days for me
aboard the _Dunderberg_--other glimpses into these brave, simple lives.
Think what these fellows do! Here is a huge, helpless vessel at the
bottom of a bay, with the tide tearing her to pieces, and down into the
depths comes a queer little man, as big as one of her anchor-points, and
stands beside her in the mud, and feels her over, and decides how he
will save her; and then does it--does it all alone. And what he does is
never the same as anything he has done before; for each wreck is a new
problem, each job of submarine patching has its own difficulties and
dangers. Oh, bored folk, idle folk, go to the wreckers, say I, if you
want a new sensation; watch the big pontoons put forth their strength,
watch the divers, and (if you can) set the crew of the _Dunderberg_ to
telling stories.
II
A VISIT TO THE BURYING-GROUND OF WRECKS
LITTLE by little, one picks up lore of the divers--small things, yet
edifying. In summer a diver wears underneath his suit, to keep him cool,
the same flannel shirt and thick woolen socks that he wears in winter to
keep him warm. But he wears mittens in winter on his hands, which are
bare in summer. On the bitterest day in January he finds comparative
warmth in deep water, as he finds a chill there in torrid August. Summer
and winter he perspires very freely, and a little work brings him to the
limit of his strength, the strain being chiefly on the lungs. The deeper
he goes the more exhausting becomes every effort.
A diver often endures real suffering (like the foot-tickling torture)
because he cannot scratch his nose or face, and they tell of one man who
worked in great distress because, when he got down, he found a June-bug
in his helmet, and had to bear the insect's lively promenading over his
features, powerless to stop it. And there was a diver who, in bravado,
used to smoke a cigarette inside his helmet.
Divers, as a class, are not superstitious. Seldom do their thoughts down
below stray into realms of fantasy, nor have they time to dream, but
only to hammer, and saw, and ply the crowbar, and drive iron spikes
twenty inches long into huge timbers--in short, to attend strictly to
their work.
It is amusing to note the scorn of practical divers for the nice
electric-lighting and telephone contrivances of divers who never dive,
but sell their inventions to the Government for its Newport diving
school, which same inventions remain, for the most part, in their
spick-span boxes. It seems simple enough to have submarine lights; yet
divers who dive prefer to grope in the almost darkness of our ordinary
waters. It seems a distinct advantage that diver and tender be able to
talk over a wire; yet divers who dive keep jealously to the clumsy
system of jerks on the lines, and will not even be bothered with the
Morse alphabet. The fact is, a diver has quite as much as he can attend
to with the burden of his suit (about a hundred and seventy-five
pounds), and his two lines to watch and keep from kinks and
entanglements. Touch one of these lines, and you touch his life. Fasten
a new line to him, or two new lines, and you enormously increase his
peril. Imagine yourself stumbling about in a dark forest, with a man
strapped on your back, and several ropes dragging behind you among trees
and rocks, each separate rope being to you as breath and blood! That is
precisely the diver's case. So he goes; so he works. And when they offer
him pretty apparatus to increase his load, he will have none of it. Nor
will he tug any extra ropes. "I have ways enough of dying as it is,"
says he.
Working thus in gloom or darkness, the diver develops his senses of
feeling and locality. He gains certain qualities of blind men, and finds
guidance in unlooked-for ways. The ascending bubbles from his helmet,
for instance, shine silver white and may be seen for a couple of
fathoms. These bubbles have a trick of lodging in a vessel's seams, and
so give the diver a rough pattern of her. Again, in searching for
leaks, the sense of hearing helps him, for he can distinguish (after
long habit) the sucking sound of water rushing through the holes.
One is sorry to learn that divers go to pieces early; few of them last
beyond fifty. As they grow old their keenness wanes; they lose their
bearings easily down below, and show bad judgment. And fear of the
business grows upon them. Often they seek false courage in strong drink,
which hurries on the end. Too many of them, after searching all their
lives for wrecks, wind up as wrecks themselves. But it is good to know
that there are exceptions--divers like Bill Atkinson, sturdy and true at
fifty, and good in the suit for years to come, unless their wives
persuade them to retire. The diver's wife, I am told--poor
woman!--starts with terror every time she hears a door-bell ring.
I must speak now of the burying-ground for wrecks, one of the strangest,
saddest, most interesting burying-grounds I can think of. It was a
disaster to the tug-boat _America_ that brought me there, this ill-fated
craft having been cut half through in the North River and sunk by a
great liner she was helping into dock. The _America_ went down forthwith
in sixty feet of water--sank so suddenly that all aboard her had to cast
themselves into the water and fight for it. The fireman and the cook,
not knowing how to swim, fought in vain, and ended their lives there. It
is astonishing how many men who follow the sea as a business cannot
swim. Well, in due course the wreckers came up to lift the tug-boat, and
Atkinson (who cannot swim either) directed the job. They swung chains
under her, fore and aft, they "jacked her up" nearly to the surface, and
then, while four pontoons held her, the _Pinafore_, the _Catamaran_,
and two others (only the working crews know the names of these
pontoons), they all splashed slowly up the river under tow of the
wrecking-tug _Fly_, and finally came to the burying-ground of wrecks.
Here they "jacked her up" some more (it was "We've got her!" "Slack away
now!" and "R'heh-eh-eh!" as the men strained at the blocks), and then
they grounded her on the mud, where wrecks have been grounded for years,
and left her, with all the others, to rust and ruin and rot.
[Illustration: THE MEN AT WORK WITH THE AIR-PUMP.]
But before they grounded her there was a long time to wait for high
tide--time for a good meal on the _Catamaran_, and a talk about hazards
of the sea as divers know them. It was then that Atkinson told me the
promised story of his deepest dive. I wish all men who do big things
would speak of them as simply as he did.
"It's like this," said he: "in diving, the same as in other things, every
man has his limit; but he can't tell what it is until the trial comes.
At this time I'm talking about (some ten years ago) I thought a hundred
feet about as deep as I wanted to go. If there are two hundred divers in
the country, you can bet on it not ten of them can go down over a
hundred feet. Well, along comes this job in the middle of winter--a
head-on collision up the Hudson off Fort Montgomery, and a fine tug-boat
gone to the bottom. We came up with pontoons to raise her, and Captain
Timmans (he's the father of Timmans the diver) ordered Hansen down to
fix a chain under her shaft--there's the man now."
A big Scandinavian in the listening circle looked pleased at this
mention. He was Hansen.
"We knew by the sounding that she lay in a hundred and fifty feet of
water on a shelf of bottom over a deeper place, and Hansen was a little
anxious. He got me to tend him, and I remember he asked me, when I was
putting the suit on him, if I thought he could do it. Remember that,
Hansen?"
Hansen nodded.
"I told him I thought I could do the job myself, so why shouldn't he?
but that was partly to encourage him.
"Anyhow, Hansen went down, and I got a signal 'All right' from him when
he struck the bottom. Then the line kept very still, and pretty soon I
jerked it again. No answer. So I knew something was wrong, and began to
haul him up quick, telling the boys to turn faster. He was unconscious
when we got him on deck, but he soon came round, and said he felt like
he'd been dreaming. He'll tell you if that ain't right."
"It's right," said Hansen.
"We couldn't work any more that day, on account of the tide, but Captain
Timmans said the thing had to be done the next morning, and wanted
Hansen to try it again; but Hansen wouldn't."
"Wasn't no use of trying again," put in Hansen.
"That's it; he'd passed his limit. But it seems I had a longer one.
Anyhow, when the captain called on me, I got into the suit and went
down, and I stayed down until that chain was under the shaft. It took me
twenty minutes, and I don't believe I could have stood it much longer.
The pressure was terrible, and those twenty minutes took more out of me
than four hours would, say, at fifty feet. But we got the tug-boat up,
and she's running yet."
After this Hansen told a story showing what power the suction-pipes
exert in pumping out a vessel. He was working on a wreck off City
Island, at the entrance to the Sound. He had signaled for rags to stuff
up a long crack, and the tender had tied a bundle of them to the
life-line, and lowered it to him by slacking out the line. All this time
the pump was working at full pressure, throwing out streams from the
wreck through four big pipes. Suddenly the life-line came near the
crack, and was instantly drawn into it and jammed fast, so that Hansen
would have been held prisoner by the very rope intended to save him, had
it not been for the slack paid out, which was fortunately long enough
to bring him up. Had it been his hand or foot that was seized in that
sucking clutch, the incident would have had a sadder ending.
[Illustration: "I STAYED DOWN UNTIL THAT CHAIN WAS UNDER THE SHAFT."]
Then came other stories, until the day was fading and the tide was
right, and Atkinson was ready for the grounding of this soaked and
battered tug-boat. Presently he calls "Look out for that rope. Get yer
jacks ready. Now slack away!" And forthwith pulleys are creaking and
great chains are grinding down link by link as the men pump at the
little "jacks" and the forty-foot timbers that stretch across pontoons
and hold the wreck-chains groan on their blocks, and at last the
_America_ comes to rest safely, ingloriously on the mud. Poor
_America_! so proud and saucily tooting only the other day, now a
bedraggled wreck on these Weehawken flats, destined to what fate who
knows? To be lifted from the mud, patched up, rebuilt, quarreled over by
owners and insurance people, or perhaps simply left here, with the
others, for wharf-rats to swarm in and boys to go crabbing on!
The burying-ground of wrecks! What a sight from the rugged height back
of the water! Here are blackened, shapeless hulks from the great river
fire of 1900, when red-hot liners drifted blazing to these very flats.
Here is the ferry-boat _River Bell_, decked with flags in her day, and
danced on by gay excursionists, now thick with mud and slime, her
deck-beams spongy under foot, her wheel-frames twisted like a broken
spider's-web. Here are the half-sunken halves of some ice-barge, cut
clean in two by a liner. Here, heaving with the tide, is an aged
car-float with a watchman's shanty on it, heaped with its rusted
boilers, its anchors, cranes, gear-wheels, cables, pumps, a tangle of
iron things that were once important. Here is a scuttled tug-boat that
has been in a law-suit (and the mud) for years. Here is a coal-barge,
wedged open and sunk by her owner to steal the insurance money. Wrecks
spread all about us, and above them rise the masts and cranes of
pontoons and pumping-craft, that seem, in the shadows and desolation,
like things of evil omen guarding their prey.
Night is coming on. Lights show in the great city across the river.
Ferry-boats pass. Lines of barges pass. Whistles sound. The waves
splash, splash against the wrecks, touching them gently, one would say.
But nobody else cares. Nobody comes near. Nobody looks. The divers go
home. The wrecking-crews eat and turn in to sleep. A rat squeals
somewhere. These helpless, crippled hulks are alone in the night, and
they grind, grind against decaying stumps. They are wrecks, they are
dead, they are buried--and yet they can move a little in the mud!
III
AN AFTERNOON OF STORY-TELLING ON THE STEAM-PUMP "DUNDERBERG"
WHEN there is difficult diving to be done in the East River, or in any
river where the tide runs strong, you will see the wrecking-boats swing
idly at anchor for hours waiting for slack water, the only time when
divers dare go down. And often there is half a day's waiting for half an
hour's work, and often a week goes by on a two hours' job, say, in full
midstream, where not even the most venturesome beginner will stay down
more than twenty minutes at the turn, lest he be swept away, ponderous
suit and all, by the rush of the river. It's start your patch and leave
it to be ripped open by the beating sea; it's get your chain fast nine
weary times, and have it nine times torn away over night by some
foolish, bumping tug-boat; in fact, it's worry and aggravation until the
thing is over.
Also, this is the time of times, if you can get aboard, to make
acquaintance with the wreckers, to pick up lore of the diving-suit and
tales of the divers.
It was bad weather when we, on the sturdy old _Dunderberg_, were busy at
a wreck off the Brooklyn shore, not far from Grand Street ferry (I had
as much to do with lifting this wreck as the pewter spoons stuck around
the little cabin). It wasn't much of a wreck anyhow--only a
grain-boat--but it had my gratitude for stubbornly refusing to come up.
And so we had hours to spend down in the cabin aforesaid, which could
barely hold cook-stove and dining-table, but managed to be parlor and
bedroom besides; also laundry on occasions. The _Dunderberg_, I should
explain, was originally a mud-scow, but for good conduct and an injury
to her nose had been changed into a steam-pump. She could suck her forty
tons of coal an hour out of a wreck with the best of them. And she
traveled with four pontoons, no one of which could touch her in table
fare, especially coffee.
Late one afternoon, when the rain was drizzling and the swinging brass
lamps lit, we sat about on wooden stools (and some were curled up in
bunks along the walls) and listened to the talk of Atkinson and Timmans
and Hansen, who had seen and done strange things in their time.
They were discussing the escape-valve in a diver's helmet, and arguing
whether it pays to stiffen the spring for very deep diving. Atkinson,
who had worked eight fathoms deeper than either of them, said he left
his spring alone; he used the same suit and the same valve action for
any depth.
"But I look out for sand-banks," said he, "ever since that fellow--you
know who I mean--had one cave in on him in the North River. He was
tunneling under a vessel with a wall of sand beside him higher than his
head, and the first thing he knew he was flat on his back, with sand
jammed in his valve so it couldn't open. It wasn't a minute before he
was shot up to the surface like a balloon. The reason of that," he
explained for my benefit, "is because a diving-suit with its valve shut
gets lighter and lighter as they drive down air from the air-pump, until
all of a sudden it comes up, man and all, just as a plank would if you
held it on the bottom and then let it go."
[Illustration: THE MAN WHO ATTENDS TO THE DIVER'S SIGNALS.]
"Talking about planks coming up," said Timmans, who was seated under the
picture of a prize-fighter, "I was down on the North German Lloyd
steamer _Main_, the one that was burned and sunk, fixing a suction-pipe
to pump grain out of her, when a big wooden hatch got loose and came up
under me. I was working between decks, and the hatch swung me right up
against the overhead beams and held me there, squeezing the life-line
and hose so tight I couldn't signal. It's lucky the hose was wire wound,
or that would have been the last of me. But I got my air all right, and
after a while I worked free."
"Wire wound and all," observed Atkinson, "I've had my hose squeezed so
the air was shut off. I was on a wreck off one of the Hoboken docks
once, when an eight-inch suction-pipe caught the hose coming down
through a hatch, and the next second I felt my air stop, though I could
hear the pump beating. I jerked 'slack away' on the life-line, and that
loosed the hose and saved me, but I got a blast of compressed air as the
jam eased that jumped me up a yard."
"Suppose your life-line had been jammed, too," I asked, "so that you
couldn't jerk 'slack away'?"
Atkinson paused to think. "There's a difference of opinion about how
long a man can live on the air that's in his helmet. Some say three or
four minutes. I don't believe it. I think two minutes would do the
business."
"There was George Seaman--" began Timmans.
"Yes," said Atkinson, taking up the story, as was a senior's right,
"there was George Seaman, who put trust in the argument of Tom Scott and
Low and some of those old-timers, that a man can cut his hose and press
his thumb quick against the hole and live long enough on what air's in
the helmet to reach the top. Years ago they used to give that talk to us
youngsters, but I notice none of 'em ever tried it. Well, Seaman, he
_did_ try it; he was down on a wreck somewhere along Sixtieth Street,
and his hose got caught in the timbers. The life-line was all right, and
he was getting air enough, only when they tried to haul him up he stuck
on account of the hose. They tried three times to lift him, and each
time he'd come up a few feet and stick, and then they'd have to let him
fall back. You can see that's awful discouraging for a man, especially
when he's tired and cold. If Seaman had kept his nerve and waited they'd
prob'bly have sent another diver down to get him untangled, but he
didn't keep his nerve. All he saw was that the hose was caught and he
couldn't free it, and they couldn't get him up. It's a lot easier to get
rattled at the bottom of a river than up in the air, and Seaman called
to mind what he'd heard about stopping the hole with your thumb, and he
got out his knife. All divers carry a knife fast to the suit. See, like
this." He drew a two-edged knife, a wicked-looking weapon, out of its
leathern sheath, and moved his thumb along the edge.
"Then Seaman he felt for the hose, and made ready to cut. His idea was,
you see, to slash the hose at one stroke, then jerk on the life-line to
be hauled up quick, and keep the hole shut with his thumb while he came
up. I can picture him now with his knife on the hose, sort of praying a
minute, like a man might with a knife at his throat. That's what it
amounted to. Well, he wrote the story of what he did right there on the
hose, and wrote it plain. They've got the piece at the office, and
they'll show it to you if you ask 'em. Seaman made his cut with about
two men's strength; I'll bet not one of you boys could do near as well
as he did at cutting a hose through with one stroke. His slash came
clear through all but a shaving of rubber, and he tried to cut that with
a second stroke; but the knife struck a new place about an inch away,
and he slashed her half through there. Then he tried nine times more,
and made nine separate cuts at the hose; and there they are to-day,
about half an inch apart, each one a little shallower than the one
before, and the last two or three only scratches on the outside. That
was just as he died, and you can figure out how long it prob'bly took
him to make those eleven knife strokes. I suppose there ought to be
thirteen, but eleven's what there is. You'll count 'em."
Not only did I count them, these eleven tragic cuts, but I have the
piece of hose to this day. The office people gave it to me, and never do
I look but with a shiver at this dumb record in diminuendo of agony and
sacrifice.
"I suppose that settled the question of stopping a hose with your
thumb?" I remarked.
"That's what it did!" said Atkinson.
After this there were more stories. I can't begin to say how many more.
Every time a diver goes down, one would say, something new happens to
him, something worth telling about. Hansen related an experience of his
with a conger eel. Atkinson told how a Dock Department diver named
Fairchild was blown to death under forty feet of water when twenty-eight
pounds of dynamite he was putting in for blasting went off too soon.
Timmans told how he fainted away once, one hundred and five feet down,
and another time let the water into his suit by pulling out a helmet lug
on a foolish wager. And that reminded Atkinson of the time his gasket
(the rubber joint under the collar) was cut through by the slam of an
iron ladder, and the air went out "Hooo," and a quick jerk on the
life-line was all that saved him. Last of all they told the story of old
Captain Conkling and the Holyoke Dam, a story known to every diver. It
seems there was a leak in this dam, and the water was rushing through
with so strong a suction that it seemed certain death for a diver to go
near enough to stop the leak. Yet it was extremely important that the
leak be stopped--in fact, the saving of the dam depended on it. So
Captain Conkling, who was in charge of the job, induced one of his
divers to go down, and reluctantly the man put on his suit, but insisted
on having an extra rope, and a very strong one, tied around his waist.
"What's that for?" asked Conkling.
"That's to help get my body out, if the life-line breaks," said the
diver.
"Go on and do your work," replied Conkling, who had little use for
sentiment.
It happened exactly as the diver feared. He was drawn into the suction
of the hole, and when they tried to pull him up both hose and life-line
parted, and the man was drowned, but they managed to rescue his body
with the heavy line, just as he had planned.
Then Conkling called for another diver, but not a man responded. They
said they weren't that kind of fools.
"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike way; "then I'll go
down myself and stop that hole." And he called the men to dress him.
At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years old, and had
retired long since from active diving. But he was as strong as a horse
still, and no man had ever questioned his courage.
In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I'll stop that hole," said he, "and
I don't want any extra rope, either."
He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped the hole, but it was with
his dead body, and to-day somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of
brave old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, helmet and
hose and life-line, buried in that mass of masonry. No man ever dared go
down after his body.
IV
WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING
TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen
observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that
reached down from hatch to cabin on the _Dunderberg_, and remarked,
while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into
the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing
with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit
when I got down into her--in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very
long without air from the pump."
"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.
"That's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or whatever they make
bleaching-powder of--barrels and barrels of it, with the heads broke in
after a storm, and it wasn't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you.
First they set men shoveling it out, with sponges in their mouths,
against the dust and gases, but one man coughed so hard he tore
something in his lungs or head and died. Then they sent for a
diver--that was me--and I worked hours down there hoisting and
shoveling, like I was at the bottom of the bay, only there was no water
to carry the weight. Say, but wasn't that suit heavy, and when I looked
out through my helmet-glasses it seemed as if I was digging through a
snow-field, with such a terrible dazzle it made my eyes ache to look at
it."
"I suppose you don't usually see much under water?" said I.
"Depends on what water it is," answered Timmans.
"All rivers around New York are black as ink twenty feet down," remarked
Atkinson.
"I know they are," said Timmans, "but I've seen different rivers. When I
was diving off the Kennebec's mouth, five miles southeast of the Seguin
light (we were getting up the wreck of the _Mary Lee_), then, gentlemen,
I looked through as beautiful clear water as you could find in a
drug-store filter. Why, it reminded me of the West Indies. I could see
plainly for, well, certainly seventy-five feet over swaying kelp-weed,
eight feet high, with blood-red leaves as big as a barrel, all dotted
over with black spots. There were acres and acres of it, swarming with
rock-crabs and lobsters and all kinds of fish."
"Any sharks?" said I.
Hansen and Atkinson smiled, for this is a question always put to divers,
who usually have to admit that they never even saw a shark. Not so
Timmans.
"I had an experience with a shark," he answered gravely, "but it wasn't
up in Maine. It was while we were trying to save a three-thousand-ton
steamer of the Hamburg-American Packet Company, wrecked on a bar in the
Magdalena River, United States of Colombia. I'd been working for days
patching her keel, hung on a swinging shelf we'd lowered along her side,
and every time I went down I saw swarms of red snappers and butterfish
under my shelf, darting after the refuse I'd scrape off her plates; and
there were big jewfish, too, and I used to harpoon 'em for the men to
eat. In-fact, I about kept our crew supplied with fresh fish that way.
Well, on one particular day I noticed a sudden shadow against the light,
and there was a shark sure enough; not such an enormous one, but twelve
feet long anyhow--big enough to make me uneasy. He swam slowly around
me, and then kept perfectly still, looking straight at me with his
little wicked eyes. I didn't know what minute he might make a rush, so I
caught up a hammer I was working with--it was my only weapon--and struck
it against the steamer's iron side as hard as I could. You know a blow
like that sounds louder under water than it does in the air, and it
frightened the shark so he went off like a flash."
"Perhaps he wasn't hungry," laughed one of the crew.
"Not hungry? I'll tell you how hungry those sharks were. They'd swallow
big chunks of pork, sir, nailed and wired to barrel heads, as fast as we
could chuck 'em overboard; swallow nails, wire, barrel heads, and all,
and then we'd haul 'em in by ropes, that did for fish-lines, only it
took twenty or thirty men to do the hauling. And there were plenty of
sharks 'round, only they never seemed to tackle a man in the suit."
"Some say it's the fire-light of the valve bubbles that scares sharks
off," commented Atkinson. "I don't know what it is, but I know the
bubbles shine something wonderful as you watch 'em boiling up out of
your helmet."
"Phosphorescence," I suggested, and then went back into the talk for
some broken threads.
"How about that steamer you were telling about," I asked; "the one that
was wrecked on the bar? Did you save her?"
"I should say we did," replied Timmans, "and I guess the company wished
we hadn't; it cost them more money than the job was worth. Why, if I
should start telling how we saved that steamer I don't know when I'd get
through. It took us eight solid months. Yes, sir, and that meant sixty
men to feed and pay wages to--forty in the wrecking-crew and twenty on
the tug. Oh, but we did have trouble--trouble all the time, but we had
fun, too, especially when some o' these gay Bowery lads we'd picked up
got loose on the mainland. Talk about scraps!"
Timmans paused as if for invitations to spin the whole yarn, and these
he immediately received.
"Tell about painting the alligator," urged Hansen.
"Oh, that was a bit of foolishness me an' another fellow done. He was a
Dutchman, and got me to help him catch an alligator one day. He said he
could bring him up North and get a big price for him. Well, we noosed
one after a whole lot of chasing in a lagoon, and kept him four or five
weeks, but he wouldn't eat, and the boys all gave us the laugh. So the
Dutchman got up a scheme to paint him white and put him back in the
lagoon. His idea was that this white alligator would scare out all the
other alligators, and then we'd capture mebbe twenty or thirty on the
banks, and make our fortune."
He paused a moment with a twinkling eye, and Hansen snickered.
"Well, we done it. We painted that alligator white, and put him back in
the lagoon, and you can shoot me if those other alligators didn't eat
him. Yes, sir; they chewed him clean up before we'd hardly got the ropes
off him."
"What did the Dutchman say?" asked Hansen, shaking with mirth.
"He stuck to it his idea was all right, but it was the blamed
alligator's fault for being too weak with fasting to fight the ones as
weren't painted, and he wanted somebody to help him catch another, but
nobody would."
[Illustration: A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT'S PROPELLER.]
Then Timmans came back to the saving of the wreck, and it really was an
amazing story of patience and ingenuity against endless obstacles. I
doubt if men from anywhere but America would have carried such a
hopeless undertaking through to success. First they rigged up a wire
railway from wreck to shore, and slid off a valuable cargo of alpaca,
silks, and beer bit by bit along the wire to land (where they
conscientiously drank the beer). Then they hitched a hawser to the
steamer, and by clever engineering managed to drag her off the bar
against the river current; but presently this current, sweeping down
from the mountains, grew too swift for the wrecking-tug, and she in turn
was dragged down stream against all the strength of her engines, and saw
herself threatened with destruction on the bar. Then the captain of the
tug, in his peril, ordered the hawser cut, and thirty-nine men of the
wrecking-crew were left to their fate on the abandoned wreck. Their
adventures alone would make a thrilling chapter, but they were rescued
finally from the half-sinking steamer, after she had somehow crossed the
bar and wrecked herself anew in the breakers some miles down the coast.
Then weeks passed while the wrecking-crew worked at patching the
steamer's holes so that she would float, and every day Timmans went down
in his suit and did blacksmith work and carpenter work on her torn
plates and beams, in constant danger of being crushed in the deep sand
trough she rocked and slid in. Sometimes the whole iron hull, beaten
against by the ocean, would go grinding along, breaking down a wall of
sand ten feet high, almost as fast as Timmans could walk. And to be
caught between her side and that wall would have ended his days
forthwith. Diving-suit and man would have been crushed like an
egg-shell.
Finally, when she was ready they made fast a sixteen-inch hawser, and
put on full steam to pull her off into deep water. Off she came, and all
was going well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came upon
them, and the steamer turned broadside to its fury, and the great
hawser snapped like a kite-string, and back she went on a coral-reef.
Once more they began at the beginning, and in time had another hawser
ready, and tried again. This time the hawser parted by grinding on the
beach as they dragged her.
Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch hawser, wound with wire,
that would resist the friction of rocks and sand, and all would have
happened as they hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that
thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the hawser strands,
piercing the wire and severing the big tow-line. The wrecking company
still shows the saw of that mischievous fish among its curiosities.
So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with details of how they
stopped some fresh leaks with sixty-five barrels of cement, and how they
quelled a mutiny and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up
a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hundred miles, until
they landed her home, two hundred and fifty-odd days after the
expedition started. All going to show the kind of stuff American
wreckers are made of.
V
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PUTS ON A DIVING-SUIT AND GOES DOWN TO A WRECK
ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the wrecking company, if he
would let me go down in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly,
with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling of people who,
on various occasions, had teased to go down, and then had backed out at
the critical moment, sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass
was being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, for Atkinson
seemed to imply that I, of course, would be different from such people,
and go down like a veteran, whereas I was as yet only _thinking_ of
going down!
"There's a wreck on the Hackensack," said he; "it's a coal-barge sunk in
twenty feet of water. We'll be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down
about noon, and I'll put the suit on you."
Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke as if the thing were
settled.
I thought it over that evening, and decided not to go down. It was not
worth while to take such a risk; it was a foolish idea. Then I changed
my mind: I would go down. I must not miss such a chance; it would give
me a better understanding of this strange business; and there was no
particular danger in it, only a little discomfort. Then I wavered again,
and thought of accidents to divers, and tragedies of diving. What if
something went wrong! What if the hose burst or the air-valve stuck! Or
suppose I should injure my hearing, in spite of Atkinson's assurance? I
looked up a book on diving, and found that certain persons are warned
not to try it--full-blooded men, very pale men, men who suffer much from
headache, men subject to rheumatism, men with poor hearts or lungs, and
others. The list seemed to include everybody, and certainly included me
on at least two counts. Nevertheless I kept to my purpose; I would go
down.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER'S SUIT.]
It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before slack water (slack
water is the diver's harvest-time), when the crew of the steam-pump
_Dunderberg_ gathered on deck to witness my descent and assist in
dressing me; for no diver can dress himself. The putting on a
diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous pair of rubber boots
reaching up to the chin, and provided with sleeves that clutch the
wrists tightly with clinging bands, to keep out the water. Thus incased,
you feel as helpless and oppressed as a tightly stuffed sawdust doll,
and you stand anxiously while the men put the gasket (a rubber joint)
over your shoulders and make it fast with thumb-screws, under a heavy
copper collar. Next you step into a pair of thirty-pound iron shoes that
are strapped over your rubber feet. And now they lead you to an iron
ladder that reaches down from rail to water. You lift your feet somehow
over the side, right foot, left foot, and feel around for the
ladder-rungs. Then you bend forward on the deck, face down, as a man
would lay his neck on the block. This is to let the helpers make fast
around your waist the belt that is to sink you presently with its
hundred pounds of lead. Under this belt you feel the life-line noose
hugging below your arms, a stout rope trailing along the deck, that will
follow you to the bottom, and haul you back again safely, let us hope.
Beside it trails the precious black hose that brings you air.
Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with its three goggle-eyes,
and prepares to screw it on. The men watch your face sharply; they have
seen novices weaken here.
"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, cheerfully.
I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt a very real emotion.
I watched two lads at the air-pump wheels as if they were executioners,
though both had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay pipe.
I thought how good it was to stay in the sunshine, and not go down under
a muddy river in a diving-suit.
"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the signals again--three
slow jerks on the life-line to come up, and so on.
Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars against the collar. I
see a man's hands through the round glasses crisscrossed over with
protecting wires; he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds the
face-glass before my last little open window. "Go ahead wid de pump,"
calls a queer voice, and forthwith a sweetish, warmish breath enters the
helmet, and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders.
"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," somebody calls; "if
you don't get enough, pull twice." I wonder how I am to know whether I
am getting too much or not enough, but there is no time to find out. I
have just a moment for one deep breath from the outside, when there is
no more "outside" for me; the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy
fingers are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, and
hands are fussing with hose and life-line, making them fast to lugs on
the helmet-face, one on each side, so that the hose drops away under my
left arm, and the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap on
my big copper crown, which means I must start down. That is the signal.
I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find I can. One step
downward, and I feel a tug at my trousers as the air-feed plumps them
out. Step by step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to my
waist, to my shoulders--to my head. With a roar in my ears, and a flash
of silver bubbles, I sink beneath the surface; I reach the ladder's end,
loose my hold on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region,
slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's careful handling)
on the barge's deck just outside her combings, and can reach one heavy
foot over the depth of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk
comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; indeed, I am
pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my sensations. It is true there is
a pressure in my ears, but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it
would have been different), and I feel rather a sense of exhilaration
from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole
suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my
armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales
would give me close to four hundred pounds.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN
UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.]
The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight
were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give
enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyant than is good for a
diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a
shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush--four hundred pounds
and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience like this,
one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down
more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a
vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as he
could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled.
Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet
out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line
and taking to his heels.
Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the reverse of amusing to a
diver, who must be raised and lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy
freight elevator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air-pressure.
I sat down on the deck and took note of things. The golden color of the
water was due to the sunshine through it and the mud in it--a fine
effect from a mean cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly
enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the squeeze of rubber
wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit over, and found the legs pressed
hard against my body with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer
and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive the latter into the
deck. I knew that divers use tools under water--the hammer, the saw, the
crowbar, etc.--almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to see
if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I had expected. I hit the
nail on the head nearly every time. Nor did the water resistance matter
much; my nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed quicker,
after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkinson's words about the
great fatigue of work under water.
I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the wreck. Strange to think
that if I stepped off I should fall to the bottom (unless the life-line
held me) just as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a
housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And then I felt the
diver's utter helplessness: he cannot lift himself; he cannot speak; he
cannot save himself, except as those lines save him. Let them part, let
one of them choke, and he dies instantly.
And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat sounded like cries of
distress, and the noise in my ears grew like the roar of a train. All
divers below hear this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one
with another: when two are down together, they communicate by taps and
jerks, as they do with the tenders above. I bent my head back, and could
see a stream of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the
escape-valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging to my
little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that rose slowly. The old
Hackensack was boiling all about me, and I saw how there may well be
reason in the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from the
helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent light in the bubbles) is
the diver's safeguard against creatures of the deep.
Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well--a delightful
experience, a thing distinctly worth the doing. It was time to feel for
the life-line and give the three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now? I
was a little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver (even
old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bearings. There! one, two,
three. And the answer comes straightway down the line--one, two, three.
That means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. Now the rope
tightens under my arms, and easily, slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden
water pales to silver, the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the
surface by the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How heavy I
have suddenly become without the river to buoy me! This climbing the
ladder is the hardest task of all; it is like carrying two men on one's
back. Again I bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my windows. A
twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, with a suck of air. The test
is over.
"You done well," is the greeting I receive; and the divers welcome me
almost as one of their craft. Henceforth I have friends among these
quiet men whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and look they
do without flinching) as they fare over river and sea, and under river
and sea, in search of wrecks.
THE BALLOONIST
I
HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK, WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT
I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly
well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him
"Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they
might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler
Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese
and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings,
or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher
Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.
All these callings (and some others) Myers has pursued with eagerness
and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for
varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world
bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry,
sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read
these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or
tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or
describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have
enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me
some time ago.
[Illustration: "BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS."]
Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is certainly a queer
place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his
balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away
through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and
visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and
cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be
growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an
Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really,
half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great
kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men
working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with
parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three
thousand feet for his afternoon "skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the
celebrated aeronaut (also the professor's wife), making an ascension now
and then from the front lawn in a chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons.
[Illustration: "FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE."]
And in winter, should you explore the upper rooms of the house, you
would find all the balloons tucked away snugly in cocoons, as it were,
fast asleep, ranged along the attic floor, each under its net, each
ticketed with a record of its work, marked for good or bad conduct after
it has been tested by master or mistress.
For weeks at a time in the experiment season a captive balloon hovers
above the Frankfort farm, say twelve hundred feet up, and the tricks
they play with that balloon would draw all the boys in the country, if
their parents would let them go. Three guy-ropes hold the balloon steady
like legs of an enormous tripod, and straight down from the netting a
fourth rope hangs free. Now, imagine swinging on a rope twelve hundred
feet long! They do that often for tests of flying-machines or
aeroplanes--swing off the housetop, and sail away in a long, slow curve,
just clearing the ground, and land on top of a windmill at the far side
of the grounds. That's a swing worth talking about! And fancy a man
hitched fast to this rope by shoulder-straps, and as he swings flapping
a pair of great wings made of feathers and silk, and trying to steer
with a ridiculous spreading tail of the same materials. The professor
had a visit from such a man, who had spent years and a fortune in
contriving this flying device, which, alas! would never fly.
[Illustration: "A PAIR OF GREAT WINGS MADE OF FEATHERS AND SILK--WHICH,
ALAS! WOULD NEVER FLY."]
Professor Myers, like most aeronauts, insists that traveling by balloon,
for one who understands it, is no more perilous, but rather less so,
than ordinary travel by rail or trolley or motor carriage. He points out
that for thirty-odd years he and his wife have led a most active
aeronaut existence, have done all things that are done in balloons,
besides some new ones, and got no harm from it--some substantial good
rather, notably an aerial torpedo (operated by electricity from the
ground), which flies swiftly in any desired direction, its silken fans
and aluminum propeller under perfect control from a switchboard; also
the "skycycle" balloon, which lifts the aeronaut in a suspended saddle
and allows him, by the help of sail propeller and flapping aeroplanes
(these driven by hands and feet), to make a gain on the wind, when going
with it, of ten or twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor
Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to go against the wind,
but selecting currents from the many available ones that favor his
purpose. "What is the use," says he, "of fighting the wind when you can
make the wind fight for you? People who take trains or boats wait for a
certain hour or a certain tide, in the same way we wait for a certain
wind current, and there is never long to wait, for the wind blows in
totally different directions at different altitudes."
"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about these varying currents?"
"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds and by observations with
kites and other instruments. And we would soon know much more if
experimenters would work on these lines of conquering nature by yielding
to her rather than opposing her."
In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there were many, we went
first into the spectacular side of ballooning, the more obviously
interesting part, stories of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling
adventure, of the fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over
Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles in sixty
minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the English aeronaut who leaped
from his car to death in the sea that a comrade might be saved through
the lessened weight, of two lovesick Frenchmen who duelled with pistols
from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped in wonder from the earth and
shuddered when one silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down
to death with principal and second. And many more of that kind which, I
must say, leave one far from convinced on the non-danger point.
Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things about balloons--this,
for instance, that the rapid rise of an air-ship makes an aeronaut
suffer the same pain and pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows,
only now the air presses from inside the head outward. And relief from
this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by repeatedly opening the
mouth and swallowing.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE."]
And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. The balloon is always
standing still to the person in it, while the earth rushes madly along,
forty, sixty, ninety miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile
the ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deepening bowl, while
the horizon sweeps up like a loosened spring. Then presently this
illusion passes, and you see everything flat. There are no hills any
more, nor villages; no towers nor steep descents, only a level surface,
marked charmingly in color, sometimes in wonderful mosaics, and
strangely in light and shade. At the height of two miles nothing is
familiar; you might as well be looking at the moon, for all you can
recognize. Roads become yellowish lines; rivers brownish lines (and the
water vanishes); a mountain-range becomes a shaded strip, with less
shade on one edge (where the sun is) than on the other; a forest becomes
a patch of color; a town another patch. There is scarcely any difference
between water and land, and you see to the bottom of a lake, so that the
configuration of its bed in valley and hill are apparent through the
color and the shading. This singular disappearance of water bodies, for
it amounts to almost that, has an evident importance.
"I'll tell you what we did on Lake Ontario," said the professor, "as a
result of observations I made there from a balloon. In sailing over the
lake on one occasion I remarked a number of small shaded spots which
puzzled me. I could not imagine what they were. Finally, with the help
of powerful field-glasses, I made them out to be wrecks sunk at various
depths, and I realized that Lake Ontario, and indeed all the great
lakes, abound in vessels which have gone down during centuries and never
been recovered. No one can estimate the treasure which lies there
waiting for some one to reclaim it. And I saw that it is a perfectly
simple matter to locate these wrecks from a balloon, and to prove this I
organized a modest wrecking expedition, and indicated to the diver where
he was to go down. Down he went at that point, and found the wreck I had
seen, and we pumped good coal out of her by hundreds of tons. What I
did then on a small scale might be done on a large scale by any one
willing to undertake it."
Of course I asked the professor why it is that an aeronaut can see down
into a lake better than, say, an observer in a boat, and he explained
that there is a great gain in intensity of terrestrial illumination when
the viewpoint is at a height, because the sun's rays converge toward the
earth, the sun being so many times larger, and therefore (this is his
theory) a man lifted above the earth gets many more solar rays reflected
to him from a given area than he would get if nearer to that area. In a
word, it is a matter of optics and angles, but, the professor declares,
most assuredly a fact.
[Illustration: HOW THE EARTH LOOKS WHEN VIEWED FROM A HEIGHT OF ONE
MILE.
(Photographed from a balloon.)]
Never before these talks did I realize how busy an aeronaut is, how much
there is to do in a balloon. Besides attending to valve-cords and
ballast there is the barometer to keep your eyes on, for by it alone can
you know your altitude. Around moves the needle slowly as you rise,
slowly as you fall, one point for a thousand feet. Rising or falling,
you know the worst or the best there. Sometimes the needle sticks, the
barometer will not work, and you must cast overside pieces of
tissue-paper to see by their rise or fall if you are going up or down.
By your senses alone you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling,
or your distance from the earth. That is most deceiving. Then you must
have your watch ready to reckon your speed, so many thousand feet up or
down in so many seconds, and your map spread out (nailed to a board, and
that lashed fast), to tell where you are, and your compass out to fix
the north and south points, for a balloon twists slowly all the time,
twists one way going up and the other way coming down. Nobody knows just
why this is, unless it be the unequal drawing of the seams as the
fabric swells and shrinks.
"I always keep the mouth of my balloon within easy reach," said the
professor, "and play with it as an engineer does with his
throttle-valve. Sometimes I even tie it shut when I am sailing, but that
is dangerous."
"Why dangerous?"
"Because the balloon might ascend suddenly, and the expanding gas burst
it."
"Can you see up into the balloon," I asked, "through the mouth?"
"Of course you can, and a beautiful sight it is. You look up through a
round window, twenty inches or so in diameter, into the great bag,
swelled out fifty or sixty feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so
that every line and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in
exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you see a spread of
gold and amber melting away in changing colors to the shaded parts. The
balloon seems to be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you
upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel that your balloon
is alive."
"Does it make any noise?"
"Usually not. Now and then there is a creaking of the basket or a rustle
of fabric, as you pass from one wind current to another, but as you
drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of
a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You
have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express
train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an
hour and beaten it."
"Is there danger to a balloon in a thunderstorm?"
"Apparently not, but it is terrifying to be in one. You seem to be at
the very point where the lightning starts and the thunder-crash is
born. All about you are roarings and blinding flashes, and it rains up
on you and down on you, and in on you from all sides. While I never
heard of a free balloon being struck by lightning, it is a common thing
for operators on the ground even in fair weather to get shocks of
atmospheric electricity down the anchor ropes of captive balloons."
Our talk drifted on, and the professor told of exciting times reporting
the great yacht races from captive balloons (with reporters turning
seasick in the plunging basket), and remarkable phenomena observed from
balloons and double colored shadows of balloons (called parhelions) cast
on clouds, and wonderful light effects, as when a marveling aeronaut
looks down upon a sea of silver clouds bathed in sunshine and through
black clefts sees a snowstorm raging underneath.
I was surprised to learn that at very great altitudes, say above three
miles, the voice almost fails to serve, or, rather, the rarefied air
loses in great part its power of voice transmission, so that in the vast
silent spaces of the sky one aeronaut must literally shout to another in
the same basket to make himself heard. One would say that the great,
calm heavens resent the chattering intrusion of noisy little men.
II
WHICH TREATS OF EXPERIMENTS IN STEERING BALLOONS
IN all their experiments at the farm, Professor Myers and Mme. Carlotta
have worked on individual lines, he striving of late years to perfect
his skycycle (which is simply a balloon of torpedo shape with a rigging
of propellers and fans underneath), while she has been content to gain
skill in steering a balloon of ordinary shape by merely moving her body
and utilizing varying air-currents, for the wind blows in different
directions as you ascend.
It is remarkable how the position of an aeronaut's body may alter a
balloon's movements. It is possible, for instance, to make a balloon
ascend or descend, without touching valve or ballast, by a simple change
of position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from edge to edge of
the basket, and by throwing your weight first on one foot and then on
the other you will give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you,
and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hundreds of feet. Or if
you would make it descend (all this the professor explained to me),
stand with your feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching
the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide apart so that the
fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway your hips forward as far as you
can, then back as far as you can, and keep doing this. Now the
wriggling process is reversed; and this time the basket goes first,
"tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends.
[Illustration: MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE
FOOT-BOARD.]
This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Carlotta to pass easily
from one train of clouds to another, and, by long study of these
cross-moving aerial trains, she is able to pick out the one she wants
for a certain destination with almost the precision of a foot-passenger
selecting his particular street-car or changing from one to another. And
in descending she has learned to steer forward or back, to left or
right, by tipping the basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to
take. The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board as a ship
follows her rudder.
An almost incredible instance of the skill attained by Carlotta in these
experiments was furnished some dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made
an ascension never forgotten by the people of that city. It was a grand
occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's gift of the Crystal Palace to her
loyal subjects, and Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty-five
thousand people, as was estimated, were packed inside the Exposition
grounds to see the aeronaut rise to the clouds. And there at the
appointed time stood Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude
about her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt over a
gymnasium suit, and made an attractive picture with her fine figure and
golden-bronze hair. So thought various city dignitaries, who chatted
with her admiringly while the crowd surged about them.
Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching the manoeuvers of some
Indians hired by a committee to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles
distant, where it had been filled. This was rather against the
professor's judgment, for the Rideau River, flowing by the grounds,
offered an obstacle that could be overcome only with the help of canoes
and tow-lines; and to paddle a big balloon across a river, a
fresh-filled, hard-tugging balloon, is not a thing to be undertaken
lightly. And in spite of all their skill these Indians found themselves
presently lifted into the air, canoes and all (oh, they were badly
frightened Indians!), not quite clear of the water, but high enough to
make it doubtful if they would ever reach shore, and highly interesting
to the crowd which pressed down to the river, even into the river, in
well-meant efforts to help, and dragged the balloon up the bank and
along toward the platform with such eagerness that they tore great rents
in it that let out the gas in volumes.
In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon became the center of a
struggling mass of people, who slowly pressed in from all sides to see
what the matter was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all
pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill with those at
that point; and had not Carlotta acted on a flash of inspiration there
would surely have been disaster in that merciless crush. She looked over
the shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw the danger--saw
women held helpless and fainting in that jam of bodies; saw one way, and
only one, to save the situation, and took that way. Stepping off the
platform, she ran lightly and swiftly over heads and shoulders, packed
solid, and came to the balloon. Such was the people's fright that they
scarcely felt her pass.
"You can't go up," cried her husband; "the balloon is a wreck."
"I must go up," she answered; "if I don't these people will be crushed
to death."
"There's a hole in her big enough to drive a team through," he
protested; but already she was in the basket, and a great cheer arose.
[Illustration: "IN SPITE OF ALL THEIR SKILL THESE INDIANS FOUND
THEMSELVES PRESENTLY LIFTED INTO THE AIR, CANOES AND ALL."]
"It's better to risk one life than many," she answered with decision,
and, turning to the crowd, motioned them to loose the car. In their
wonder the mad multitude forgot their fear, and the struggling quieted.
All eyes were now on the balloon; one woman's courage had quelled the
panic. The danger to the crowd was past, to the woman just beginning.
"Wait a moment," shouted Professor Myers; "you must have more ballast."
But in the din of voices she misunderstood him and cast out the last
bag. Then, with a great heave and a flapping of its torn sides, the
balloon wrenched itself free and shot upward, a cripple soaring with its
last strength. Up and up it went, higher and higher as the small store
of gas expanded. That tattered balloon, with its seams gaping open,
raised itself somehow two miles over the city of Ottawa, and then almost
immediately began to fall. The gas stayed in just long enough to lift
the broken bag, and then left it to dash downward. Professor Myers,
heart-sick on the ground, turned his eyes away, sure that he had seen
his wife alive for the last time.
But Carlotta was of no such mind. She had saved the crowd, now she would
save herself; and even as the balloon dropped with frightful speed, she
put her plan into action. Swinging herself up on the netting, she caught
the flapping silk above a long tear, and drew it down with all her
weight until it reached the car. Instantly the air rushed in underneath,
and bellied out the fabric into a great umbrella, a parachute improvised
from a ripped balloon. Now they were slowing up; they had put the brakes
on, and now they were soaring easily, drifting with the wind. Carlotta
drew a long breath of relief and looked down. They were still a mile
above ground. She had the runaway in hand, but where should she land
him? Most aeronauts would have been thankful enough to get down alive
anywhere; she proposed to do a feat of steering as well. No doubt there
was some gas in the upper part of the bag to help her, but in the main
she was guiding a parachute; and she guided it so skilfully by tipping
the foot-board forward or back, to left or right, that she landed
finally in a clump of evergreen-trees, some fifteen miles from Ottawa,
that she had selected as the very place she proposed to land. And great
were the rejoicings when it was known that she had come to no harm.
The story had an interesting sequel the following year, when Carlotta
made another ascension from the same place.
"Where will you land this time?" one of the committee asked her.
Carlotta looked at the clouds a moment, then, smiling, said, "If you
like, I will land exactly where I did last year."
This they all declared impossible, for the wind was strong in just the
opposite direction; but Carlotta insisted she would land in that clump
of evergreens and nowhere else. And she kept her word. She had observed
that at a certain height the wind was favorable to her purpose, and by
the same tactics of seeking the right wind-currents and by the same
clever foot-board tipping she reached the point she was steering for, to
the general wonder and admiration.
My acquaintance with Professor Myers has given me some light on a
question often in my mind; that is, what kind of children these men have
who follow careers of danger and daring. Will the son of a
steeple-climber climb steeples? Will the daughter of a lion-tamer be
afraid of a mouse? And so on. Of course, with both father and mother
aeronauts, as in this case, it would be strange indeed if their child
did not love balloons; and so it has turned out, for Miss Aerial Myers,
now a girl in her teens, has already made various ascensions, and enjoys
nothing better than soaring aloft on her father's skycycle, which she
steers skilfully. Her first experience of a voyage in the air is
memorable for two facts, that it nearly brought destruction to herself
and her mother, and drew attention to an important but little-known fact
in ballooning science.
It was some years ago, at the Syracuse County Fair, and a balloon race
had been advertised between Carlotta and young Tysdell, an assistant of
Professor Myers. For this event an enormous crowd had gathered on the
grounds. And now (by what tears and pleadings who can say?) Miss Aerial,
aged eleven, had persuaded her too fond mother to take her along, and
off they went, amid cheers and wavings, with a strong breeze blowing,
and the child peering down at the dwindling earth over the basket-side.
She watched the roads change into yellow streaks, and the hills swing up
from back of the horizon, and the clouds spread away below them like a
sea. She watched her mother take readings of compass and barometer, and
as the wind swept them along to new view-points she would cry out, "Here
comes another town, mama!" and clap her hands as the town raced by.
[Illustration: MME. CARLOTTA CALLS FOR ASSISTANCE FROM ANOTHER
BALLOONIST THREE MILES AWAY.]
Tysdell won the race, having ballast in plenty to throw out, while
Carlotta had little, since the extra lifting-power of her balloon was
needed for Miss Aerial. Now, the difficulty of managing a balloon is
much increased if you have no ballast, for then you cannot rise at will
to enter a higher wind-current blowing the way you want to go, but must
drift where the current you are in may take you. And the current they
were in took them (such is the perversity of things) straight toward a
deep and dangerous lake. Carlotta saw where they were going, but was
powerless to prevent it. She could not throw Miss Aerial overboard like
a sand-bag to make the balloon go higher, although she did throw
overboard everything else that was movable, even to her jacket and
shoes. Then, having done all that was possible, she waited, clutching
the basket-sides with anxious fingers, and wondering if there was any
way to safety.
Suddenly an idea came to her, and she scanned the heavens for Tysdell's
balloon. No sight of it anywhere. Tysdell was three miles away, hidden
by clouds. Nevertheless she lifted her voice and sent forth a loud cry,
calling his name. Immediately the answer came, quite distinct. She
explained their peril, and asked Tysdell if he could come to them. He
said he would try, and questioned her where they were and what
wind-currents had borne them. Carlotta told Tysdell to what height he
must drop (she knew her own height by the barometer), and in a very few
minutes, being able to rise and fall as he pleased, he was near the two
other air-sailors, and got his balloon down by the lake-side in time to
help them ashore when they struck, as presently they did. The basket
splashed the water, then skipped along the surface under the drag of the
balloon, and was caught finally in the arms of a tree that reached out
from the bank. And the only harm done was the spoiling of Miss Aerial's
best frock!
Here was a case of conversation carried on easily between two balloons a
mile or so above the earth and three miles apart. But other experiments
made by Mme. Carlotta show that talking between balloons may go on over
much greater distances, a reach of nearly eight miles having been
accomplished on one occasion near Ogdensburg, New York. The explanation
of this phenomenon is perfectly simple. Each balloon, while it is
speaking, acts as a huge megaphone for the other, and each balloon,
while it is listening, acts as a huge sounding-board for the other; and
the tighter the balloons are kept under pressure of gas, the easier it
is to make these great silken horns (for such they are) throw forth and
receive the messages. It should be noted that this facility for voice
transmission does not exist at great heights because of the rarefied
air. At a mile above earth, however, this difficulty is not presented,
and it may be that a superior kind of wireless telegraphy will be
introduced some day by the use of talking balloons. Why not?
III
SOMETHING ABOUT EXPLOSIVE BALLOONS AND THE WONDERS OF HYDROGEN
ONE day the professor told me about some rainfall experiments with
balloons that he conducted years ago for the government. There was a
theory to be tested that loud explosions at a height will make the
clouds pour down water, and some gentlemen in the Department of
Agriculture were anxious to set off as loud an explosion as possible,
say a thousand feet up in the air. Professor Myers received this
commission, and proceeded at once to Washington with a gas-balloon
twelve feet in diameter.
"Don't you think that balloon is rather small?" asked one of the
gentlemen.
"No," said Myers; "I should call it rather large."
The other man shook his head. "I'm afraid it won't make noise enough to
test our theory."
"Well," said the professor (I can see his eyes twinkling), "if this
balloon doesn't make noise enough we'll get a bigger one."
They took the balloon some miles out of Washington (the professor
insisted on this), filled it with a terribly explosive mixture of oxygen
and hydrogen, and sent it up about a quarter of a mile, with an
anchor-rope holding it and a wire hanging down to a little hand-dynamo
or blasting-machine. As they made ready to turn this dynamo, Professor
Myers lay flat on his back, eyes glued to the balloon, confident but
curious. The handle turned, a spark jumped at the other end, and the
ball of silk seemed to swell enormously and then vanish with a flash of
a thousand shivers of silk. On this came the sound--a smashing and
tearing blast louder than any thunder-crash or roar of cannon. It
flattened men to the ground, killed hundreds of little fish in a stream
near by (bursting their air-bladders), knocked over a bowling-alley like
a house of cards, frightened cattle, and brought down rain in torrents
within eight minutes. The Agricultural gentlemen were more than
satisfied, and adopted the professor's system for extended rainfall
experiments--only these (for obvious reasons) were removed to the lonely
and arid plains of distant Texas.
"It wasn't much fun living down there," said the professor; "but we got
rain whenever we wanted it."
"What would happen," I inquired, "if a very large balloon filled with
this explosive mixture were set off over a crowded city?"
The professor shook his head in his awed contemplation of this
possibility. "It would work fearful destruction. If large enough (and
there is no difficulty in obtaining such a size), it would wipe out of
existence whole blocks of houses and the people in them. It would
destroy an army."
In the course of our talks I discovered a mystic side, very unexpected,
in the professor's nature. He used to speak of hydrogen, for instance,
with a certain almost reverence, as if it were something endowed with
life and consciousness, a powerful spirit, one would say, not merely a
commonplace product of chemistry, a gas from a retort.
[Illustration: A BALLOON-PICNIC AT THE AERONAUTS' HOME.]
"I have often wondered," he said one day, "as my basket has swept me
along, what there is in this silken bag above me that lifts me thus
over mountains and cities. I look up into the balloon through the open
mouth, and I see nothing; I hear nothing; I smell nothing. None of my
senses answer any call; yet somehow, strangely, in a way I can't
explain, I _perceive_ a presence. It would not be at all the same to me
were the balloon filled with air, though it would be the same to all my
senses. Again and again I have noted this thing, that hydrogen makes
itself known to men when they are near it."
He paused a moment as if to observe my attitude, to see if it were one
of scoffing. I made no remark, but begged him to go on.
"After all," he continued, "even the books allow to hydrogen properties
that are very amazing. It is the lightest of all things; it passes
through and beyond all things; it is the nearest approach we know of to
absolute nothing. Who can say that it is not related to the land of
nothing, to--" He hesitated.
"You mean?" said I.
"I don't know what I mean. I only wonder. Take this case that happened
at Ogdensburg, New York, during an ascension we made there. We had
filled the balloon with hydrogen, and were just ready to start when the
valve-cords that hang down inside the bag from the valve at the top
became twisted and drew up out of reach from the basket. In vain I tried
to get them free by poking at them with sticks and long-handled things;
the cords would not come down, and of course no sane man would make an
ascension with his balloon-valve beyond control. There was nothing for
it but to get inside that great gas-bag and undo the tangle with my
hands. So I called fifteen or twenty men to catch hold of the netting
and pull the struggling balloon down over me until I could reach the
cords. Then I--"
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Were you standing inside the balloon so
that you had to breathe hydrogen?"
The professor smiled. "I stood inside the balloon, but I breathed
nothing; I held my breath, which is one of the things I have practised.
Before I went inside I told my wife to note the time by her watch, and
if I did not come out before one hundred and twenty seconds had passed
to have the men drag me out. You see, I knew I could hold my breath one
hundred and twenty seconds, but no longer.
"Well, we carried out the plan, and I freed the cords in less than my
limit of time; then came the uncanny part of it--at least, it seemed so
to me. I had read that hydrogen will not transmit sound, but had never
tested it. It is true I had at various times taken hydrogen into my
lungs, but never had I tried to speak in hydrogen. Now was my chance,
and, with all my remaining breath I shouted as loud as I could inside
that balloon. Think of it; there were my wife and the men a few feet
distant, with only the thinnest tissue of silk between us, and a gas
that was like nothing. Yet my cry, that would have reached perhaps half
a mile in air, could not penetrate that little void. To those outside
the balloon it was as if I had not opened my lips. They heard nothing,
not even a whisper. I believe you might fire a cannon inside a bag of
hydrogen, and no faintest rustle of the discharge would reach your ears.
So, you see, a world of hydrogen would be a voiceless world."
"Did you say you have breathed hydrogen?" I asked.
"Yes; I have breathed it up to the danger-point. I know all the
sensations. There is first a mild exhilaration, then a sense of
sickening and head-throbbing, and finally a delicious languor that leads
into stupor. When you get there it is time to stop. In making
ascensions we have to be very careful not to breathe too much gas from
the balloon-neck which hangs open over the basket. More than one
aeronaut has been gradually overcome without realizing that he was in
danger."
The professor went on to tell of other singular things about this subtle
gas, notably that, speaking within limits, the higher you want a balloon
to rise, the _less_ hydrogen you must put in it. If you fill a balloon
full of hydrogen it will rise to no great height (and is very apt to
burst), since the gas has no space to expand in, and the way to keep a
balloon rising is to make it expand more and more as it goes up, each
foot of added volume displacing a foot of the air-ocean and to that
extent adding buoyancy.
"General Hazen and I," said the professor, "once planned that some day,
when we got an appropriation, we would go up in a balloon having a
capacity of, say, forty thousand cubic feet, but carrying at the ground
only ten thousand cubic feet of hydrogen--in other words, in a shrunken,
quarter-filled balloon. Of course as we rose and the air became rarefied
this hydrogen would expand against the decreasing air-pressure, and at a
height of two miles our original ten thousand feet of gas might have
swelled to twenty thousand feet, at five miles to thirty thousand feet,
and so on. The last ten thousand feet of expansion would have brought us
to no one knows what height, but certainly, we calculated, to the
greatest height ever reached by a balloonist."
He explained that the balloon record of seven miles claimed for
Glaischer and Coxwell, the English aeronauts, is not reliable, since the
barometer used in that famous ascension (it was made at Wolverhampton,
England, in 1862) could not register above five miles, and what was
accomplished beyond that height is matter of pure conjecture and must be
less than might be done by the Hazen-Myers plan, since Glaischer's
balloon (by a serious oversight) was started on its flight nearly full
of hydrogen, instead of nearly empty.
"Oh," exclaimed the professor, with regretful look, "why don't some of
our very rich men think of these things!"
IV
THE STORY OF A BOY WHO RAN AWAY IN A BIG BALLOON
ONE of the professor's hobbies is that gas-balloons are better and safer
than the hot-air kind, although the latter cost less to operate. Your
hot-air balloon goes up with a rush, but comes down again as soon as it
cools; and in the coming down lies the danger. A gas-balloon, on the
other hand, stays up as long as you keep gas in it, and the professor's
secret of varnishing holds gas like a trap.
As to the ordinary use of hot-air balloons for parachute dropping, the
professor has only condemnation. A parachute, says he, is a sin and a
disgrace--a thing to be prohibited by law. The parachute kills more
people every year (the professor still is talking) than many a battle,
and kills them in unpleasant ways: drops them on live electric wires,
which shock them to death; drops them in lakes, where they are drowned,
or in the ocean, where they are eaten by sharks; drops them in trees,
where they catch by their coat-collars and choke to death; drops them on
sharp railings, which spear them through; drops them--but the
professor's list (backed by statistics, be it said) is too long and
gruesome. It is only fair to add that I have a friend, Leo Stevens, a
professional aeronaut, who has made thousands of drops from hot-air
balloons and claims that nothing is safer than a parachute, and says he
can steer one in its downward sailing so as to avoid dangerous
landing-places, although he does admit numerous hair-breadth escapes, as
when he dropped from a parachute two miles out at sea, this at Long
Branch in 1898, and was only saved by his life-preserver and the courage
of some fishermen, or again when De Ive, his partner in ballooning
ventures, dropped with him on one occasion from a big balloon (one
parachute was suspended on either side), and landed in Lake Canandaigua
and was drowned. "Oh, there's no doubt a man takes chances on a
parachute," said Stevens, "but I like it."
There is a singular thing about parachutes, Stevens contends, not
sufficiently considered by Professor Myers in his experiments. The
professor, with his usual thoroughness, has tested all shapes and kinds
of parachutes by dropping them from a captive balloon with a sand-bag
hitched on instead of a man. The dropping was done by a fuse which would
burn the supporting rope and at a given moment set the parachute free,
just as a man under the parachute would cut it free. And in a large
number of cases the parachute did not open in time to save the sand-bag
man from destruction on the ground.
"That proves," argues the professor, "that parachutes are extremely
dangerous."
"Nothing of the sort," answers Leo Stevens; "it only proves that there
is a big difference between a sand-bag man and a real man. The sand-bag
is dead weight, and the man is live weight. A parachute will open for
the one where it won't open for the other."
"Why will it," queries the professor, "if the man and the sand-bag weigh
the same?"
[Illustration: "STEVENS CAME DOWN ONCE WITH A PARACHUTE TWO MILES OUT IN
THE ATLANTIC OCEAN--AND WAS PROMPTLY RESCUED."]
"I don't know why, but it will," Stevens insists. "If what you say
were true I'd be dead long ago, and my wife, and all my assistants."
I well remember my first visit to aeronaut Stevens at his little balloon
establishment on Third Avenue, a rambling, go-as-you-please attic, with
things strewn about anyhow, lengths of balloon-cloth hanging from
rafters for the varnish to dry, crinkly yellow segments of balloons
heaped near a sewing-machine that was stitching them into spheres, rows
of hot-air balloons from past seasons ranged along on shelves in tight
bundles, models of flying-machines, all kinds of parachutes, including
one in red, white, and blue, made to take up a dog, and in various dusty
corners photographs of Leo Stevens walking a tight rope, Leo Stevens
rising to the clouds over waving multitudes, Leo Stevens (and his big
umbrella) soaring down to earth from the height of twenty steeples,
swinging with dancing-master grace from the bar of his trapeze. I liked
this place for the good-natured faces of "Kid" Benjamin, who was
scooping cold salmon out of a can when I came in, and a young lady with
long eyelashes, who was running the machine.
Leo Stevens was out, said this young lady; he was seeing some patent
lawyers about his new air-ship, but she was Mrs. Stevens, and could she
do anything for me? I asked various questions, and she answered them
from a wide practical knowledge. She had made dozens of balloons and
parachutes--yes, and used them, too. It was "Kid" Benjamin who offered
this latter information, remarking that she was "grand on a parachute."
Mrs. Stevens smiled, and explained that she had never made an ascension
in her life until the previous summer, and then only because her husband
was in a fix through the failure of another woman to appear. A balloon
race had been advertised between two lady aeronauts, and when the time
came one of them, Miss Nina Madison, was missing. Rather than have the
thing a failure and a big crowd disappointed, Mrs. Stevens agreed to go
up. She would take Miss Nina's place and race the professional. And she
did it, and she won the race.
"You see," she said, "I didn't feel nervous as another woman might,
because I'd been living with balloons for years. Besides they hitched me
fast to the parachute ropes so I couldn't have fallen if I'd wanted to.
It was lovely going up; everybody said we made a beautiful ascension,
and the two balloons kept so close together that the other lady and I
were talking all the way. At last, when we were up about three thousand
feet, she called out that my balloon was settling and for me to cut. But
I called back: 'Cut yourself,' and, sure enough, she did in a minute,
and I watched her parachute open out and sink and get smaller and
smaller, until she reached the ground. A few minutes later, when I saw
my balloon had really settled, I cut, too. H-o-o-o, what a sensation!
You know those awful dreams where you fall and fall? Well, it's just
like that for two or three seconds, until your parachute fills wide and
springs you up against the ropes. Then you sail down, down, with a
lovely easy motion until you get close to the ground. But look out for
the landing. Once I struck in a treetop. And you're liable to come down
on houses or anything."
"You're liable to come down in the middle of a lake," put in "Kid"
Benjamin.
"Do you go up?" said I to the "Kid," whose hands and face showed black
smears from painting balloon-cloth. He was certainly not over eighteen.
"Do I?" he answered, with a grin. "I made more'n twenty ascensions and
drops last summer."
"He's the one," said Mrs. Stevens, "who carried that boy up hanging from
the parachute ropes. Don't you remember? At Coney Island? The boy was
helping hold the balloon, and when she started his foot got caught."
"And he went up hanging by his foot?"
The "Kid" nodded. "Yep, stuck fast in the rigging by one shoe. As I sat
on the trapeze bar there was that boy forty feet above me kicking and
yelling. Say, you'd never guess what he was yelling about."
"I suppose he was afraid?"
The "Kid" shook his head. "No, sir; he didn't seem to mind the eight
hundred feet we'd gone up, not a bit. What worried him was sixty cents
in pennies and nickels that had spilled out of his pants pockets while
he was upside down."
Then the "Kid" explained how he postponed his parachute drop on this
occasion and got down safely, boy and all, by letting the balloon cool
off and gradually settle to the ground.
"Isn't a parachute pretty long when it hangs down?" I asked.
"Certainly. It's thirty-five feet from where she hitches on t' the
balloon to where you sit on the bar. That's length o' ropes and length
o' cloth both."
"Then, how can you cut her loose from 'way down on the bar?"
"I'll tell you," put in Mrs. Stevens. "You just pull a tape that hangs
down inside the parachute from a cutaway-block at the parachute head.
The holding-rope passes through that block, and there's a knife-blade in
the block over the rope. The tape pulls the knife-blade down, and away
you go. It's one of my husband's inventions." She was plainly very
proud of her husband.
Presently entered Leo Stevens himself, a surprisingly young man for such
a veteran, scarcely over thirty, the explanation being that he began
ballooning as a mere child. Before he was ten he had gained some mastery
of slack-wire feats, and at thirteen he was known over the country as
Prince Leo, a marvel of the air, in black and gold, making the fortune
of some gentlemen who exploited him.
His arrival recalled the object of my visit, which was to get from him
some practical ideas for balloon and parachute experiments on a small
scale, the sort of thing boys might undertake in their own backyards;
and, on learning this, Stevens caught my idea at once. He knew just what
I wanted, and was glad to help me. He liked boys himself, and we settled
down forthwith to a consideration of segments and materials and
dimensions and, after a little planning and measuring, he had the
problem solved.
"A hot-air balloon is the easiest and cheapest for boys to make," said
Stevens, "and it goes up with more of a rush than a gas balloon. So
we'll tell them how to make a hot-air balloon. I remember a boys'
balloon picnic that I got up one summer at Chautauqua Lake while I was
making ascensions there. What fun those boys did have! We sent up a
kitten in a strawberry basket, strapped fast, you know, so she couldn't
fall out, and the basket hung from the parachute by a time fuse that
burned loose about a thousand feet up, and down came the whole thing,
parachute, kitten, and all, sailing beautifully and landing as easily as
you please. It never hurt the kitten at all. But the balloon drifted
nearly a mile away across a swamp and stuck in a big tree. What a time
those boys had chasing it and climbing after it and slopping home with
it after dark through the swamp, with lanterns and torches! I suppose
they got well spanked, a good many of them, but boys don't mind."
"How big was this balloon?"
[Illustration]
"About eleven feet high, inflated; that's a good size. I mean eleven
feet high inflated, but the segments must be cut out eighteen feet long
to allow for the curve. See," and he made a sketch of a single segment.
"There must be fourteen segments like this, each one eighteen feet long
and two feet wide at the widest part, then tapering to a point at one
end, the top, and to a width of five inches at the other end, the mouth,
which must be left open. These segments are made from ordinary sheets of
tissue paper, first pasted into long sheets (use ordinary starch paste)
and then cut out after the pattern. Then the fourteen segments must be
pasted together lengthwise along the edges, and they will form a balloon
with enough lifting power to take up a parachute and small passenger,
say a kitten or a puppy."
"We must tell them how to fill this balloon with hot air," I suggested.
"That's so," said Stevens. "Well, it's very simple. They must dig a
trench, in the yard or somewhere, five feet long and one foot deep, with
a hole dug at one end for a fire. Then they must cover over the trench
with pieces of tin and spread dirt over that, and boards over all; this
is for a good draught. Then they must make a fire in the hole at one end
of the trench out of barrel-staves or anything that will give a hot
flame, and toward the last they might throw on a little kerosene.
That's exactly the way we make our fires for big ascensions.
"At the other end of the trench they must fix a length of stove-pipe
sticking straight up out of the draught-hole into the mouth of the
balloon and four or five boys must stand around on fences and boxes to
hold the side of the balloon away from the fire which will shoot high
above the chimney. Many a big hot-air balloon has been burned up that
way on a windy day, and in our ascensions we have dozens of ropes sewn
all over the balloon sides; we call them wind guys, so that men can pull
the cloth away from the fire while it's filling. Say, talking about boys
getting spanked, I must tell you a story."
The story was from his own boyish experience--how he made his first trip
to the clouds at the age of twelve, and set a whole city talking. This
was the city of Cleveland, Ohio, where on a certain Sunday afternoon
there was to be a balloon ascension at the great pleasure park. Young
Stevens, of course, was present, wild with excitement, for balloons had
been in his thoughts and dreams ever since he could remember. He pressed
forward through the crowd and, with bulging eyes, watched the aeronaut
arrange his barrels and pipes for the hydrogen-making, danced with
delight as the great bag swelled and struggled, and finally was bitter
in disappointment when the police appeared suddenly with orders to
prevent the ascension, because the day was Sunday.
Then, while the balloonist was protesting and pleading, Stevens formed
his plan. He would go up himself instead of the man. There was the
balloon all ready, held by a single rope. There was the basket swinging
impatiently, empty, and he more impatient than the basket. Quickly he
turned to a boy who was with him. "Say, I'll tell you what. You get a
knife and cut that rope, and I'll go up." But the boy demurred. Anyhow,
he had no knife. So away dashed Stevens, and returned in a jiffy with a
knife, taken from his father's shop. It was a sharp one.
"There," panted the boy. "Now, cut her quick, soon as I climb in."
The people about were so occupied with the parley growing warm between
balloonist and police that few paid attention when a little shaver in
knickerbockers crept close to the basket and then slipped over its side.
But the next minute nine thousand people paid considerable attention and
shouted their surprise and delight as the eager balloon suddenly shot
skyward, a small white face peering down and trying not to look
frightened. The knife had done its work, and the subject of dispute,
abruptly removed, was presently soaring half a mile above the city,
drifting with the wind.
Meantime little Leo, curled up at the bottom of the car, was saying over
to himself a story he had read of two little babies who went up once in
a balloon and sailed far, far away and never came back, but they might
have come back if only they had been strong enough to pull a string that
hung over them. Hello! So there was a string to pull! Well, any boy
could pull a string. He wasn't a baby. But where was the old string? He
must look about and find it. And sure enough he did find it, only it
turned out to be a stout rope, and he tugged at it valiantly until the
valve opened and the balloon began to descend, just as the story-book
said it would. And so occupied was Leo with keeping this valve open that
he never once looked at the wide view spread beneath him, nor knew
where he was until he came bumping into a treetop, and found himself
upset among the branches, which first tore his clothes to tatters and
then dropped him into a muddy canal, whence he emerged a sadly battered
and bedraggled aeronaut, yet happy. And even when his mother chastised
him that evening with a ram-rod (his father being a gun-maker) he
remained serene, for had he not gone up in a balloon, and was not the
whole of Cleveland admiring him, and would he not go up again (he knew
he would, despite all promises made under ram-rod stress) as soon as the
chance presented?
And within a year the chance did present, a bait of fifty dollars per
ascension being offered the lad, and the outcome was he ran away from
home, and saw no more of his family until years had passed and he had
grown accustomed to dangers of the air and diamonds of value in his
apparel.
"Isn't it queer," said Stevens, talking it over, "how a fellow will stay
away from his people when everything is all right, and get back to them
through trouble? After I started in to be a balloonist I never saw my
mother for seven years. Then I came once more to Cleveland to give an
exhibition at the very park where I first went up--they call it Forest
City Park. I was to perform on a slack wire nine hundred feet long,
stretched between two towers one hundred and fifty feet high. My wire
wasn't long enough to reach all the way, so they spliced on a length of
three hundred feet more, and before I began my feats I walked back and
forth over the wire to test it. I always do that. Then I walked to the
middle of the wire and pretended to slip and fall--that's a regular
trick to startle the crowd. You let yourself drop suddenly, catch on the
wire, and spring up again. Well, this time when I let myself drop I
didn't spring up again, and I didn't know anything more for nineteen
days, when I came to myself in the Huron Street Hospital. Somehow that
splice in the wire had broken, and I went straight to the ground,
breaking one arm, both wrists, and cracking my spinal column in four
places. It's a wonder I lived at all, they say, and during that hard
time my mother came to me, as mothers do. Oh, she doesn't love the
balloon business, I can tell you. But I love it. I've made over a
thousand ascensions, and never been badly hurt but once."
[Illustration]
We were far away now from our balloon-making, and I reminded Stevens
that we had still to tell the boys how to make a parachute.
"All right," said he; "here you are," and he gave me the following
directions: "The parachute is made of fourteen segments of tissue paper,
each one like this, measuring thirty-six inches long, six inches wide at
the base, and tapering like the pattern up to a point. These segments
must be pasted together lengthwise, the fourteen points joining at the
top of the parachute, and in each one of the fourteen side-seams a
length of eighty inches of No. 8 thread must be pasted, leaving two
inches sticking out at the top and about four feet hanging down below.
The short ends at the top must be tied together, and these made fast to
a piece of iron hoop pasted in the mouth of the balloon. Here the fuse
must be placed and lighted just as the balloon is ready to start. A
five-minute fuse will be long enough, and it must be so placed that when
it has burned its time the parachute will fall from the balloon. The
long ends below must be tied to a curtain ring, from which the little
basket hangs, with the kitten securely fastened in it by a piece of
cloth pierced with four holes for the four legs. This can be brought up
over the kitten's back and tied to the sides of the basket. In this way
the kitten is in neither danger nor discomfort. The boys must be careful
to make this plain to mothers and sisters, or their experiments may be
stopped by family orders. I'll guarantee one thing, though, if they
carry out these instructions carefully, your boy friends will have a
fine time."
I certainly hope they will.
THE PILOT
I
SOME STIRRING TALES OF THE SEA HEARD AT THE PILOTS' CLUB
OF all the clubs in New York, I know none where a man who values the
real things of life may spend a pleasanter hour than at the Pilots'
Club, far down on the lower water-front, looking out of lofty windows in
one of those great structures that make the city, seen from the bay, a
place of wonderful fairy towers.
Here on the walls are pictures that call up thrilling scenes, as this
painting of pilot-boat No. 11 (they call her _The Phantom_), rescuing
passengers from the _Oregon_, helpless in the great storm of 1886, sixty
miles beyond Sandy Hook. We shall find men sitting about these rooms,
smoking and reading, who can tell the story of that night in simple,
rugged words that will make the water devils dance before us.
Look at them! These are the pilots of New York, greatest seaport in the
world, with its tidy annual total of twenty-odd millions in tonnage
entered and cleared, against fifteen millions for London. These are the
boys (some of them nearing seventy) who bring the mighty liners in and
take them out, who fight through any sea at a vessel's blue-light
bidding, and climb her fortress sides by a slamming whip-lash ladder
that shames the flying trapeze. And this in trim derby hat (sometimes a
topper), with gloves and smart necktie, and some New-York "Heralds"
tucked away in a coat-tail pocket.
Look at them! These are the boys who stay out when every other floating
thing comes in, who face an Arctic rigor when masts are barrel big with
ice, and ropes like trees, and when climbing to a steamer's deck is like
skating up an iceberg. These are the boys who know, through fog and
darkness, the call of the whistling buoy that sings at the mouth of
Gedney's, and can say "Good morning" to every bobbing juniper-spar that
marks the long ship lane (red lights on starboard buoys, as you come in,
white lights on port buoys), who know the way even when the glass and
iron lamp-frames are all but sunk with ice--west-northwest and a quarter
west for a mile and a half, till the beacon lights of Waackaack and
Point Comfort line out straight on the Jersey shore, then west by south
until the Sandy Hook light lines with the old South Beacon, then a short
way northwest by west and a quarter west until the Conover Beacon lines
with Chapel Hill, and so on straight to the Narrows.
These are the boys who know every rock and shoal in this most
treacherous bay, with its thirteen lighthouses, its two light-ships, and
its eighty danger spots, marked by nun-buoys, bell-buoys, electric-light
buoys, whistling buoys, all familiar to them as their own homes.
Great boys they are for story-telling, these pilots, and by the hour I
have listened to their memories of the sea. Two things made deep
impression on me (so do we of less heroic lives take note of weakness in
the strong)--one, that many pilots cannot swim (the same is true of
deep-sea divers), the other, that pilots, even after years at sea, may
be victims of seasickness like any novice. Pilot Breed, for instance,
as trusty a man as stands at a liner's wheel, assured me that every time
he goes out for duty he goes out for torture, too. And he does his duty
and he bears the torture, so that after all we must count this rather
strength than weakness.
[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF THE OREGON'S PASSENGERS.]
"How can you do your work," I asked, "if you are in such distress?"
"Because I have to," he answered, with a wistful smile. "You know
sailors are often seasick, but they go aloft just the same and
work--because they have to. You could do it yourself if you had to. And
yet," he added, half shutting his eyes, "I've many a time been so bad
when we've tossed and tossed for days and nights on the watch for
vessels that I've come pretty near to dropping quietly overboard and
ending it."
This he said without any special emphasis, yet one could see that it was
true.
"Why don't you give up the life?" I suggested.
"Perhaps I would," said he, "if I could do as well at anything else.
Besides--"
Then came the queerest reason. His father, it seems, a pilot before him,
had suffered from seasickness for thirty-seven years, and then for
thirty years more had been quite free from it. "Now," said Breed, "I've
been a pilot for twenty-two years, so I figure if I stick to it fifteen
years more I may be like my father after that, and have no more
trouble."
Think of that for a scheme of life!
Presently another pilot joined us, and set forth a remarkable
experience. "I was taking the steamer _Lahn_ once," said he, "through a
heavy fog, and the captain and I were both on the bridge, anxious to
locate the light-ship. You know she lies eight miles off the Hook, and
gives incoming vessels their first bearings for the channel. Of course
we didn't expect to see her light--you couldn't see anything in such
weather--but we listened for her fog-horn. How we did listen! And
presently we heard it. You get accustomed to judging distances over
water by the sound, and I put that light-ship at five miles away, or
thereabouts, and I wasn't far wrong. Well, we headed straight for it,
and heard the fog-horn all the time for about a mile. Then it suddenly
stopped.
"'Hullo!' said I. 'What's up?'
"'Confound those light-ship people,' growled the captain. 'I'll make
complaint against them for stopping their horn.'
"'Wait a little,' said I, and kept listening, listening for the horn to
blow again, and all the time we were running nearer to the shoal. Pretty
soon we slowed down, and went on a couple of miles, then another mile.
It seemed as if we must have reached the light-ship, and the captain was
in a state of mind.
"Then suddenly the fog-horn sounded again, not four lengths away, sir,
and the queer thing is it had been sounding the whole blamed time--we
got positive proof of it afterward--only we hadn't heard it. The
explanation was that we had passed through two sound zones--that's what
the scientific people call 'em--and I can tell you those sound zones
make considerable trouble for pilots."
To this perplexing statement the others nodded grave assent, and Breed
capped the tale with a sound-zone story of his own. It was just off
quarantine, and he was turning a liner to bring her up to dock when
another liner came along, also running in. Breed gave the signal three
times for the other liner to port her helm, and she signaled back three
times for him to port his. By good luck each vessel did the right thing,
and they passed safely, but neither pilot heard the whistle of the
other, and each made angry complaint that the other had failed to
whistle: yet witnesses testified that both had whistled, and each one
swore that he had.
The truth was, according to the gentlemen who explain acoustic puzzles,
that these two steamers happened to be placed there down the bay like
two people in a whispering gallery, who cannot hear each other where
they are, but would hear plainly if they moved further apart or drew
closer together, so as to be in the foci of sound. Thus it was that
distant vessels heard both sets of whistles, although there was a nearer
region where these were inaudible.
Investigation has shown that these sound zones frequently establish
themselves at sea (they vary in extent with wind and tide), so that the
sound of horn or bell may be heard for a mile or two, and then become
inaudible for, say, two miles, and then become audible again, almost as
plainly as at first, for several miles more. The theory is that the
sound-waves somehow go skipping over the sea, like a flat pebble over a
mill-pond, in long jumps, and that a vessel under the highest part of
one of these jumps is out of the sound influence, but will come into it
again by going ahead a certain distance or going back a certain
distance. Whether this explanation be the true one or not, the facts are
abundantly vouched for, and are believed to explain various collisions
and wrecks that have long been looked upon as mysteries.
"There are lots of queer things about our business," reflected an old
pilot. "Now, you take steamers, they're just as different as people;
each one has her own ways, and most likely her own partic'lar kind of
crankiness. They talk about twin steamers, but there's no such thing.
You can have 'em both made in the same yard, with every measurement
alike, and they'll be as different, sir, as--as two violins. Why, I
never saw a craft that'd sail the same on both tacks; they're always
harder on one than the other. And as for compasses--well, I don't
suppose there's ever two that came into this port with needles pointing
just the same way. They all lean a shade one way or the other, same as
watches."
"Lean a shade!" put in another man. "I've known 'em to lean a whole lot.
I've known a steamer's compass to point plumb northeast instead of
north. And that time we nearly went on the rocks by it. We were coming
along past Fire Island, and the night was pretty thick. I felt something
was queer and wouldn't go below, although the captain wanted me to. I
kept looking up, looking up, searching for the north star, and pretty
soon I made it out, or thought I did, through a rift in the blackness.
"'Hold on!' said I to the captain, 'something's the matter with your
compass. There's the north star ahead of us, and it ought to be abaft
the bridge.'
"'North star nothing,' said the captain. 'You're tired, man; you need a
rest. Now, you just turn in for an hour, and I'll run her.'
"'You'll run her on the rocks,' said I, 'inside of fifteen minutes
unless you pull her out of here. I tell you that compass is crazy.'
"Well, sir, he began to get scared when he saw me so positive, and a
little later he pulled her out--just in time, too, for we were right on
the breakers of Long Island, thanks to that lying compass. I've heard
it's the magnetic sand at Shinnecock that devils compasses. You know
there's acres and acres of it along there."
This led to a discussion of magnetic sand, and it was edifying to see
how well informed these pilots are in the latest advances of science.
They set forth, for example, the clear advantage of literally pouring
oil upon furious waters, and were all agreed that the foam of a spent
wave, spreading around a life-boat, will often protect her against a
succeeding wave. The foam seems to act like oil in preventing a driving
wind from tossing up the surface--getting a hold on it, one might say.
"Taking it altogether," I asked, "do you men regard a pilot's life as
very dangerous?"
It was Breed who answered: "Taking it altogether," said he, "I regard a
pilot's life as about the most dangerous going. Here's a little thing to
show you how fast they go, these lives of pilots. When I was received as
apprentice there were eighteen other apprentices ahead of me, and the
only way we could get to be pilots was through somebody dropping out,
for there were never more than just so many licenses issued. Well, when
I had been an apprentice for three years the whole eighteen had been
received as pilots, and there were seven vacancies besides. That makes
twenty-five dead pilots in three years, and most of 'em killed. Why, in
the blizzard of 1888 alone ten of our boats were wrecked."
At this there was a solemn shaking of heads, then stories of the taking
off of this or that gallant fellow. There was Van Pelt, one of the
strongest men in the service--a pilot from a family of pilots--killed by
the stroke of a tow-line--a big hawser that snapped across his body like
a knife when the towing-bitts pulled out, and cut him clean in two.
Then there was that Norwegian apprentice, who was lost when they tried
to send a small boat after Denny Reardon on the _Massachusetts_, in the
storm of November, 1897. The _Massachusetts_ was loaded with lions,
tigers, and elephants--the whole Barnum & Bailey show--and Reardon had
just got her safely over the bar. There was a fierce sea on that night,
and Reardon waited at the steamer's side--waited and peered out at the
flare-up light, while the boys on the _New York_ tried to do the
launching trick. And in one of the upsets this Norwegian chap was swept
astern and churned to death in the screw-blades.
[Illustration: A PILOT-BOAT RIDING OUT A STORM.]
Then there was Harry Devere, a Brooklyn pilot, who happened to be out in
the cyclone of 1894, miles from land, in the little pilot-schooner, with
its jaunty "17" on the canvas. There they were, riding out the storm, as
pilot-boats do (facing it, not running), when up loomed a big West
Indian fruiter, burning a blue light forward, which meant she was in
sore need of a man at the wheel who knew the dangers in these parts. The
old ocean was killing mad that night, air and water straining in a death
struggle, and already four pilots had been carried on by liners, carried
on to Europe because there was no human way of putting them off.
To start for that vessel now was madness, and every man in the
pilot-crew knew it, and so did Devere. But he started just the same. He
said he would try, and he did--tried through a cyclone that was sweeping
a whole heaven of snow down upon the bellowing sea as if to smother its
fury. Down into this they went, three of them, and somehow, by a miracle
of skill, got the yawl under the vessel's lea. Then smash they were
hurled against the iron side, and Devere sprang for the rope ladder--a
poor, fluttering thing. He caught it, held fast, and the next moment was
torn away by a great wave that cast him back into the waste of waters.
And so he perished.
You ought to hear them tell these stories!
On the whole it seemed clear there is danger enough in this calling for
the most extravagant taste. And the chief danger is not this boarding of
vessels in storms, nor yet the dancing out of tempests in cockle-shell
craft, where a steamer would scurry to shelter; neither of these, but
the everlasting peril of being run down. That is a danger to break men's
nerves, for always, night and day, the pilot-boats must lie in the swift
track of the liners--right in the track, else they will pass unseen--and
it must be known that this is a narrow track, a funnel for the ships of
all the world, which pass ceaselessly, ceaselessly, converging from all
ports, diverging to all ports, in storm, in fog, in darkness, and there
the pilot-boats must lie, flying their square blue flags by day, burning
their flare-up lights every fifteen minutes by night, waiting, waiting,
in just such strained suspense as a man would feel before the rush of a
silent locomotive, sure to kill him if he does not see it, before the
rush of many silent locomotives which come while he sleeps, while he
eats, perhaps while he prays.
And constantly in the pilot records is this laconic entry: "No. 8 run
over and sunk; all hands lost." "No. 11 run over and sunk; one man
saved, the rest lost." "Pilot-boat _Columbia_ cut down by a liner; ten
men lost." No chance for heroic struggle here, no death with dramatic
setting and columns in the papers, but a stupid, blundering execution
while the men rest helpless on weary bunks, lulled by the surging
sea--"run over and sunk."
II
WHICH SHOWS HOW PILOTS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE FIGHT THE ICE-FLOES
NO study of pilot life can be complete without mention of the river
pilot who has to face perils in the rapids not a whit less real than
those faced by his brother pilot on the sea. I got my first glimpse of
the river pilot, oddly enough, in frozen December time, when even that
great waterway of northern America--I mean the St. Lawrence--was all but
a solid bed of ice, not quite, however, and to that chance I owed a
glimpse of Canadian boatmen at the hazard of their winter work, which is
none the less interesting for being unfamiliar.
It was fifteen degrees below zero, just pleasant Christmas weather in
Quebec, and the old river of saintly fame was grinding along with its
gorge of ice, streaming along under a dazzle of sun, steaming up little
clouds of frozen water-vapor, low-hanging and spreading over it like
tumbled fleece in patches of shine and shadow, quite a balloon effect, I
fancied, as I came down the cliff.
In a tug-boat office at the river's edge, chatting around a stove, yet
bundled thickly as if no stove were there, I found some half dozen
sharp-glancing men, who might have been actors in New York or noblemen
in Russia (I judge by the fineness of their furs), but were pilots here,
lower-river pilots who, as one of them assured me, are vastly more
important than the upper-river kind.
I learned also from one who wore a coat of yellowish-gray skins with
otter trimmings that they were a belated company, who would start
shortly for Orleans Island across the ice. That was Orleans Island there
to the left. No, it did not seem far, but I might find it far enough if
I tried to get there. At this they all laughed.
Meekly I sat down, as was befitting, and listened to the talk. They
conversed in bad French or worse English, and were most of them, strange
to say, Scotchmen who had never seen Scotland and never
would--Douglasses and Browns and McGregors, who couldn't pronounce their
own names, but could take a liner to the gulf, day or night, through the
reefs of Crane Island, past the menacing twin Pilgrims, by windings and
dangers, s
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