firmly under her, and, although I am unusually strong, I had all I could
do to support her enormous bulk. When she felt my arm beneath her,
protecting the package, she was all the more indignant and determined to
crush the package in order to teach me a lesson, and she glared upon me
fiercely. I finally succeeded, by throwing my shoulder against her, in
toppling her sufficiently to remove the package with my right hand, and
then I let her down upon the seat.
I seldom wax poetical, and never permit myself to write verses to ladies
when I am not sure that they will be gratefully received. But, in this
case, I side-stepped a little from my usual course, and, taking my
note-book from my pocket, wrote the following lines, which I folded up
nicely, and when I arrived at my street, I handed the paper to Her
Militancy:
_Dear Madam, I'm an anarchist.
That package was a bomb.
I'm on my way
Someone to slay,
And this is really true--
I didn't want to waste that bomb
On just the likes of you._
HE SEPARATED
The freezing point of dynamite is about eight degrees F. higher than
that of water. Once frozen, it remains congealed at temperatures
considerably above the freezing point. When solidly frozen, it can be
detonated only with much difficulty, and even then only with great loss
of explosive force. Consequently, when conducting blasting operations in
cold weather, it is necessary to thaw frozen dynamite before using it.
The process is neither dangerous nor difficult if conducted with
ordinary precautions, but it may be made full of peril by carelessness
or ignorance.
A friend of mine named Roynor, when gold-hunting in Alaska, had as a
partner a venerable prospector whose only known name was Andy. Andy was
the dynamiter of the combination, as well as chief cook and dish-washer.
The old man used to utilize the oven of the cooking stove for thawing
his dynamite. Occasionally, he would forget that the dynamite was there
until it was heated to the danger point. These little inadvertencies at
last strained the nerves of Roynor beyond the elastic limit. He
remonstrated to his aged partner with all the epithetitious
sesquipedalian terminology of which he was capable, but nothing in the
way of language or dynamite had any terrors for the old man.
"Andy," said Roynor, finally, "if you are not more careful with that
dynamite, we are going to separate, and we are going to separate the
very next time you put any dynamite in the oven."
The following evening, as Roynor was returning from his day's work, and
when nigh the shack where his partner was cooking, he saw the shack
instantly convert itself into a blinding flash, which solidified into
numerous scattered débris that flew by him and fell round him in
abundance.
When he recovered from the stunning shock of the explosion and dazedly
looked about him, he saw many fragmentary evidences of the repetition of
the prospector's carelessness.
"Well, Andy," he sadly remarked, "I told you we should separate the next
time you did it. We have separated all right--particularly you."
THE WELL-DIGGER'S CASUALTIES
At my laboratory near Lake Hopatcong, one of the natives, who had made a
reputation as a well-digger, and claimed to be able to descend through
more rock in a day than could any other living man, thought that his
strenuous habitude would adapt him to the manufacture of explosive
materials, and with this in view he applied to me for a position.
My foreman gave him a job in which his duty was to assist with the
rolling of motorite. The foreman gave the fellow explicit instructions
about the care necessary to keep his fingers from getting in between the
rollers, as it would not only prove uncomfortable for him were he to
shed a finger or a hand, but it would also spoil the motorite by mixing
it with his lacerations.... Almost at once, the end of one finger went.
Immediately, the well-digger was discharged, for his own sake and for
the sake of motorite.
The man next took a contract to dig a well for one of the cottagers on
the Lake. It was in the early winter. The weather was cold, and his
dynamite froze very hard. He placed it in a bucket of boiling hot water,
which thawed the outer stratum of the frozen stick, overheating it and
rendering it very sensitive, while the core remained frozen solid.
He was too active and impatient a workman to wait long for a stick of
dynamite to thaw, so he took the partly thawed stick, seized a hatchet,
and proceeded to chop off one end of it.
The blow of the ax upon the soft, overheated, highly sensitive portion,
compressing it against the frozen interior, which served as an anvil,
exploded the stick. There was one finger and the thumb left on his right
hand which held the ax, while his left hand, which had held the
dynamite, and his whole left arm, were blown away.
When he looked about him with the one astonished eye that was left, he
seemed pained that his old friend dynamite had gone back on him in that
way.
THE RIVAL EDITORS
The following story was related to me by a professional liar, and yet I
have suspicions that it is not true in every detail; but I feel sure
that some variant of it has been true more than once, with the exception
of the aerial incident.
A certain inventor had invented one of the very often-invented high
explosive compounds of chlorate of potash, sulphur, charcoal, paraffin
wax, etc., thinking that he had made a great discovery.
Now it happens that there is so much erraticism about high explosive
mixtures with chlorate of potash as a base that the pathway of invention
of such compounds has been strewn with the wreckage of the hopes and
anatomy of their inventors.
The inventor had enlisted the financial support of a promoter, and the
promoter was endeavoring to enlist financial support for himself, and to
that end had invited several men of means, with two rival newspaper
editors of the place, to witness a demonstration of the explosive at the
inventor's laboratory, which was a two-story, light frame structure.
The promoter was letting himself be interviewed by the two editors and
other newspaper reporters on the upper floor, while the inventor was
making a demonstration with some of the stuff on the lower floor, the
prospective investors warily watching the proceedings from a respectful
distance.
The inventor had about half a barrel of the stuff in a tub. He first
took a portion of it and pounded it on an anvil to show that it would
not explode from shock. Next he took a handful of it and threw it into
the fire under the boiler, to show that it would not explode from mere
ignition. He then took a hot iron, which he had brought to a white heat
in a forge, and thrust it into the half barrel of the infernal mixture,
to show that it simply could not be exploded except with a very powerful
exploder or detonator.
But the mixture happened, on that occasion, to differ somewhat from the
inventor with respect to the sequence of eventuations--and exploded.
The building went up, and the promoter, the two editors and the
reporters on the upper floor accompanied the building.
Two of the newspaper men were great rivals. One of them was the editor
of the _Clarion_ and the other the editor of the _Echo_. It so happened
that the _Clarion_ had better facilities for getting telegraphic news
than the _Echo_, and accordingly the _Clarion_ was usually able to post
its news in advance of the _Echo_, and the editor of the _Clarion_ used
often to chaff his rival with the remark, "It's no use to put up your
poster now, for my poster of the same news is just coming down." He
called the _Echo_ the echo of the _Clarion_.
When the explosion occurred, the editor of the _Clarion_, being more
directly over the explosive than was the editor of the _Echo_, went up
farther and faster, and on his return met the editor of the _Echo_ still
going up, and called out to him, "Behind as usual! All of the other
fellows are coming down."
THE PASSING OF "JEOPARDY"
We once had a servant girl whom we nicknamed "Jeopardy," because she
could not be prevented from pouring kerosene directly from the can upon
a lighted fire.
One day, Jeopardy left us very suddenly, and she never came back. We
were sorry she left, as Jeopardy was a good girl. It developed that she
had chanced to find a fifty-pound case of dynamite sticks in the
wood-shed, which she had been using to start the fire in the kitchen
stove.
Sometimes, dynamite will work all right for such a purpose, but it is
notional stuff and can not be depended upon merely to burn. It was
during one of these intervals of independability that Jeopardy went.
THE INVOLUNTARY ATTACK
Soon after the invention of the Maxim automatic machine gun, I took the
American agency for the introduction of the weapon to the United States
Government. Among the tests that were conducted with the gun at Sandy
Hook was one known as the sand test, sand being sifted into the
mechanism of the gun, which was then loaded and fired. The gun went
through the test perfectly.
The commanding officer, however, had not himself been present at the
regular tests and arrived upon the scene only after they had been
concluded. This particular officer was a dyspeptic, and was at times
very unpleasant and domineering. On this occasion, he was particularly
so. When told by the officers immediately in charge of the tests that
they had been concluded, he peremptorily commanded that the gun should
be loaded and fired again. One of the under-officers demurred, stating
that a sand test was a very hard one on the gun, and that it would be
unfair to subject it to unnecessary hardship of that character. That
officer was immediately sat upon very hard.
The gun was loaded and made ready, pointing out to sea, as usual. At
this moment, a schooner was seen rapidly coming into range. The
commanding officer, however, said that he wanted to see only a few
rounds fired, and that there would be plenty of time to fire them before
the schooner came into the zone of danger; and he immediately gave the
command: "Fire."
My assistant, who was operating the gun, instantly obeyed. After the
discharge of perhaps twenty-five rounds came the command: "Cease
firing!"
But the gun kept right on. Then, the command came several times in loud
shouts, but the gun did not hear. The rage of the commanding officer was
at white heat, but it did no good. The gun kept right on firing.
There were three hundred and thirty-three rounds in the belt, the weapon
had been rigidly clamped to a set direction, and my assistant, being a
little bit rattled at the loud shouts of the commanding officer, did
not think to unclamp it, and turn it out of range of the schooner.
Soon, a stream of bullets, flying at the rate of six hundred a minute,
were ricocheting all about the schooner, and there was wild excitement
and waving of hands on board--all to no purpose, until the last
cartridge had been exploded.
The trigger had been pulled by the sand and held pulled. It was,
consequently, impossible to stop the gun from firing, until the belt of
cartridges was exhausted.
I felt glad. The subordinate officers also looked gratified.
HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD
Liquid nitroglycerin is still used to torpedo the oil-wells when they
get old, in order to give them a new lease of life.
There was one teamster in the old days who had become notorious as a
hauler of the dangerous explosive. The law does not permit the shipment
of the liquid by freight or by express, and for that reason this
teamster had plenty to do in hauling nitroglycerin for long distances.
He was a great smoker and his old pipe was always alight, though he
might be riding on a ton of nitroglycerin with a few kegs of black
gunpowder chinked into the load.
One day he was carrying, on runners, about two tons of nitroglycerin and
a few odd kegs of gunpowder, when something happened. There had been a
fall of several inches of light snow the evening before, and the scene
of the eventuation was an open field which he was crossing.
There was an enormous crater in the ground; the light snow around the
crater was besprinkled with a few shreds of horse and harness and a
sliver or two of sled, but not a trace of the driver was ever found.
THE FORGOTTEN PRECAUTION
I once hired board and apartments at the house of a Frenchwoman, who
took in only a few select gentlemen boarders. Perhaps I may have been
justly esteemed the star boarder, inasmuch as I paid the highest price,
and, too, in addition to a sleeping room and a library, I hired another
large room to serve me as a laboratory. Although my main laboratory was
located at my factory, still I was in the habit of conducting a few
experiments in a small way when not at the factory.
I had given my landlady particular instructions about not handling the
various things in my laboratory. I strictly enjoined her not to touch
anything under any circumstances--I would keep the place in order
myself. Nevertheless, she could not be prevented from entering the
laboratory to dust and tidy it up a bit, and she generally knocked over
a thing or two in the process.
One day, I brought home a pint glass jar of pure nitroglycerin, setting
it up out of reach of the little three-year-old girl, who often used the
laboratory as a playground, in spite of my protestations. I called my
landlady's attention to the fact that this bottle contained
nitroglycerin, and I explained its dangerous character unless it were
left undisturbed.
I told her that, if she found it out of the question to let the bottle
alone, and should, in dusting, succeed in knocking it over and spilling
its contents upon the table where it stood or upon the floor, and should
wipe up the oily liquid with a rag, not to put the rag in the stove,
for, if she did, she would blow the roof of the house off, and project
herself into the empyrean, and through it and out at the other side.
She actually remembered this injunction for more than three days, but,
on the fourth day, on my return home, the little three-year-old met me
as I came in, and said:
"Mamma very sick. Cure Mamma."
"Mamma" was lying upon a sofa, pale as a ghost, and breathing heavily.
When I asked her what the matter was, she answered, "Oh, I am so sick!"
I began to be thoroughly frightened, and wormed out of her the fact that
she had a terrible nitroglycerin headache. It came out that she had been
dusting and tidying the laboratory that day, and had inadvertently
knocked over the bottle of nitroglycerin. Fortunately, it did not
explode as it fell, the contents being merely spilled upon the table and
floor.
She took an old towel and soaked the liquid up with it. She then rolled
up the towel in a tight, snug, compact wad, and started toward the
kitchen to put the wad in the cook-stove and burn it up, when, just as
she arrived at the stove, she felt a dizziness in the head, and a
strange sort of sinking sensation in the stomach. The top of her head
began to buzz and pound.
Then, she saw light. It dawned upon her, like the inspiring flash that
came upon Saul, that this was nitroglycerin, and she recalled what I had
told her about the effect it would have upon her if she handled it, and
my direction that, if she should spill the stuff and then wipe it up,
she must not burn the rag.
THE FATAL HAT
Out in the Pennsylvania oil regions in the early days, while
nitroglycerin in the liquid state was being used experimentally as a
blasting agent, some boys found in a creek an old felt hat, which had
been used as a filter for nitroglycerin.
One of the boys accidentally discovered that when laid upon a stone and
the edge of the hat hit with a hammer, it would crack, so they took it
to a blacksmith's shop, where they could have some fun by hammering it
on an anvil.
At the first blow the old hat exploded. Two of the boys were killed
outright, and two more were badly injured.
The blacksmith at the time of the accident, happened to be standing
outdoors, which thereafter constituted his blacksmith shop until he
could rebuild.
A DROP TOO MUCH
Professor Mowbray, who made the nitroglycerin for the Hoosac Tunnel and
afterward served the American Xylonite Company many years as consulting
chemist, conceived the idea that he could make a very powerful smokeless
gunpowder by the use of nitroglycerin merely absorbed by fibrous
guncotton and rolled into pellets. He had at the time a young assistant
chemist at work for him, who has now become a man of much wealth and
prominence in New York.
The assistant prepared some of the pellets under Mowbray's directions,
loaded them into a rifle under wad and ball, and fired at a target made
of several layers of pine boards. But the pellets did not seem to give
the bullet the required penetration. Mowbray suggested remedying this
defect by adding a little more nitroglycerin, which was done. The young
chemist demurred a little. Still, he did as instructed--loaded and
fired the piece again, with but little better results. This time,
however, the breech mechanism stuck, and was opened with difficulty.
Mowbray said that there was but one thing to do, and that was to add a
few more drops of nitroglycerin. It occurred to the young chemist that
this sort of gunpowder came pretty near being dynamite, and he declined
to fire the piece the next time, and was deaf to all entreaties of the
Professor. As a compromise, the gun was rigged up on a rest, pointing at
the target; a string was attached to the trigger, which the assistant,
standing behind a barricade, pulled.
This time, there was considerable penetration of the target, and the
walls of the building where the test took place were penetrated in many
places, not with the bullet, but with the fragments of the exploded
weapon.
Mowbray, hearing the report, ran out and ventured the suggestion that he
guessed he must have got in a drop too much of nitroglycerin.
A CLOSE CALL
I had one very close call while conducting a sand test of the Maxim gun
at Annapolis, where the Naval Proving Grounds were formerly located. The
gun had passed through all of the regular tests satisfactorily, and it
was then suggested to try if sand enough could be put into the mechanism
box to block it and prevent its firing.
The gun fired perhaps fifty rounds before it stopped. Then it stuck, and
my assistant worked at the belt and lever, attempting to start it again.
I told him to put down the safe so that the gun could not fire, which he
did. I was then about to step around the gun in front, which I confess
was a very careless thing to do, when it began firing again. I was
already so close to the muzzle that my clothes were cut by the bullets
and burned by the gunpowder.
The trigger had been pulled, and held pulled, by the sand, so that the
safe did not prevent it from firing.
It is pretty good practice to keep away from the business end of a
loaded gun.
A PICKANINNY'S TREASURE TROVE
Once at Annapolis, while we were firing a six-pounder semi-automatic gun
in a speed test, we had succeeded in firing forty-two aimed shots in a
minute into a huge earth butt, which, owing to recent rains, was merely
a heap of mud.
The day following, a negro boy, about fourteen years old, found one of
the projectiles, which had penetrated the butt, and glancing, came out
at the top without exploding. This he brought up to where my assistant
was doing some work on the gun, and showed what he had found.
My assistant shouted at him, "Look out! That's loaded, and if you drop
it, it might go off."
Frightened, the negro immediately dropped the projectile upon the hard
cement pavement, and, as it struck point down, it did go off, and took
off one of his legs; and a fragment of the shell came dangerously close
to the head of my assistant.
NOT TO BE BUNCOED
The great Du Pont Powder Company had in its employ at one time a
faithful, patient and lucky fellow, an Italian, who worked constantly,
with not a day off except Sundays, for twenty-one years in the corning
mill, breaking black gunpowder press cake into grains. During that
period the coming mill had blown up seven times, once every three years,
but each time Giovanni had happened, by the merest chance, to be outside
for a few seconds to get a drink of water or on some other brief errand.
Twice he had had his clothes nearly ripped off him, and his face and
hands burned, such had been his proximity on these occasions to the
crater of fire as the mill went up, and once he had been rendered
unconscious by the shock.
Finally, at the end of twenty-one years of service, having put aside a
snug little fortune, sufficient for the remainder of his life in sunny
Italy, he packed up his belongings and turned his face toward his old
home. Arriving in New York, his ticket purchased, he hied himself to a
noted Italian hostelry, to await the coming of the joyous morrow when he
should actually be on the big steamer, headed for home.
Giovanni had no bad habits, and the bunco man failed to lure him. He
took no stock in the dapper, polished-mannered compatriot just recently
from his home place, who was acquainted with all the folks. His cash was
sewed into his clothes, and those clothes would not come off until he
reached his destination.
When he was shown up into his room at night and left alone with his
thoughts, a placard upon the wall above the gas-burner attracted his
attention. It read: "Don't blow out the gas," and under this injunction
was the statement that gas burned after ten o'clock would be charged
extra.
Giovanni was indignant. Here he was at last caught between the horns of
a dilemma. This, to his mind, was downright thievery. He would cut the
Gordian knot. He would disobey the injunction. He would not pay for gas
burned overtime perforce; and he blew it out....
* * * * *
An old sea-captain who had for forty years traveled on every sea, who
had weathered a thousand gales, and survived a hundred shipwrecks, on
his return from his final voyage, in making his landing on his home
shore, slipped from the dock into the water and under the skiff, and was
drowned.
Such is the irony of chance!
SIR FREDERICK'S BONFIRE
Sir Frederick Abel, who was the originator of the modern process of
making high-grade guncotton and of compressing it into dense cakes for
use, told me the following story:
At one time, Sir Frederick had about five tons of dry guncotton, which
was not of sufficient purity to stand the Government tests. He had, on
previous occasions, frequently demonstrated how compressed guncotton,
though dry, would quietly burn away without exploding when ignited, so
he now fancied that his five tons would make a capital bonfire. With
this idea of entertainment in possession of him, he invited a party of
friends to witness the unique conflagration.
The friends were dominated more by the spirit of aloofness than was Sir
Frederick himself, and they kept at a respectful distance, while Sir
Frederick advanced toward the pile of explosive, and threw a lighted
torch upon it. Then he retreated a short distance to avoid the intense
heat, for he expected to see the whole pile burn away.
It started by merely burning; but, as I have already said about
dynamite, it is notional stuff. So, on this occasion, the guncotton took
a notion to explode after it got fairly on fire, which did not take very
long. The whole mass detonated with terrific violence, and, even before
Sir Frederick had retreated as far as he expected to go, he was knocked
senseless by the concussion, and nearly every shred of clothing was
blown from his body.... Although considerably bruised and lacerated, he
recovered after several months.
He had learned a useful lesson: that a small quantity of compressed dry
guncotton can be very well depended upon to burn quietly away without
detonating, but, when a large mass of it is ignited, the greater heat of
combustion and the greater pressure generated in expelling the larger
quantity of the products of combustion, is almost sure to produce
detonation.
The fact that a small quantity of an explosive material will burn away
quietly without exploding has often led persons to think that a large
quantity would burn in the same manner.
At one time, the British Government had on hand at Woolwich Arsenal
about a hundred tons of cordite that had begun to show signs of
decomposition, and it was decided to burn it. The entire quantity was
taken out into an open meadow, at what was supposed to be a very safe
distance from the city limits. A train was laid to the pile and set on
fire.
For the same reason that the five tons of Sir Frederick Abel's guncotton
detonated, this huge heap of cordite also detonated. Almost instantly
after it was ignited, it exploded with most awful violence, and with
very disastrous results. A number of buildings in the near vicinity were
leveled to the ground. A few persons were killed and many more injured.