Careers of Danger and Daring Part 27

So the next thing was a plunge into the placid Brandywine, which winds across the yards between willow-hung banks. In went the men, in went young Alexis Dupont, and with a little hiss their flaming garments were extinguished. Then, as they struck out into the stream, they looked back and saw that the wind was carrying a shower of sparks from the burning building to the roof of a cutting-mill near by, where tons of powder lay. For one of the sparks to reach the tiniest powder train would mean the blowing up of this mill, and almost certainly the blowing up of another and another by the concussion, for it is in vain that they try to protect powder-mills by scattering them over wide yards in many little buildings. When one explodes, the great shock usually sets off others, as a falling rock turns loose an avalanche.

All this young Dupont realized in a single glance. There would be an awful disaster presently, with many lives imperiled, unless those falling firebrands could somehow be kept off that roof. To know this was to act. Millionaire or not, peril or not, it was his plain duty as a Dupont to fight those sparks, and, without a moment's wavering, he turned back and scrambled up the bank.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL.]

"Come on, boys!" he cried; "start the bucket line," and a moment later he was climbing to the roof of the threatened mill, where he did all that a brave man can do--stamped out the falling embers, dashed water again and again upon the kindling fire as the men pa.s.sed up full buckets, and for a time seemed to conquer. But presently the fire flamed hotter, the sparks came faster, and the water came not fast enough. He saw--he must have seen--that the struggle was hopeless, that the mill beneath him was doomed, that the explosion must come soon. From the ground they shouted, calling on him to save himself. He shouted back an order that they pa.s.s up more water, and keep pa.s.sing water. There was only one thing in the world he wanted--water.

The men below did their best, but it was a vain effort, for in those days the roofs of powder-mills were made of pitch and cement--not of iron, as to-day--and by this time the fire had eaten its way nearly through. Alexis Dupont, working desperately, stood there with flames spreading all around him. It was plain to every one that the minutes of his life were numbered. Again they shouted--and--

The explosion came like an execution, and out of the wreck of it they bore away his crushed and broken body. The last thing he knew was that he had played the game out fairly to the end--he died like a Dupont, said the men.

Such was the spirit of the second generation (Alexis Dupont was a son of old Eleuthere, founder of the line), and later we find the same courage in the third generation, as on March 29, 1884, when La Motte Dupont, one of the grandchildren, took his stand inside the dynamite-mill--his mill--when it was threatened by fire, and stayed there after every man had left it, struggling with hand and brain against the danger until the explosion, coming like a thousand cannon, crashed his body deep into a sand-heap and left it with the life gone out.

I suppose this is only an instance of nature's tendency to furnish always what is needed, to raise up a hero for each emergency; but it is encouraging to know that the very finest kind of courage may be thus developed by the mere pressure of moral responsibility in a man under no master, but free to be a craven if he will. We have seen something like this in the splendid devotion of fire-department chiefs, who often outshine all their men simply because they cannot resist the gallant spirit in their own hearts.

Now for the exception to this rule of persisting courage, an exception sometimes presented in the lives of explosive makers (and in the other lives, too), and showing that in certain cases courage may suddenly and strangely disappear. A man may be brave for years, and then cease to be brave. The wild-beast tamer may awaken some morning and discover himself afraid of his lions. The steeple-climber who has never flinched at any height may shrink at last. The pilot in the rapids, the acrobat on his swing, the diver sinking to a wreck, may feel a quaking of heart unknown before. Here is apparent contradiction, for how can courage be made by habit and then unmade? I don't know. I merely give the facts as I have found them, and it is quite certain that a st.u.r.dy Irishman who has shoveled powder all his life and waded in it knee-deep, as if it were so much coal-dust, may, for no reason he can put finger on, find himself lying awake of nights reflecting on what would happen if a spark should strike under one of the big rollers he feeds so carelessly, or, remembering uneasily that dream of his wife's about a white horse--every powder-man knows the close relation between dreams and explosions, and--well, they will all tell you this, that the only thing for a man to do when his heart feels the cold touch of fear is to quit his job. If he doesn't his knell is sounded, he is marked for sacrifice, his tigers will rend him, the deep waters will overwhelm him, a swift fall will crush him--he will surely die.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER.]

The greatest catastrophe in the records of powder-making came because a man ignored such plain warning of his own fear. At least, the workmen at the Dupont mills will tell you this if you can get them to break through their usual reserve. The man was William Green, and, whatever his fault, he paid the fullest price for it. Green was stationed in one of the magazines, with the responsibility of sealing up hexagonal powder, a very powerful kind used by the government in heavy guns. This powder comes pressed into little six-sided cakes of reddish color, which are packed in large wooden boxes lined with tin, and it was Green's duty to solder the tin covers tight with a hot iron. In each box there was enough of this powder to blow up a fortress, and it is no wonder the occupation finally told on Green's nerves. He said to his wife that sooner or later a speck of grit would touch his iron and make a spark, and then-- The theory is that a spark is required to explode powder which will only burn harmlessly at the touch of a hot iron or a flame.

However this may be (and I should add that the theory is disputed), Green felt that he was in danger, and by that fact, say the powder-men, if for no other reason, he _was_ in danger. And one day--it was October 7, 1890--the spark came; surely that was a most important spark, for it caused the explosion of one hundred and fifty tons of gunpowder, the instant death of thirteen men and one woman, and the serious or fatal injury of twenty-two men and nine women.

Only an earthquake could have wrought such terrible destruction. The city of Wilmington was shaken to its foundations. Great chasms were rent in the solid rock under the exploding magazines. Trees were torn up by the roots. Iron castings, weighing tons, were hurled clean across the Brandywine. Iron columns thick as a man's waist were twisted and bent like copper wire. Horses outside the yards were found with legs missing; men were found stripped clean of their clothes, and this curious fact was developed, that a man or a horse in the region of explosion would have shoes blown from the feet (iron shoes or leather shoes) if the legs were on the ground at the moment of shock, but would keep shoes on if the legs were lifted. Thus poor Green was found with both feet shod, and so identified, although his body had no other st.i.tch of covering, and the explanation was that he probably saw the spark in time to spring away, and was actually in the air when the explosion came.

In my investigations I have heard various stories showing what uncertainty there is as to the behavior of dynamite in the presence of fire. Workmen who handle it constantly in blasting operations say you can put fire to a stick of dynamite without danger, and it will simply burn away in bluish flame. On the other hand, they admit that in every fifty or a hundred sticks there may be one where the touch of fire _will_ bring explosion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL.]

It is quite certain this was the case in New York's recent tunnel accident near One Hundred and Eightieth Street, and I have some facts of interest here obtained from a workman who was in the main gallery at the time. This man heard a shout of warning, and, looking down the rock street, saw a puddle of blazing oil from one of the lamps lapping at the side of a heavy wooden box. He knew that the box was full of dynamite, and as he looked he saw the yellow oil flame turn to blue. That was enough for him, and he started to run for his life. But the explosion caught him in the first step, lifted him from the ground, and bore him on, while his legs kept up the motions of running. He was running on the air.

As he was thus hurled along his knee struck a large stone between the siding and the north heading, and he fell on his face, half dazed. The air was thick with strangling fumes, there was a frightful din about him--yells and crashing stones. Every lamp had been blown out, and in the utter darkness he could see the glaring eyeb.a.l.l.s of fleeing negroes, who cursed in awful oaths as they ran. He pressed his mouth close to the ground, and found he could breathe better. He felt some one step over him, and seized a leg. The leg kicked itself free and went on. He groped about with his hands, and touched an iron rail; it was the little track for hauling the dumping-cars. He crept along this painfully to the siding, then down the siding to the shaft, where, in the blackness, he found a frantic company--negroes mad with fright, Italians screaming and praying, Irishmen keeping fairly cool, but wondering why, oh, why! the elevator did not come, and several men stretched on the ground quite still or groaning quietly.

Time lacks for the rest of the story; they took out men dressed in a collar and shirt-band only--everything else blown off, and some whose faces were mottled with fragments of stone, a kind of dynamite tattooing, and some grievously injured. There are no limits to the fury of dynamite, once it sets out to be cruel.

II

WE VISIT A DYNAMITE-FACTORY AND MEET A MAN WHO THINKS COURAGE IS AN ACCIDENT

ON a certain pleasant morning in June, I set forth to visit a dynamite-factory, and see with my own eyes, if might be, some of the men who follow this strange and hazardous business. As the train rushed along I thought of the power for good and evil that is in this wonderful agent: dynamite piercing mountains; dynamite threatening armies and blowing up great ships; a teacupful of dynamite shattering a fortress, a teaspoonful of the essence of dynamite--that is, nitroglycerin--tearing a man to atoms. What kind of fellows must they be who spend their lives making dynamite!

In due course I found myself back in the hill land of northern New Jersey, where everything is green and quiet, a lovely summer's retreat with nothing in external signs to suggest an industry of violence. Stop; here is a sign, though it doesn't seem much: two sleepy wagons lumbering along the road between these cool woods and the waving fields. Farm produce? Lumber? No. The first is loaded with a sort of yellow meal, and trails the way with yellow sprinklings. That is sulphur. They use it at the works. The second is piled up with crates, out of which come thick gla.s.s necks like the heads of imprisoned turkeys. These are carboys of nitric acid, hundreds of gallons of that terrible stuff which is so truly liquid fire that a single drop of it on a piece of board will set the wood in flames. This nitric acid mixed with innocent sweet glycerin (_it_ comes along the road in barrels) makes nitroglycerin, and the proper mixing of these two is the chief business of a dynamite-factory.

Farther down the road I came to a railroad track where a long freight-train was standing on a siding. Some men were busy here loading a car with clean-looking wooden boxes that might have held starch or soap, but _did_ hold dynamite neatly packed in long, fat sticks like huge fire-crackers. Each box bore this inscription in red letters: HIGH EXPLOSIVES. DANGEROUS. I looked along the train and saw that there were several cars closed and sealed, with a sign nailed on the outside: POWDER. HANDLE CAREFULLY.

In this case "powder" means dynamite, for the product of a dynamite-factory is always called powder. I think the men feel more comfortable when they use that milder name. There was "powder" enough on this train to wreck a city, but n.o.body seemed to mind. The horses switched their tails. The men laughed and loitered. They might have been laying bricks, for any interest they showed.

I asked one of them if it is considered safe to haul car-loads of dynamite about the country. He said that some people consider it safe, and some do not; some railroads will carry dynamite, while others refuse it.

"Suppose a man were to shoot a rifle-ball into one of these cars," I asked, "do you think it would explode?"

This led to an argument. One of the group was positive it _would_ explode. Concussion, he declared, is the thing that sets off dynamite.

Another knew of experiments at the works where they had fired rifle-b.a.l.l.s into quant.i.ties of dynamite, and found that sometimes it exploded and sometimes it didn't.

Then a third man spoke up with an air of authority. "You've got to have a red spark," said he, "to set off dynamite. I've handled it long enough to know. Here's an experiment that's been tried: They took an old flat-car and loaded it with rocks; then they fastened a box of dynamite to the b.u.mper, and let the car run down a steep grade, bang! into another car anch.o.r.ed at the bottom. And they found that the dynamite never exploded unless the b.u.mpers were faced with iron. It didn't matter how much concussion they got with wooden b.u.mpers, the dynamite was like that much putty; but as soon as a red spark jumped into it out of the iron, why, off she'd go."

Then he instanced various cases where powder-cars had gone through railroad wrecks without exploding, although boxes of dynamite had been smashed open and scattered about.

"How about that car of ours the other day up in central New York?" said the first man. "Everything blown to pieces, and six lads killed."

He smiled grimly, but the other persisted: "That collision only proves what I say. There was a red-hot locomotive plowing through a car of dynamite, and of course she went up. But it wasn't the concussion did it; it was the sparks."

"You say that it takes a red spark," I observed, "to set off dynamite.

Do you mean that a white spark wouldn't do it?"

"That's what I mean," said he. "It seems queer, but it's a fact. Put a white-hot poker into a box of dynamite, and it will only burn; but let the poker cool down until it's only red-hot and the dynamite will explode."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "EVERYTHING WAS BLOWN TO PIECES."]

Pondering this remarkable statement, I continued on my way, and presently, not seeing any big building, asked a farmer where the Atlantic Dynamite Works were. He swept the horizon with his arm, and said they were all about us; they covered hundreds of acres--little, low buildings placed far apart, so that if one exploded it wouldn't set off the rest.

"The dynamite-magazines are along the hillside yonder," he said. "If they went up, I guess there wouldn't be much left of the town."

"What town?" said I.

"Why, Kenvil. That's where the dynamite-mixers live. It's over there.

Quickest way is across this field and over the fence."

I followed his advice, and presently pa.s.sed near a number of small brick buildings so very innocent-looking that I found myself saying, "What!

_this_ blow up, or _that_ little sputtering shanty wreck a town?" It seemed ridiculous. I learned afterward that I had walked through the most dangerous part of the works; it isn't size here that counts.

I paused at several open doors, and got a whiff of chemicals that made me understand the dynamite-sickness of which I had heard. No man can breathe the strangling fumes of nitric acid and nitrated glycerin without discomfort, and every man here _must_ breathe them. They rise from vats and troughs like brownish-yellow smoke; they are in the mixing-rooms, in the packing-rooms, in the freezing-house, in the separating-house, everywhere; and they take men in the throat, and make their hearts pound strangely, and set their heads splitting with pain.

Not a workman escapes the dynamite-headache; new hands are wretched with it for a fortnight, and even the well-seasoned men get a touch of it on Monday mornings after the Sunday rest.

In walking about the works I noticed that the several buildings, representing different steps in the manufacture of explosives, are united by long troughs or pipes sufficiently inclined to allow the nitroglycerin to flow by its own weight from one building to another, so that you watch the first operations in dynamite-making at the top of a slope, and the last ones at the bottom. Of course this transportation by flow is possible for nitroglycerin only while it is a liquid, and not after it has been absorbed by porous earth and given the name of dynamite and the look of moist sawdust. As dynamite it is transported between buildings on little railroads, with horses to haul the cars.

I noted also that most of the buildings are built against a hillside or surrounded by heavy mounds of earth, so that if one of them blows up, the others may be protected against the flight of debris. Without such barricade the shattered walls and rocks would be hurled in all directions with the energy of cannonb.a.l.l.s, and a single explosion would probably mean the destruction of the entire works.

At one place I saw a triangular frame of timbers and iron supporting a five-hundred-pound swinging mortar, that hung down like a great gipsy kettle under its tripod. In front of this mortar was a sand-heap, and here, I learned, were made the tests of dynamite, a certain quant.i.ty of this lot or that being exploded against the sand-heap, and the mortar's swing back from the recoil giving a measure of its force. The more nitroglycerin there is in a given lot of dynamite, the farther back the mortar will swing. It should be understood that there are many different grades of dynamite, the strength of these depending upon how much nitroglycerin has been absorbed by a certain kind of porous earth.

In a little white house beyond the laboratory I found the superintendent of the works, a man of few words, accustomed to give brief orders and have them obeyed. He did not care to talk about dynamite--they never do.

He did not think there was much to say, anyhow, except that people have silly notions about the danger. He had been working with dynamite now for twenty-five years, and never had an accident--that is, himself. Oh, yes; some men had been killed in his time, but not so many as in other occupations--not nearly so many as in railroading. Of course there was danger in dealing with any great force; the thing would run away with you now and then; but on the whole he regarded dynamite as a very well behaved commodity, and much slandered.

"Then you think dynamite-workers have no great need of courage?" I suggested.