Careers of Danger and Daring Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ITS MASCOT KITTEN, CURLED UP THERE BY THE ASH-BOX."]

When we arrived the "traveler" was bringing to one spot the ma.s.sive parts of a cross-section in our arbor-way. It was a stretched-out iron W, flattened down between girders across top and bottom. This, we learned, was a "strut," and it weighed sixteen tons, and it would presently be lifted bodily overhead to span the roadway. We waited a full hour to see this thing done--to watch another st.i.tch taken in the bridge; and it seems to me, as I think of it, that I can recall no hour when I saw so many perils faced with such indifference.

First, the booms would drop down their clanking jaws and grip the chain-bound girders from little delivery cars, then swing them around to the lifting-place at the farther end of the traveler. Now we understood what our friend down the way meant by "skipping along lively when the falls come at you." He meant this boom-tackle and its load as they sweep over the structure in blind, merciless force. And, indeed, they did skip along, the bridge-men, as the traveler turned its arms this way and that, and several times I saw a man slip as he hurried, and barely save himself. A single misstep might mean the crush of a ten-ton ma.s.s, or a plunge into s.p.a.ce, or both. It seemed a pretty s.h.i.+very choice.

"One of our boys got hit this morning," said a man.

"Hit by the falls?"

"Yes; he tried to dodge, but his foot caught somehow, and he got it hard right here." He touched his thigh. "It flattened him out, just over there where that man's making fast the load."

"Was he badly hurt?"

"Pretty bad, I guess. He couldn't get up, and we lowered him in a coal-box with a runner; that's a single line. You see, it's very easy to take a wrong step."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIDING UP ON AN EIGHTEEN-TON COLUMN.]

Presently somebody yelled something, and this man moved away to his task; but we were joined almost immediately by another bridge-man, who told us how they ride the big steel columns from the ground clear to the cap of the tower. Two men usually ride on a column, their duty being to keep her from b.u.mping against the structure as she lifts, and then bolt her fast when she reaches the top. Of course, as a tower grows in height, these rides become more and more terrifying, so that some of the men who are equal to anything else draw back from riding up a column.

These fears were justified just at the last on the New York tower, and a man named Jack McGreggor had an experience that might well have blanched his hair. They had reached the 325-foot level, and were placing the last lengths of column but one, and McGreggor was riding up one of these lengths alone. It was a huge ma.s.s twenty-five feet long, square in section, and large enough to admit a winding ladder inside. It weighed eighteen tons. As the overhead boom lifted the pendent length (with McGreggor astride) and swung it clear of the column it was to rest on, the foreman, watching there like a hawk, wiggled his thumb to the signal-man on a platform below, who pulled four strokes on the bell, which meant "boom up" to the engine-man. So up came the boom, and in came the column, hanging now in true perpendicular, with McGreggor ready to slide down from his straddling seat for the bolting.

Now the foreman flapped his hand palm down, and the signal-man was just about to jerk two bells, which means "lower your load," when rip--smash--tear! Far down below a terrible thing had happened: the frame of the engine had snapped right over the bearing, and out pulled the cable drum that was holding the strain of that eighteen-ton column, and down came the falls. It was just like an elevator breaking loose at the top of its shaft. The column started to fall; there was nothing to stop it; and then--and then a miracle was worked; it must have been a miracle; it is so extraordinary. That falling column struck squarely, end to end, on the solid column beneath it, rocked a little, righted itself, and stayed there! Which was more than Jack McGreggor did, for he came sliding down so fast--he came with a wild, white face--that he all but knocked the foreman over; and the foreman was white himself. And what that eighteen-ton column would have done to the bridge, and the boys on it, had it crashed down those three hundred and twenty-five feet, is still a subject of awed discussion.

All this time a dozen men have been swarming over the strut, hammering bolts, tightening nuts, hitching fast the "falls," making sure that all parts are rigid and everything ready for the lifting. At the front of the traveler two foremen, "pushers" they are called, yell without ceasing: "Hey, Gus! Hey! Hey, Jimmie! Put that winch in! Slack away them falls! What the mischief are you doing? Hey! Hey!" And they shake their hands and dance on their toes, for all the world like a pair of mad auctioneers.

The men work faster under this vigorous coaching. Four or five are stretched flat on their stomachs along the top girder, as many more cling to steep slanting braces, and some hang fast to the uprights, with legs twisted around them like j.a.panese pole-climbers. No matter what his position, every man plies a tool of some sort--wrench, chisel, or sledge, and presently all is ready.

Now the n.i.g.g.e.rheads start with a pounding and sputtering that make the bridge quiver. The big spools haul fast on the ropes, the falls stiffen, the booms creak, and with shouts from every one, the strut heaves and lifts and hangs suspended. The "pushers" yell at the n.i.g.g.e.rheads to stop. The men swarm over the load, studying every joint, then wave that all is well, and come sliding, twisting down just as the engines start again, all but two men, who sit at the ends and ride along with the hoist. Meantime the others are racing up the side frames, from slant to slant to the top of the truss, where they wait eagerly, yelling the while, at the points on either side, where presently the strut-ends must be adjusted and then bolted fast.

It seems like some mad school-boy game of romps. Now we'll all swing over this precipice! Whoop-la! Now we'll all run across this gulf! Wow!

wow! wow! Every man in that scrambling crew is facing two deaths, or three deaths, and doing hard work besides. Look! There comes the strut up to its place, and nearly crushes Jimmie Dunn with its sharp edge, as a strut _did_ crush another lad not so long ago. And see that man hang out in a noose of a rope, hang out over nothing, and drive in bolts. And see this fellow kick off on the free pulley-block and come sliding down.

Hoooo! And there are the others jumping at the falls after him, and coming down with a rush, laughing. Risking their lives? One would say they never thought of it.

"Why, that's nothing!" said one of them; "we used to slide down the falls from the top of the tower. But you've got to know the trick or the ropes'll burn through your trousers. It's a great slide, though."

"Aren't you ever afraid of falling?" I asked a serious-faced young man who was running one of the n.i.g.g.e.rheads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE "TRAVELER." HOISTING A STRUT.]

"I'll tell you how it is," said he; "we're not afraid when a lot of us do a thing together, but each one might be afraid to do it alone. In our hearts I guess we're all afraid."

"Ever have an accident yourself?"

"No," he said, "but--" He hesitated, and then explained that he had been standing near the day "Chick" Chandler fell from the Brooklyn tower. It hadn't been a nice thing to see, and--

Finally I got the story. Chandler, it seems, was the first man killed on the bridge, and he died for a jest. He was working that day on the one-hundred-and-ten-foot level; he was an experienced man and counted sure of foot. It had begun to sprinkle, and the men were looking about for their rain-coats, when Chandler, in a spirit of mischief, started across a girder for an oil-skin that belonged to a comrade. And so interested was he in this little prank that he forgot prudence, perhaps forgot where he was, and the next second he was falling, and presently there was the shock of impact far below, and then a red No. 1 was branded on the ugly black bridge.

III

WHICH TELLS OF MEN WHO HAVE FALLEN FROM GREAT HEIGHTS

THERE is this to note about falls from bridges, that the very short ones often kill as surely as the long ones. They told me of one case where a man fell eight feet and broke his neck, while other men have fallen from great heights and escaped. A workman of the Berlin Bridge Company, for instance, fell from a structure in New Hamps.h.i.+re, one hundred and twenty feet, and lived. And I myself saw Harry Fleager on the East River Bridge, New York, and from his own lips heard his remarkable experience.

Fleager is to-day a st.u.r.dy, active young man, and when I saw him he was running a thumping n.i.g.g.e.rhead engine on the end-span. Nevertheless, it was only a few months since he had fallen ninety-seven feet smash down to a pile of bricks.

"It happened this way," said he. "One of the big booms broke under its load just over where I was standing, and the tackle-block swung around and caught me back of the head. That knocked me off the false work, and I went straight down to the ground. Just to show you the force of my fall, sir, I struck a timber about thirty feet before I landed; it was eight inches wide and four inches thick, and I snapped it off without hardly slowing up. After that I lay for a week in the hospital with bruises, but there wasn't a bone broken, and I've been at work ever since."

Several times while I was seeking permission to go up on the structure I was treated to stories like this and to mild dissuasion. It was too dangerous a thing, they said, for a man to undertake lightly. And I did not succeed until I met the engineer in charge, Charles E. Bedell, a forceful, quiet-mannered man, who, after some talk, granted my request.

He did not dwell so much on the danger as the others had, although he did say: "Of course you take all the risks."

"Do you think they are very great?" I asked.

"Not if you use ordinary caution and are not afraid."

Fear was the fatal thing, he said, and he told me of men who simply cannot endure such heights. Every day or two some new hand would start down the ladders almost before he had reached the top, and come into the office saying he couldn't stand the job.

"But you go ahead," said Mr. Bedell; "you'll come through all right.

Just take it easy and be careful." Then he handed me a permit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Handwritten:

South Kent St & Kent Ave

Permit Mr. Moffett to visit the work at any time until further notice.

Charles E. Bedell]

We have seen how I fared on the bridge; let me show now what befell this brilliant young engineer a couple of months later, and observe how his own case ill.u.s.trates the paralyzing effect of fear upon a man. For months he had gone over the structure daily, as sure of himself at those giddy heights as on the ground. He never took chances, and he never felt afraid. But one day a workman fell from far above him and was crushed to death right before his eyes, and this was more of a shock to him than he realized.

How much of a shock it had been was shown weeks later, when the hour of peril came. It was a pleasant day in September, and the bridge was singing its busy song in the morning suns.h.i.+ne. The engineer in charge had made his round of inspection, and was standing idly on the false work under the end-span. He was just over the street, and could look down upon his own office, a hundred feet or so below. Every timber and girder here was familiar to him. Rumbling along on the trestle track came the big "traveler," its four booms groaning under their iron loads.

The "traveler" came on slowly, as befits a huge thing weighing one hundred and fifty tons. The engineer was whittling a stick. The "traveler" came nearer, with one of its booms swinging toward Bedell, but lazily. He had plenty of time to step aside. One step to the right, one step to the left, one step forward was all he need take. Of course, he would not think of taking a step backward, for there was destruction--there yawned the gulf. It was inconceivable to the man on the "traveler" that his chief, who knew all about everything, would take a step backward.

Still the engineer in charge did not move. The boom swung nearer. Still he whittled at his stick. His thoughts were far away. The man on the "traveler" shouted, and Bedell looked up. Now he saw, and the sudden fear he had never known surged in his heart. He had still time to step aside, but his mind could not act. The boom was on him. Up went his right arm to clutch it, and back reeled his body. His right hand missed, his left hand caught the stringer as he fell, caught its sharp edge and held there by the fingers--the left-hand fingers--for five, six, seven seconds or so, legs swinging in the void. Down sprang the man on the "traveler," and leaped along the ties to his relief, and reached the spot to find the fingers gone, to see far below on the stones a broken, huddled heap that lay still. So died the man who had been kind to me (as they say he was kind to every one), and who had warned me to "take it easy and be careful."

Despite the constant peril of their days, the nights of bridge-builders are often spent in gaiety. The habit of excitement holds them even in their leisure, and many a st.u.r.dy riveter has danced away the small hours and been on his swing at the tower-top betimes the next morning. They are whole-souled, frank-spoken young fellows (there are few old bridge-men), and to spend an evening at their club, on West Thirty-second Street, is a thing worth doing.

On the street floor is a cafe, not to say saloon, where the walls are hung with churches and bridges and towering structures, monuments to the skill of the builders who have pa.s.sed this way. And if you will join a group at one of these tables and speak them fair you may hear enough tales of the lads who work aloft for many a writing. And up and down the stairs move lines of bridge-men, all restless, one would say, and some pa.s.s on crutches and some with arms in slings (there is a story in every cripple), and you hear that New York has half a dozen one-legged bridge-men still fairly active in service. It's once a bridge-man always a bridge-man, for the life has its fascination, like the circus.

As I sat in a corner one evening with Zimmer and Jimmie Dunn and some of the others, there came down from overhead a racket that almost drowned our buzz of talk and the frequent ting of the bar register. The bridge-men were in vigorous debate over the question whether or not the interests of the craft call for more flooring on dangerous structures.

Some said "yes," some "no," and said it with vehemence. More flooring meant less danger. That was all right, but less danger meant more compet.i.tion and less pay. So there you are, and the majority favored danger with a generous wage.

"What kind of men make bridge-men?" I inquired.

"All kinds," said one of the group who was drinking birch-beer, "Some come out of machine-shops, some out of locomotive works, I was a 'shanty-jack.'"