from Port Arthur, when there suddenly loomed up ahead the huge bulk of a
Russian warship. At once the dynamite-laden craft threw herself directly
in front of the oncoming leviathan.
Without the pause of an instant, the doomed Japanese crew sprung the
huge mine, when a vast cone of flame shot up, reddening the night,
carrying with it high into the air, decks, superstructure and guns of
the warship. The warship's magazines, fired simultaneously by the
dynamite blast, aided the complete demolition. The returning torrent of
guns and wreckage plunged into the sea.
All was over, and it was dark again.
A WILD PROJECTILE
In spite of every precaution at Government proving grounds, big
projectiles do sometimes glance out of the butts or heaps of earth into
which they are fired, or from the face of armorplates against which they
are directed, and finally land in most unexpected quarters.
One day, while a thirteen-inch gun was being tested at Indian Head, a
projectile glanced out of the butt, mounted high into the air, and then
came down through the roof of a building, where there were engaged a
number of officers and book-keepers. The projectile passed down through
the floor, close to the desk of one of the officers, and buried itself
in the earth.
As the projectile contained no explosive charge, the damage was not
great, but the scare that was thrown into the occupants of that room was
of considerable magnitude.
THE BOMB AND THE TRAIN
One of the most anxious moments that I ever experienced was during some
experiments made by me at Maxim in throwing aerial torpedoes from a
four-inch cannon.
These torpedoes were about four feet in length, charged with a very
powerful high explosive, and armed with a detonating fuze. We had
successfully fired several of them into a sand-butt where they exploded
with great violence. There were six of them: five had been fired and the
sixth was loaded into the gun, ready to be discharged, when a passenger
train on the Jersey Central Railroad hove in sight, and was passing us
about a thousand feet away as the gun was fired.
We had no idea of there being any danger to the train, as its position
was well away from the line of fire, and each of the preceding
projectiles had behaved so well. But, this time, the torpedo glanced
from the sand-butt, and went after that train. We stood paralyzed with
dread as we saw it pass over the train, close to the roof of a car, and
strike in the swamp just beyond it, perhaps a couple of hundred feet
behind the track. An inverted cone of black earth shot up, followed by a
dull sound.
In imagination we had witnessed a frightful catastrophe, the wreck of a
passenger train, with fearful loss of life, and all the horror of our
own resultant predicament. Now that the danger was past, the even tenor
of our way did take on a new relish. What objects we are, after all, of
the mercy of chance!
THE MISSING VESSEL
At the same place, I was one day on the point of beginning an
experiment, for which I required a small quantity of dry guncotton.
Before going for it to the guncotton dry-house, I instituted a search
for a suitable vessel in which to carry it. For some mysterious reason I
had much difficulty in finding anything just adapted to my purpose, and
the hunt delayed me a matter of five minutes or more. Finally, however,
I secured a satisfactory vessel, and hurried out of the door in the
direction of the dry-house.... I had covered less than a rod of the
distance when the dry-house blew up.
In this instance, surely, a benign Providence interfered to save me from
destruction.
THE DRUNKEN MESSENGER
Some years ago, soon after I had built my experimental laboratory near
Lake Hopatcong, a dear old friend came to visit me. He had seen hard
times in the interval that had separated us, and had suffered from both
business reverses and ill health since the days when he and I were
chums. He was plunged in the depths of pessimism, while I was
optimistic. He was in the throes of abject discouragement. Though I made
him many offers of assistance in varied forms, none of them seemed to
cheer him in the least.
When I knew him in our youth, he had been one of the bravest men that
ever lived; now, he appeared to have lost all his former courage. Often,
however, he made the remark that he was minded to make an end of
everything, since life offered him nothing worth while. I frequently
importuned him against the folly of contemplating suicide.
It came about that one day I was in need of fulminate of mercury. As
this material cannot be taken upon a train or sent by express, it was
necessary to go for it with horse and wagon. Both my assistants and
myself were just then too busy to be spared from the work in hand. So,
it occurred to me that my old friend would be exactly the person to send
on the quest. Since he was even then engaged in meditating suicide, he
would not be in the least afraid of fetching the stuff for me. Of
course, I should not have thought of sending him had I believed there
was any particular danger. Certainly there would be none if the material
were handled properly, and in a wet state.
My old friend started on the mission valorously enough, but he lost his
courage presently, and returned empty-handed.
I then sent one of my helpers, a spare man who worked for me
occasionally, as he had been long connected with the manufacture and
handling of explosives. I gave him the necessary money for the purchase
of the material, for the hire of the team and his other expenses, and as
there would be two or three dollars over, I told him he could spend
that in any way he liked, for his own use and behoof.
He returned along toward evening, left the horse and wagon at the
stable, and started up to the works with a bag containing ten pounds of
fulminate, placed in a small hand-valise. Fortunately I saw him coming
soon after he had abandoned the vehicle.
The road was altogether too narrow for him; the ground seemed to reel
under his feet, and he was steadying himself by swinging the valise back
and forth from side to side with great violence. A drunker man never
walked.
I took the valise away from him, and carried it to the works myself. The
next day, when we opened it, we found that instructions had not been
followed about wetting the fulminate. The bag of dry fulminate had, when
he procured it, been merely set in a pail of water for a few minutes,
and only long enough to wet a thin stratum of the explosive, leaving the
whole interior perfectly dry.
It is surely a wonder that the drunken man had not exploded this mass of
dry fulminate in the rough handling he had given it. Had he fallen with
the bag, he must almost certainly have caused an explosion by the shock
of the impact of the fulminate against the ground.
NITROGLYCERIN BY AUTOMOBILE
At another time, I required some very pure nitroglycerin. As this
material, like the fulminate of mercury, could not be transported by
either freight or express, it was necessary to go and bring it over by
horse and wagon, or by automobile. I decided to go and fetch it myself
with my automobile, which, at that time, was a Haynes-Apperson of one of
the early makes. That machine had the faculty of going wrong oftener and
in more places than any other piece of machinery I ever saw or heard of.
It had a very short wheel base, and, as the steering gear had worn so
much that there was a good deal of lost motion, it required very great
skill to keep the car in the road. No sooner would it be brought in line
with the highway than it would immediately proceed toward the ditch or
some wall or tree. It swayed from side to side of the road like a
drunken man, and it was necessary, in order to keep it in the road at
all, to calculate an average with it.
As it was quite a long drive to where I was to procure the
nitroglycerin, I went into New York and brought out a young chauffeur
from the Haynes-Apperson Company, explaining to him fully why I wanted
him, and for what I was going. I made him understand that I did not want
him to start to accompany me unless he had the courage to stand by me to
the end. He was all courage; bravery seemed to ooze out of him at every
pore.
When we started on our journey, early the next morning, I found that he
was wholly unable to steer the automobile. He could not keep it in the
road at all, and I had to drive it all the way myself; but, as he
understood the machine and how to repair it, I concluded that he might
prove valuable on that account. And he did, for during the outgoing and
return trip, that old machine broke down three times, and the tires went
flat four times.
On arrival at the factory, I let the chauffeur wait while I went to
procure the nitroglycerin. I took a lot of bicarbonate of soda with me,
with which I absorbed the nitroglycerin, forming a sort of paste. This
rendered it safe to handle, and, by placing it in water, I could at any
time dissolve out the bicarbonate of soda, and leave the pure
nitroglycerin.
When I had prepared fifty pounds of nitroglycerin in this manner, placed
it in glass jars and rolled them up with several thicknesses of felt
covering material, I had them taken up to the automobile and placed in
the rear part of it.
I then told the young chauffeur that I was ready to proceed, but he said
that he had been talking with the men in the office, and that they had
told him that they would not ride with Mr. Maxim in that automobile with
that nitroglycerin for all the money in the world. They had frightened
the fellow nearly out of his wits. It was with much persuasion and
reasoning and insistence that I finally got him to consent to get into
the car with me and ride along a very smooth even road to the skirts of
the town, letting him believe that he could there escape, and that I
would proceed alone.
When we got a little out of the town, I reminded him of his agreement to
stick with me, and told him that it would be out of the question for me
to attempt to proceed alone without an assistant, as I had but one hand,
and could not repair the machine very well if anything should go wrong.
But he was deaf to all entreaties.
Then I told him, with highly colored emphasis and significant gestures,
that, should he not proceed with me, as he had agreed, I might prove
then and there more dangerous to his comfort and well-being than the
nitroglycerin--and I kept him with me!
After having traveled a few miles, the chauffeur began to recover his
courage, and I had no more trouble with him.
As I was ascending a steep grade along a narrow road, on the return
trip, I saw a big touring car bearing down upon me, with a party of four
young men and two young women in it. They were traveling like the wind.
I turned out of the road as far as I possibly could, and stopped my car,
and signaled with my hand to them to slow down, pointing to the
narrowness of the road.
They gave little heed to this, and rushed by me like a tornado, coming
so close that they could not have missed my machine, hub to hub, more
than an inch.
There is little consolation in the fact that, had they struck us, they
never would have known how foolish a thing they had done.
THE JETS OF BLUE
A chemist friend of mine once invented a process of converting
nitro-benzole into tri-nitro-benzole by a very quick and labor-saving
method, which consisted in mixing the nitro-benzole with nitric acid,
confining the mixture in a large, strong, steel cylinder, then gradually
heating the cylinder until the required pressure should be produced,
which was expected to effect the desired reaction.
Accordingly, five hundred pounds of nitro-benzole was mixed with the
necessary quantity of nitric acid of the requisite strength, and the
heating process was begun.
While anxiously watching this infernal machine, my friend saw a peculiar
blue flame emerge from the seam around the head. Being of an alert
nature, and able to take a hint without being kicked by an elephant, he
withdrew from the vicinity of that cylinder. He did not merely sidle
away from the perilous place--he fairly flew with an alacrity born of
desperation. He had barely emerged from the laboratory when there was a
terrific explosion that leveled the building, and formed an enormous
crater in the earth where he had stood, the concussion knocking him
senseless. And, today, he still swears, with solemn earnestness, that a
freight car could have been buried in the hole that was blown in the
ground when his pet project went off.
This experience so impressed him that he concluded that explosive
compounds possess properties which place them in a class by themselves,
and that it is a good class to avoid.
THE WISDOM OF RETREAT
During the experiments with Maximite at Sandy Hook, previous to its
purchase and adoption by the United States Government, I was loading
some shell in a small house, near where a ten-inch gun was being fired.
About a year or so before, when a ten-inch gun of this particular make
was being tested at Sandy Hook, the breech block blew out, went through
the bomb-proof, and killed several officers and men.
Having completed my work, I started up the railroad track in the
direction of the steamboat landing, to return home, when there came the
ring of the bell for another discharge of the cannon. As the breech of
the gun was pointing in my direction, I recalled the above fatality; but
I reasoned with myself that, as a large number of tests had since been
made with these guns, and as the defect in the breech mechanism was
supposed to have been corrected, the chance of the breech blowing out at
this particular discharge and coming my way was infinitely small.
Nevertheless, I thought, it is exactly on such occasions that the
unexpected does happen. So I ran for all I was worth up the track and
off at one side. Then I heard the report of the gun, and looking around,
saw that sure enough the breech block had blown out, and saw it pass
through a building in its path. I saw it strike the track over which I
had been walking, cut a rail off, saw it strike the old stone fort
beyond me, and ricochet high into the air.
There was an immediate shower of stones and débris falling around me,
which I dexterously dodged. On examining the small house where I had
been charging the Maximite shell I found that the windows were fairly
riddled with pieces of smokeless powder, which had been blown from the
breech of the gun.
THE RACE WITH DEATH
Among the many dynamite plants that hang upon the verdant hills of the
American countryside, there is one which stands somewhat apart from the
railroad, and the dynamite has to be carted to the station over the
highway. At one point the highway passes close to the edge of a
precipice of considerable height, at the bottom of whose abrupt, ragged
sides nestles a pleasant villa, owned by a wealthy business man.
A friend of mine, who told me the story, had just paid a visit to this
factory of explosives, and was walking leisurely along the road. At a
distance of perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him there was one of the
dynamite wagons, moving two tons of dynamite to the railroad. The driver
had recently purchased a couple of fresh horses, which he pronounced "a
spanking pair." They were rather restive and shied at everything they
saw. But the driver was a brave fellow and a strong one, and he had no
fear of being unable to control them.
All at once, under the impulse of a gust of wind, a newspaper flared up
in front of them. Quick as a flash, they bolted, rushing headlong, the
bits held firmly between their teeth; while the high-piled load of
dynamite swayed from side to side menacingly as the wagon took the
curves of the road.
At this instant the foreman of the dynamite-works flashed by, driving a
pair of horses to an empty wagon. He had observed the plight of the
driver of the dynamite wagon, and was lashing his horses in mad pursuit.
Although the foreman's team was inferior, still his wagon was empty, and
he was soon neck and neck with the runaway horses. For several hundred
yards it was a close race, neither achieving any appreciable advantage
over the other. Nearer and nearer were they coming to the precipice,
which yawned just where the road turned sharply to the right. Still on
and on they flew, when, in a moment of advantage, the foreman leaped
from his wagon, full upon the neck and head of the nigh horse of the
runaway pair, and brought the team to a standstill within less than
fifty feet of the precipice, and directly over the villa I have
mentioned.
Had not this foreman possessed both the presence of mind and the
athletic qualifications necessary, coupled with great daring, that load
of dynamite must inevitably have gone over the precipice as the horses
struck that curve. Little the peaceful occupants of the villa under the
hill imagined what a calamity at that fearful moment overhung them!
THE INDOMITABLE POET
An editor in a large Western mining city once hit upon a happy expedient
for getting rid of obnoxious callers. To this end, he filled a gunpowder
keg with ashes, inserted a fuze, piled a handful of black gunpowder
around it, to give the whole an air of reality, and established the
arrangement on a table in his ante-room. On the advent of certain bores,
the office boy followed instructions by lighting the fuze, and walking
out of the room with the audible remark:
"I'm goin' to blow up that old guy in there!"
The thing proved its worth as an automatic bouncer, until, on a
memorable day, a long-haired, calf-eyed, dreamy-looking young male
person came into the place, who informed the office boy that he desired
to see the editor. He explained in cadenced speech that he deigned to
exhibit to the editor a poetic effusion, the lucubration of a fine
frenzy, fairly oozing divine afflatus, on the Surplusage of Over-Soul in
Young Maidens.
On hearing his minion's report concerning the visitor, the editor told
the boy to light the fuze and to ask the poet to sit down; that the
editor would see him in half an hour.
When the editor went out into the ante-room the fuze had burned out, the
surface gunpowder had flashed off, but the poet was still sitting
there.
SCATTERED
I was once called as an expert to visit a dynamite plant where a new
kind of high explosive was being manufactured instead of the ordinary
nitroglycerin dynamite. It consisted of a mixture of chlorate of potash,
sulphur, charcoal and paraffin wax. Its inventor had given it the
reassuring name of Double X Safety Dynamite.
A quarry-man in a nearby town had, with his safety-ignoring habitude,
attempted to load a hole with the stuff, using a crowbar as a rammer,
with the result that he set off the charge, and the crowbar went through
his head.
This unscheduled eventuation aroused the apprehension of the president
of the company, who was also its backer. He began to grow suspicious
about the safety of the material. Being so much interested, he went with
me on my visit of inspection.
We left the train at a siding about a mile from the works, and had just
started in their direction when there came a sudden boom and roar, and
the earth shook. Over the powder works there rose a huge column of black
smoke, flaring wide into the sky.
We found a great crater where the mixing house had stood. Three men were
working in the building when the explosion occurred. A fortunate
survivor who had left the place a moment before to go for a bucket of
drinking water, was walking about the crater, apparently searching for
something among the scattered remnants. As we approached him, he sadly
said:
"I can't find much of the boys. I guess you'll have to plow the ground
if you want to bury them."
A LIVELY DEAD ONE
Several years ago, at the works of the American Forcite Company, a batch
of nitrogelatin blew up in process of manufacture and several men were
killed. One laborer who was working so close to where the explosion
occurred that his clothing was nearly all blown off and he was spattered
with the blood of his companions and crazed by the shock, started in a
wild and aimless run along the road, with his tattered garments flying
in the wind.
A woman of the neighborhood, whose husband was employed at the works,
intercepted him with the eager inquiry:
"Is anyone killed?"
"Yes, yes!" said he, "We are all killed! Every one of us is killed!"
And it was some time before he could be convinced that he was not among
the dead.
INCIDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTORITE
Motorite consists of a compound of about seventy per cent. nitroglycerin
and thirty per cent. gelatinated guncotton, the mixture being compounded
in such a way as to form a tough and rubbery substance. This material is
made into bars, which are smoothed and varnished upon the outside and
then forced into steel tubes. In use, these steel tubes are placed in an
apparatus in such wise that the bar of motorite can be ignited only at
the exposed end, in a combustion chamber, into which water is forced,
and as the combustion is confined to that end, it proceeds with absolute
uniformity, according to the pressure, and without explosion. In other
words, the motorite acts as a fuel, the products of combustion serving
as a flame blast, blowing the water through a series of baffle plates,
atomizing it, and converting it instantly into steam. The object of
motorite is to replace compressed air in the driving of motors for
self-propelled torpedoes.
I have already expended more than fifty thousand dollars in experiments
with motorite and on different kinds of apparatus for its use. As about
four times as much energy is available for driving a torpedo by this
system as by any other, I hope some time to effect arrangements for the
equipment of torpedoes with it.
The first bars of motorite that I made, I formed by passing through a
die. The result was that a small, microscopic flaw which could not be
seen with the naked eye extended through the bars from end to end, so
that, when the bar was placed in the combustion apparatus, the flame of
ignition passed immediately down through the flaw, exploding the
apparatus.
After the first apparatus blew up, I made another one, and, as I could
not very well conduct the experiments at the place where the first
mishap occurred, I hired a floor in a building to make the test. But I
needed an assistant, and it was problematical where I could find one.
One day, while returning home, I was accosted by a panhandler, a young
man claiming to have just arrived from Pittsburg, seeking work. I told
him that if he was actually looking for work I had a job for him, and I
bade him come right along with me. I took him home that night, fed him,
and watched him.
The next morning we went down to the shop. I explained to him all about
the nature of the experiment that I was about to try, and told him that,
if he had any timidity, the time to abscond was then and there. He told
me that he was not afraid of anything, if I was not.
"Very well, then," I said, "I do not expect the thing to blow up;
otherwise, I would not be here."
I got my time-watch ready, and told him to press the electric button to
ignite the motorite. Instantly there was a terrific explosion. The
windows were blown out into the street, and pieces of the shattered
apparatus were driven into the ceiling and into the wall all about us;
but fortunately neither of us was hit.
John looked calmly about him for a moment, and then at me, and
remarked:
"God, she busted!"
While we were recovering from our amazement, half a dozen policemen
rushed into the place, accompanied by a priest. I explained the mishap
the best way I could, and, seeing that the priest was a handsome,
genial, good-natured fellow, I appealed to him. He had a little chat
with the policemen, and they all left.
I sent that priest a box of the best cigars that I could buy.
Under the counsel and advice of the landlord I then moved away from
there.
I next bought a house, and in the back yard I built a laboratory with no
windows or doors in it, except a skylight at the top and the windows and
doors that fronted my house. The walls were of brick, and made thick.
The skylight at the top was a large one, and was arranged to open up
full size. Special precautions were taken by means of various
attachments to cause the roof to stay on in case of emergency.