Careers of Danger and Daring Part 16

"Lots of 'em come from farms," added another. "I know one fellow tried it who'd been a tailor. Said he changed for his health."

This struck the company as highly amusing.

"There's lots of 'em try it and quit," remarked Jimmie Dunn, who is one of the oldest and also one of the youngest men in the guild. I had seen him nearly killed a few days before by the sudden up-swing of a sixteen-ton strut. "I knew a telegraph-pole climber who said he didn't mind any old kind of a tower; he'd go up it all right and work there.

Well, he got all he wanted the first morning. Came down white as that paper. Said he wouldn't stay up half an hour longer if they'd give him the whole blamed bridge. Why, it gets _us_ fellows dizzy once in a while."

"I'll bet it does," agreed the shanty-jack man. "I saw an old hand once start to ride up a barrel of water one hundred and seventy feet on a bridge over the St. Lawrence. The barrel was swung on a 'single runner,'

and you ought to have seen it spin with his weight tipping it lopsided!

Ain't any bridge-man going could have kept his head there. 'Twas a fool thing to do, and the only way this fellow got up alive was by dropping plumb into the barrel of water and shutting his eyes."

"Talking about close calls," spoke up Zimmer, "I can beat that. It was out in Illinois. We were riveting on a high building, where the roof came up in a steep slant from each side to a ridge at the top. There were about twenty of us on this roof, and the way we'd work was in pairs, one man on one side and his partner on the other side, with a rope between 'em, reaching over the ridge, and the two men hung at the two ends, each one balancing the other, like two buckets down a well. We had to get up some scheme like that, or we couldn't have stuck on the roof; it was too steep.

"Well, that was all right as long as both men kept their weight on the rope, but you can see where one would be if the other happened to let go. He'd be chasing down a nice little hill of corrugated iron on a sixty-degree slant, and then over the eaves for a hundred-and-ten-foot drop. It wasn't any merry jest, you'd better believe, but we didn't think much about it and riveted away, until one morning a fellow on my side got his foot out of the noose somehow, and began to slide down.

Say, he was about as cool a man as I ever heard of. I'll never forget how he sort of winked at me as he started, and what he said.

"'Going to blazes, I reckon,' said he. Those were his very words. And down he went; couldn't stop himself, and we couldn't help him, it all happened so quick. He got to the eaves, his feet went over, he was just plunging into s.p.a.ce when his overalls caught on a rivet that somebody had left sticking up there. And there he stuck. Then he said, with just the same comical look, 'Saved by a miracle, by thunder!'

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALKING A GIRDER TWO HUNDRED FEET IN AIR.]

"Must have been a double miracle, for the man on the other side started to drop, too, when the rope slacked, and he'd have been killed sure if a knot in the rope hadn't happened to catch under a piece of loose iron on the ridge. Say, it's that kind of business whitens out a man's hair."

"It's a bridge-man's fate settles these things, friends," commented another member of the group. And he instanced a case where this fate had followed in cruel pursuit of two brothers named Johnson, Michael and Dan, good men both on the girders. Dan, it seems, had been crushed by a swinging load on a West Virginia bridge, and lay crippled in the hospital, only the wreck of a man, whereupon Michael, zealous in his brother's cause, had followed the work over into Kentucky, where a bridge was building across the river at Covington. His purpose was to bring suit against the company for the injury done to Dan.

"And here came the fateful part of it, for scarcely had Michael set foot upon the structure--he had certainly not been ten minutes upon it--when the false work gave way and two iron spans, unsupported now, tipped slowly, then smashed down into the river, carrying with them ruin and death. In this catastrophe were numbered some dozens of wounded and killed, and among the latter was Michael Johnson, found under the river standing upright in a tangle of wreckage, caught and held by the bridge-man's fate."

Then another man told the story of a falling bridge that thrilled me more than this one, although there was in it no loss of life. I always feel that a man who faces death unflinchingly for a fairly long time shows greater heroism, even though death be driven back, than another man who suffers some sudden taking off with no choice left him. This bridge was building at White River Junction, Vermont, over the upper waters of the Connecticut. There was a single iron span reaching two hundred feet between piers of masonry, and everything was ready to swing her off the false work except the driving of a few iron pins. And a bridge swung is a bridge practically finished, so it was merely a matter of hours to put the contractors at ease of mind against any dangers of the torrent. Meantime the dangers were there, for heavy rains had fallen and angered the river with a gorge of mountain streams.

At five o'clock of an afternoon the engineer in charge saw that a crisis was approaching. The waters were sweeping down runaway logs in fiercer and fiercer bombardment, and it was a question if the false work could hold against them. And for the time being, until morning surely, the false work must carry the span. If the false work went the span would go, and the bridge would be destroyed.

So the chief engineer ordered all hands down on scows and rafts, which were straightway jammed close against the false work by the current.

Down on these lurching platforms went seventeen bridge-men, and set to work with iron-shod pike-poles, spearing the plunging logs as they came by and swinging them out through the bents of false work, down roaring lanes of water twenty feet wide between the legs of scaffolding. If these could be protected from the logs, the bridge might be saved; if they could not be protected, the bridge was doomed. It was the strength and skill of the pike-pole lads against the fury of the river.

For nine hours the battle lasted, and all this time the bridge-men worked wonders down in the black night, with rain beating on them in torrents and the logs coming faster and harder as the hours pa.s.sed.

Every man in the crew realized that the false work might give way at any moment, for the whole structure was groaning and shivering as they swung against it, and they knew that if it went at all it would go as one piece, without a moment's warning. And that would mean sudden death in the river under the crush of a broken bridge. Yet no man shirked his duty, and long after midnight they were there on the scows still, fighting the logs with bridge-men's grit and the comfort of steaming hot coffee--well, we may call it coffee.

But it was a hopeless fight now; the engineer saw this, and at two o'clock ordered all hands off the scows and back to the sh.o.r.e. There is a point beyond which you cannot allow men to go on offering their lives.

And scarcely five minutes later--indeed, the last man was barely off the structure, so our friend declared, and he was one of the seventeen--the false work ripped loose and was swept away, and the iron span crashed down into the furious flood.

After this Zimmer described his sensations in a fall of one hundred and thirty-five feet from the eighth story of a skysc.r.a.per they were putting up out West. He was sitting on an upright column of the steel skeleton, waiting to pin fast a cross-beam, when a girder swung over from the other side and struck him. It weighed a matter of six tons. Down went Zimmer, and, as he dropped, he caught at a granite block resting loose there and toppled it over with him. And the thought in his mind as he fell was that here was an interesting ill.u.s.tration of what he had learned at school about a heavy body falling faster than a light one, for although he had a start of eight feet on the granite block, it pa.s.sed him one story down, and smashed ahead through a staging that might have saved him. Then, as the stone sheered off, he estimated, did Zimmer (falling still), that its weight was about fifteen hundred pounds. Then he himself smashed through two stagings and caught at a rope, which burned through his gloves, and the next thing he knew was days later at the hospital, where somebody was bending over him saying: "Will you please tell me about your sensations coming down?" "And there was a newspaper reporter trying to interview me," said Zimmer, "which is what you might call rushing things."

"Tell ye a fall that stirred us boys all right," said another man. "It was in the big shaft at Niagara Falls. You know where they send electricity all over the State. The shaft was a hundred and eighty feet deep, and they used to lower us down in a boat swung from an iron cable.

Well, one day the drum slipped and let the whole business fall free with five of us in the boat. We went clear down one hundred and seventy feet, and the boat fell away under us just like that granite block of Zimmer's, and there we were hanging fast to the corner chains and every man of us expecting to die. But somehow the engineer got his brakes on just as we were ten feet above bottom, and blamed if we didn't land fairly easy without a man hurt. Just the same, we'd looked over our lives pretty well in those few seconds."

After this came tragic memories from other men. One recalled the terrible wreck of the Cornwall bridge over the St. Lawrence. Another the disaster at Louisville, when two great iron spans, reaching a thousand feet, went down into the Ohio, with false work, "traveler," and sixty-five men, of whom only four escaped. "And one of the four, sir, was on the "traveler," two hundred feet above the water, when she went down. Never had a scratch."

So the talk ran on, and I came away with mingled feelings of wonder and admiration and sadness. Here are men who leave their families every morning with full knowledge that before nightfall disaster may smite them, as they have seen it smite their comrades. Why, one asks, do they keep to such a career? And if they believe, as apparently they do, that bridge-men are fated to violent death, why do they not leave this work and seek a safer calling?

I suppose the same reason holds them to the bridge that holds the diver to his suit, the climber to his steeple, each one of us to his particular path--it is so hard to find another. And then there is the lash of pressing need, the home to keep, and no time for experiment. Yet there are the hard facts always, that no insurance company will take a risk upon these lives, that bridge contractors are not philanthropists nor issuers of pensions, and that if a man fall from the structure, say at 11.50 A.M., his pay stops short not at twelve o'clock, but at ten minutes before twelve. Which is probably excellent business, although it seems poor humanity.

THE FIREMAN

I

WHEREIN WE SEE A SLEEPING VILLAGE SWEPT BY A RIVER OF FIRE AND THE BURNING OF A FAMOUS HOTEL

I WILL first tell a story, fresh in my memory, about a New Jersey village lost in the hills back of Lake Hopatcong, a charming, sleepy little village that reaches along a stream fringed with b.u.t.terball-trees and looks contentedly out of its valley up the steep wooded hill that rises before it. n.o.body in Glen Gardner cares much what there is in the world beyond that hill.

The general att.i.tude of Glen Gardner toward progress is shown well enough by this, that the village could never see the use of a fire department. They never had one, and never proposed to; other people's houses might get on fire; theirs never did. As a matter of fact, n.o.body could remember when there had been a fire in Glen Gardner, unless it was Aunt Ann Fritts, who was eighty-eight years old, and remembered back farther than was necessary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNING OIL-TANKS.]

This was the case on a certain drizzling Sunday in March of the new-century year, when, at 6.30 A.M., the world beyond the hill intruded itself upon Glen Gardner's peacefulness in such strange and sudden fashion that old Mrs. Bergstresser collapsed from the shock. What made it worse was the fact that there had been a dance the night before at Farmer Apgar's, and half-past six found most of the village dozing comfortably. There was really nothing to do before church-time. So they all thought, at least, little suspecting that even now, as they slept, a long oil-train was puffing up the steep grade from Easton, bringing sixty cars loaded with crude petroleum and trouble.

On came the oil-train, its front engine panting as the drivers slipped, and the "pusher" back of the caboose shouldering up the load with snorts of impatience. Ouf! The front of the train climbs over the ridge at Hampton Junction, half a mile back of Glen Gardner, where the Jersey Central tracks reach their highest point. Now they are all right. There is a long down grade ahead for three miles. The pusher gives a final shove at the rear end, and cuts loose, glad to be rid of the job. The men in the caboose wave good-by to the fireman and engineer as they drop away.

h.e.l.lo! What's that jerk? They look out and see the last oil-car just clearing the divide. It's nothing; they're over now; they're running faster. Queer place, this! There's a spring here with two streams that part in the middle like a woman's hair; one goes down the east side, the other down the west side. What? Broken in two?

The caboose crew start to run forward; a brakeman on the front half starts to run back. Thirty-seven cars behind the engine a coupling has snapped, and the train is taking the down grade in two sections: twenty-three loaded oil-cars are running away, and a million gallons of oil are chasing two million gallons down a mountain-side!

Everything now depends upon the brakeman on the forward section. He is the only man who can judge the danger, and signal the engineer what to do. The engineer does not even know that anything is wrong. It is plainly the brakeman's business to keep the front half of the train out of the way of the rear half. They must go faster, faster as the runaway cars gain on them. Any one can see that it is undesirable to have two million gallons of oil struck by a million gallons coming at forty miles an hour.

Yet the brakeman does the wrong thing (no man can be sure how he will act in imminent peril); the brakeman signals the engineer to stop.

Perhaps he planned a gradual slow-up to block the flying section gently; perhaps he did not realize how fast the runaway was coming. Most likely he lost his head entirely, as better men have done in less serious crises. At any rate, the front section presently drew up with grinding brakes on the ledge of track that stretches along the cheek of the mountain just over the slope where the slumbering village lay, not five feet from Carling's warehouse, beyond which were the coal-yards and the wooden houses of Glen Gardner, the post-office, the hardware store, and the main street. Of all places for that train to stop, this was the worst.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SNYDER, WHITE AS A GHOST, RACED AHEAD OF THE FIRE."]

It was a matter of seconds now until the crash came, and on this followed a shattering blast that shook the valley and hill, and brought the village to its feet in a daze of fear. Four oil-cars were smashed in the wreck and hurled across the tracks for the rear cars to pile up on.

And straightway there was a gushing oil-well here, out of which in the first ten seconds came an explosion with the noise of cannon, that showered burning oil over fields and trees and shingled housetops, while a fire column shot up fifty feet in the air and began its fierce feeding on the broken tanks. And out of this fire fountain came a smoking fire river, that rolled down the hill toward the village.

At this moment, Joe Snyder, who had not gone to the dance the night before, and was doomed now to the early worm's fate, had just put his key in the door of the butcher-shop. He never turned the key, nor saw it again, nor saw the butcher-shop again. What he did see was a roaring torrent of oil sweeping down the street and blazing fifteen feet high as it came. And the picture next presented when Snyder, white as a ghost, raced down the sidewalk ahead of the fire, will stay long in the memory of those who saw it from their windows.

But this was no time for looking at pictures out of windows; there were other things to be done, and done quickly. Never did fire descend so swiftly upon a village. Even as the startled sleepers stared in fright, houses all about them burst into flames like candles on a Christmas tree. Now the warehouse is burning, and the sheds across the tracks; and there goes the hardware store; and there goes the carpenter's shop; and now the fire-stream rolls through Main Street, and licks up the Reeves house on one corner and Vliet's store on the other. Then the drug-store goes, and Carling's store and Rinehart's restaurant. Trees are burning, fences are burning, the very streets are burning, and men see fire rolling across their front yards like drifting snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE VERY STREETS ARE BURNING."]

I do not purpose to follow the incidents of this fire and the several explosions, nor show how the village fought against it vainly, damming up fiery oil-streams and turning their courses, toiling at bucket-lines, and spreading blistering walls with soaked carpets. The point is that these efforts alone would never have availed, and Glen Gardner would speedily have lain in ashes, had not fire-engines from Sommerville and Washington been hurried to the spot. And even as it was, a section of the village was wiped away in clean-licked ruins, which stood for many a day as a grim reminder that the only safety against fires in these times lies in being able to fight fires well.

Which brings me, of course, to the modern fire department and the men who risk their lives as a matter of daily routine to protect their fellow-men. I will begin with some incidents of one particular fire that happened in New York on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. It was a pleasant afternoon, and Fifth Avenue was crowded with people gathered to watch the parade. A gayer, pleasanter scene it would have been hard to find at three o'clock, or a sadder one at four.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, coming along with bands and banners, were nearing Forty-sixth Street, when suddenly there sounded hoa.r.s.e shouts and the angry clang of fire-gongs, and down Forty-seventh Street came Hook and Ladder 4 on a dead run, and swung into Fifth Avenue straight at the pompous Hibernians, who immediately became badly scared Irishmen and took to their heels. But the big ladders went no farther.

They were needed here, oh, so badly needed; for the Windsor Hotel was on fire--the famous Windsor Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street.

It was on fire, far gone with fire before ever the engines were called; and the reason was that everybody supposed that of course _somebody_ had sent the alarm. And so they all watched the fire, and waited for the engines, ten, fifteen minutes, and by that time a great column of flame was roaring up the elevator-shaft, and people on the roof, in their madness, were jumping down to the street. Then some sane citizen went to a fire-box and rang the call, and within ninety seconds Engine 65 was on the ground. And after her came Engines 54 and 21. But there was no making up that lost fifteen minutes. The fire had things in its teeth now, and three, four, five alarms went out in quick succession.