Careers of Danger and Daring Part 13

One sees what ground there may be for such lament on turning up the dates of this unhappy Nile expedition, and the heart aches at the sight of those dumb figures. Think of it! the relief-party reached Khartum about February 1, 1885--_too late by less than a week_. Khartum had fallen; Khartum, sore-stricken, lay in fresh-smoking ruins. And when at last British gunboats, firing as they came, steamed into view of the tortured city that had hoped for them so long, there was no General Gordon within walls to thrill with joy. General Gordon was dead, cut down ruthlessly by the Arabs _a few days before_--killed on January 27, with his countrymen so near, so short a distance down the river, that their camp might almost have been made out with field-gla.s.ses. What a difference here a little more hurrying would have made, a very little more hurrying!

It would be interesting indeed if we might hear the whole story of these months spent in fighting a river, in battling with cataract after cataract, in rowing and steering and sailing and hauling a fleet of boats and supplies for an army up, up, up into unknown rapids, through a burning desert, such a long, long way. It would be an inspiration could we know in detail what these pilots did and suffered, what perils they defied, and how some of them perished--in short, what problems of the river they went at and how they fared in solving them. That would make a book by itself.

A few things we may know, however. This, for instance: that, while the maps put down six cataracts in the Nile between Cairo and Khartum, say fifteen hundred miles, there are, in truth, many more than six. Between the second and third alone there are more than six, and some of them bad. Also that the river beyond the third cataract curves away in a great rambling S, so that Lord Wolseley planned to send an expedition, as he actually did, straight on from that point by a short cut across the desert. The important thing then, and the difficult thing, was to reach the third cataract, and upon this all the skill of the voyageurs was concentrated.

The first cataract, about five hundred miles above Cairo, is fairly easy of ascent; the second cataract, some two hundred and fifty miles farther on, is perhaps the most dangerous of all, and resembles its rival at Lachine in this, that the Nile here strains through myriad foam-lashed islands strewn in the channel for a length of seven miles, like teeth of a crooked comb. A balloonist hovering here would see the river streaming through these islands in countless channels that wind and twist in a maze of silver threads. But to lads in the boats these silver threads were so many plunging foes, torrents behind torrents, sweeping down roaring streets of rock, boiling through jagged lanes of rock; and up that seven-mile way the pilots had to go and keep their craft afloat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAULING A STEAMER UP THE NILE RAPIDS.]

Jackson described the boats used in this hazardous undertaking. There were, first, the ordinary whale-boats, about twenty-five feet long and five feet high, with a crew of ten Dongolese at the oars, and two or three sails to catch the helpful northerly winds. Overhead was an awning stretched against the scorching sun, and around the sides were boxes and bags of provisions and ammunition,--five or six tons to a boat,--piled high for shelter against bullets, for no one could tell when a band of Arabs, lurking at some vantage-point, might fall to picking off the men. At a cataract the crew would go ash.o.r.e, save two, a voyageur in the stern to steer and another in the bow to fend off rocks, or, in case of need, give one swift, severing hatchet-stroke on the hauling-rope. For, of course, the ascending power came from a line of Dongolese, black fellows, with backs and muscles to delight a prize-fighter, who, by sheer strength of body, would drag the boat, cargo and all (or sometimes lightened of her cargo by the land-carriers), up, up, with grunting and heaving, against the down-rush of the river.

And woe to the boat if her hatchet-man fails to cut the rope at the very second of danger! So long as the craft can live his arm must stay uplifted; yet he must cut instantly when it is plain she can live no longer. And here one marvels; for how can anything be plain in a blinding, deafening cataract? And how shall the man decide, as they rise on a gla.s.sy sweep and hang for an instant over some rock-gulf beaten into by tons of water, whether they can go through it or not? Truly this is no place for wavering nerve or halting judgment. The man must know and act, _know and act_, because he is that kind of a man; and, even so, in hard places above the second cataract two Indians from Caughnawaga, Morris and Capitan, fine pilots both, held back their blades too long, or, striking as the boat plunged, missed the rope, and paid for the error with their lives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUTTING THE LINE--A MOMENT OF PERIL.]

And even with hauling-line cut in time, the pilots have only changed from peril to peril, for now they are adrift in the cataract, and must shoot down unknown rapids, chancing everything, swinging into sh.o.r.e as soon as may be with the help of paddle and sail. Then is all to be done over again--the line made fast, the black men harnessed on, and the risk of a new channel encountered as before. Thus days or weeks would pa.s.s in getting the whale-boats up a single cataract.

And sometimes they would face the still more formidable task of dragging a whole steamboat up the rapids, with troops aboard and stores to last for weeks. Then how the hauling-men would swarm at the lines, and shout queer African words, and strain at the ropes, when the order came, until knees and shoulders sc.r.a.ped the ground! This was no problem for untutored minds, but took the best wits of Royal Engineers and gentlemen from the schools, who knew the ways of hitching tackle to things so as to make pulley-blocks work miracles. At least, it seemed a miracle the day they started the big side-wheeler _Na.s.sif-Kheir_ up the second cataract with five hawsers on her, three spreading from her bow and two checking her swing on either quarter, and her own steam helping her.

There stood five hundred Dongolese ready to haul, and there was the whole floating population--pilots, soldiers, and camp-followers--gathered on the banks to wonder and to criticize the job which n.o.body understood but half a dozen straight little men in white helmets, who stood about on rocks and snapped things out in English that were straightway yelled down the lines in vigorous Dongolese. It was Trigonometry speaking, and the law of component forces, and "Confound those n.i.g.g.e.rs! Tell 'em to slack away on that starboard hawser. Tell 'em to _slack away_!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OVER THEY WENT, THE WHOLE BLACK LINE OF THEM."]

It was respectfully presented to Mathematics, Esq., that the "n.i.g.g.e.rs"

in question couldn't slack away any more without letting the hawser go or tumbling into the rapids, for they were on one of the little islands, on the brink of it, holding the steamer back while the land-lines hauled against them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS.]

"Then in they go," ordered Trigonometry. "Tell 'em to get over to that next island. Tell 'em to get over _quick_!"

And over they went, the whole black line of them, right through the rapids, swimming and struggling in the buffeting surge, getting across somehow, hawser and all, where white men must have perished. And the steamboat had gained a hundred feet.

Then one of the front lines of haulers in turn had to move forward to an island, to swim for it with six hundred feet of hawser slapping the river as they dragged it. What a picture here as these naked men leaped in, fearless, each with a flashing bayonet thrust in his thick white turban! Mathematics, Esq., had no notion of trying this sort of thing when _he_ changed islands, vastly preferring his pulley-blocks, and would presently be hauled across on a rope trolley, as pa.s.sengers are swung ash.o.r.e from wrecks by the life-saving men. That made a picture, too!

Thus, slowly and with infinite pains, they worked the patient steamboat, length by length, island by island, torrent by torrent, up through the Great Gate (Bab-el-Kebir), up to the very head waters of the second cataract; and there, with victory in their grasp, saw the forward hawser snap suddenly with the noise of a gun, and the old side-wheeler swing out helpless into the main rush of the river, swing clean around as the side-lines held, and then start down. Whereupon it was: "Cut hawsers, everybody!" and drop these pulley-blocks and tackle-fixings, useless now, and let her go, let her go, since there is no stopping her, and Heaven help the boys on board! Then, amid shouts of dismay, the big boat _Na.s.sif-Kheir_ plunged forward to her destruction, while the mathematical gentlemen stared in horror--then stared in amazement. For look! She keeps to the channel! She is running true! Wonder of wonders, she is shooting the rapids, shooting the greatest cataract of the Nile, where boats of her tonnage never pa.s.sed before!

The _Na.s.sif-Kheir_ was saved, and every man aboard her, and every box of stores. She was saved by an humble Canadian pilot, who had never studied trigonometry, but who stepped to the wheel when he saw the peril, and steered her down those furious rapids as he had steered other boats down other rapids on the old St. Lawrence. After that, when the expedition found itself in trouble in the upper cataracts, say those of Tangoor or Akashe or Ambigole or Dal, and when the Royal Engineers had drawn up some neat plan with compa.s.ses and squares for doing a certain thing with a boat, and had proved by the books that it _could_ be done, and agreed that it should be done forthwith, then some one would usually say, just at the last, as by an afterthought:

"I suppose we might as well have in one of those voyageur chaps, just to see what _he_ thinks of it!"

And they usually had him in.

THE BRIDGE-BUILDER

I

IN WHICH WE VISIT A PLACE OF UNUSUAL FEARS AND PERILS

AS I went time and again to the great East River Bridge, the new one whose huge steel towers were drawing to full height in the last months of the century, I found myself under a growing impression that here at last was a business with not only danger in it, but fear of danger.

Divers and steeple-climbers I had seen who p.r.o.nounced their work perfectly safe (though I knew better), and balloonists of the same mind about perils of the air; there were none, they declared, despite a list of deaths to prove the contrary. And so on with others. But here on the bridge were men who showed by little things, and sometimes admitted, that they were _afraid_ of the black-ribbed monster. And it seemed to me that these were men with the best kind of grit in them, for although they were afraid of the bridge, they were not afraid of their fear, and they stuck to their job week after week, month after month, facing the same old peril until--well--

I came upon this fear of the bridge the very first time I sought leave to go upon the unfinished structure. It was in a little shanty of an office on the Brooklyn side, where, after some talk, I suggested to an a.s.sistant engineer, bent over his plans, that I would like to take a picture or two from the top of the tower. That seemed a simple enough thing.

"Think you can keep your head up there?" said he, with a sharp look.

I told him I had climbed to a steeple-top.

"Yes. But you were lashed fast then in a swing, and had a rope to hold on to. Here you've got to climb up by yourself without anything to hold on to, and it's twice as high as the average steeple."

"How high is that?" I asked.

"Well, the saddles are three hundred and forty feet above the river."

"Saddles?"

"That's what we call 'em. They're beds of steel on top of the towers for the cables to rest on--nice little beds weighing thirty-six tons each."

"Oh!" said I. "How do you get them up?"

"Swing 'em up with steam-derricks and cables. Guess you wouldn't care for _that_ job, hanging out on one o' those booms by your eyelashes."

"Perhaps not," I admitted. "But I'd like to watch it."

He said I must see somebody with more authority, and turned to his plans.

"You don't feel in danger yourself, do you," I persisted, "when _you_ go up?"

"Don't, eh?" he answered. "Well, I nearly got cut in two the other day by a plate-washer. It fell over a hundred feet, and went two inches slam into a piece of timber I was standing on." Then he explained what havoc a small piece of iron--some stray bolt or hammer--can work after a long drop.

"That plate-washer," said he, "weighed only two pounds and a half when it began to fall; but it weighed as much as you do when it struck--and you're a fair size."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS. A TOWER OF THE NEW EAST RIVER BRIDGE. THIS PHOTOGRAPH ALSO ILl.u.s.tRATES THE NARROW ESCAPE OF JACK MCGREGGOR ON THE SWINGING COLUMN. (SEE PAGE 192.)]

"Is that based on calculation," said I, "or is it a joke?"

"It's based on the laws of gravitation," he answered, "and it's no joke for the man who gets. .h.i.t. Say, why don't you go down in the yard and look around a little?"

I told him I would, and presently went down into the yard, a noisy, confusing place, where the wind was humming through a forest of scaffolding that held the bare black roadway skeleton a hundred feet overhead. It was a long street of iron resting on a long street of wood, with timber and steel built up in X's on X's, the whole rising in an easy slant to yonder grim tower that loomed heavy and ugly against the sky, a huge bow-legged H with the upper half stretched to a great length, and each leg piled up with more black X's held by two enormous ones between. It looked for all the world as if it had come ready made in a box and had been jointed together like children's blocks, which is about the truth, for this great bridge was finished on paper, then in all its parts, before ever a beam of it saw the East River. As I drew near its feet (which could take a row of houses between heel and toe) I had the illusion, due to bigness and height, that the whole tower was rocking toward me under the hurrying clouds; and at first I did not see the workmen swarming over it, they were so tiny.

But they were making noise enough, these workmen, with their striking and hoisting and shouting. There was the ring of hammers, the _chunk-chunk_ of engines, the hiss of steam, the mellow sound of planks falling on planks, and the angry clash of metal. Presently, far up the sides of the tower, I made out painters dangling on scaffolding or crawling out on girders, busy with sc.r.a.pers and brushes. And higher still I saw the glow of red-hot iron, where the riveters were working.

And at the very top I watched black dots of men swing out over the gulf on the monster derrick-booms, or haul on the guiding-lines. And from time to time the signal-bell would send its impatient call to the throttle-man below, six strokes, four strokes, one stroke, telling him what to do with his engine, and to do it quick.