next afternoon as I drew near the Church of the Pilgrims to witness the
first day's climbing. Already, at a distance, I knew that the men were
at work from the upbent heads of people on the street who stared and
pointed. And presently I made out two white figures on the steeple, one
swinging about fifteen feet below the ball, the other standing against
the shingled side without any support that I could see. Up the old tower
(inside) I made my way, and two ladders beyond the "bell-deck" came upon
Walter Tyghe, "Steeple Bob's" assistant, astride of a stone saddle on
one of the four peaks where the tower ends and the steeple begins. There
was a clear drop of a hundred feet all around him. He was "tending" the
two men aloft, as witnessed a couple of ropes dangling by him. It was
two jerks to come down and one to go up. Were he to lose his balance and
let go the hauling-rope, the men on the swing would instantly be killed,
as they had no "lock-blocks" on.
"Come out here," said Walter, "there's plenty of room," and, thus
encouraged, I straddled the peak, and we sat face to face, as two men
might sit on a child's rocking-horse, while the tower pigeons circled
beneath us, alarmed at this intrusion. Far down on the sidewalk were
little faces of distorted people; far up at the steeple-top were legs
kicking at ropes. And off over red housetops was the river, and the
great towers of New York spread with silver plumes by the steam jets.
"Now you can see the stirrups working," said Walter, and, looking up, I
saw a figure swing back from the steeple, an arm shoot out, and a length
of rope go wriggling around the shaft, cast like a lasso. Then the rope
was drawn into a noose, and the noose hauled tight. The legs kicked, the
figure hitched itself up about a foot, and again the rope was cast
(another rope), and a second noose still higher made secure. That is all
there is to it. The steeple-climber stands in a stirrup held by one
noose while he lassoes the shaft above him with another noose,
supporting another stirrup on which he presently stands. And so, foot by
foot, the climber rises, shifting noose and stirrup at each change,
resting now on one, now on the other, and finally reaching the cross, or
ball, or weather-vane at the very top.
"That's Joe Lawlor chuckin' the rope," explained Walter; "Merrill, he's
on the swing. Say, Lawlor's a wonder at rigging. He can do anything with
ropes. He's the feller that climbs up the front of a house with suckers
on his feet."
Of this fact I took note, and then inquired if I couldn't get up further
inside the steeple, so as to be nearer the men. Walter said I could
climb ladders up to where they had punched a hole through for the rope
to hold the block and falls, and I tried it. Alas! when I got there,
after breathing dust and squeezing between beams, I found that I could
see nothing. I was almost at the steeple-top, and could hear Merrill,
through the wooden shell, humming a tune as he worked, but I was further
away than before.
"Hello in there!" came a voice. "Don't monkey with that line." And it
came to me that this rope, reaching down by me from yonder little hole
(the one knocked through), held the block which held the swing which
held the man. And an accident to this rope would mean instant death. I
touched it, and drew my hand away, as one might touch some animal
through the cage bars, and I felt like saying, "Good little rope!"
It was coming on to dark now, and we all went home together, over the
bridge and up the avenues, talking of steeples the while. And Lawlor
explained the action of his suckers in climbing walls, which is
precisely that of a boy's sucker in lifting a brick. The big
climbing-leathers, well soaked in oil, are pressed alternately against
the stones, the right leg resting on one while the left leg presses the
other against the wall a step higher. And so you walk right up the
building or church or flagpole, and the smoother the surface the easier
you go up. In fact, if the surface is rough you cannot use the suckers
at all, as the air gets under and prevents their holding.
Then the men spoke of various jobs aloft that called up memories.
Merrill told of cleaning the fifteen-foot Diana statue on the Madison
Square Garden tower. "It's hard getting over her," he said, "because
she's so blamed smooth. I guess I took three quarts of rust out of her
ball-bearings. You know she's a weather-vane, and turns with the wind."
I wondered how many New-Yorkers who see the Diana every day of their
lives have ever dwelt on the fact that she turns.
Talking of weather-vanes reminded my friends of a ticklish job they did
on St. Paul's steeple, in New York, when Merrill, standing under the
ball, held Lawlor on his giant shoulders so that Joe could lift off the
weather-vane on top and ease the shaft where it had jammed. With
Lawlor's weight and the weather-vane's weight, "Steeple Bob" held four
hundred pounds on his shoulders during those important minutes, and, it
might almost be said, stood on the dizzy edge of nothing while he did
it.
Finally, Lawlor expressed the opinion that there isn't any meaner job in
the business than a chimney.
"A chimney?" said I.
"That's what. I mean one o' them big ones you see on factories. We have
to scrape 'em and paint 'em just like steeples, and that means climbing
up the whole length inside. The climbing's easy enough on bolts and
braces, but it's something fierce the air you breathe. Why, I've gone up
a two-hundred-and-forty-foot chimney with a five-foot opening at the
bottom, and found the soot so thick about half-way up--so thick, sir,
that I've been almost stuck in it. Yes, sir, just had to shove my head
into an eight-inch hole and bore through black stuff, beds of it. And
mind, not a hole for air as big as a pin-head from bottom to top."
After bidding the men good night I reflected, with a kind of shame,
that I had drawn back from daring only once what they dare every day,
what they _must_ dare for their living. And I reasoned myself into a
feeling that it was my duty under the circumstances to go up that
steeple on the swing, as Merrill had proposed. Having begun this
investigation, I must see it through; and in this mind I went to the
church again the next day.
I found all hands on the "bell-deck" spreading out packets of patent
gilding for the ball which awaited its new dress, all sticky from a
fresh coat of sizing. Lawlor remarked that there was better gold in
these little yellow squares than in a wedding-ring. "It's twenty-four
carats fine," said he, "and about as thick as a cobweb."
As to my going up on the swing there was no difficulty. Lawlor would go
first, and be there to keep me in good heart, for they say it is not
well for a novice to be at a steeple-top alone. Merrill would see to the
lashings, and Walter would give a hand at the hauling-line. Thus all
conditions favored my ascent; even the sun smiled, and after taking off
coat and hat I was ready. There we were at the top of the tower, and at
the base of the steeple Lawlor, red-faced and red-shirted, preparing to
ascend; Merrill, pale, as he always is, but powerful, standing at the
ropes; and I, in shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, watching Walter make a
little harness for my kodak.
After a time Lawlor, having reached the top, called down something, and
Merrill answered. It was my turn now. I climbed out through a small
window and stood on the ledge, while "Steeple Bob" dropped the swing
noose over my head and proceeded to lash me fast to seat and ropes.
"That's in case a suicidal impulse should get hold of you!" he said,
smiling, but meaning it. "Now, keep this rope between your legs, and
work your hands up along it as we lift you. It's anchored to St. Peter."
Then he explained how I was to press my toes against the steeple side,
so as to keep my knees from barking on the shingles.
"And don't look down at all," he told me. "Just watch your ropes and
take it easy. Are you ready?"
At this moment Walter said something in a low tone, and Merrill asked me
to lend him my knife. I handed it out, and he stuck it in his pocket.
"You don't need this now," said he, and a moment later the pulley ropes
tightened and my small swing-board lifted under me. I was rising.
"Shove off there with your toes!" he cried. "Take short steps. Put your
legs wider apart. Wider yet. You don't have to pull on the rope. Just
slide your hands along. Now you're going!"
I saw nothing but the steeple side in front of me, and the life-line
hanging down like a bell-rope between my spread legs, and the pulley
block creaking by my head, and the toes of my shoes as I pressed them
against the shingles step by step. It struck me as a ridiculous thing to
be climbing a steeple in patent-leather shoes. I smiled to think of the
odd appearance I must present from below. And then for the first time I
let my eyes turn into the depths, and caught a glimpse of men on
housetops watching me. I saw Merrill's upturned face down where the
ropes ended. And I saw little horses wriggling along on the street.
[Illustration: HOW THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER GOES UP A FLAGPOLE.]
There were three places where the steeple narrowed into slenderer
lengths, and at each one was a sort of cornice to be scrambled over (and
loose nails to be avoided), and then more careful steering with legs and
toes to keep on one particular face of the steeple and not swing off
and come bumping back, a disconcerting possibility. "Hello!" called
Lawlor presently, from above. "You're doing fine. Come right along." And
before I knew it the swing had stopped. I was at the top, or as near it
as the tackle could take me. The remaining fifteen feet or so must be
made with stirrups. And there was Lawlor standing in them up by the
ball. There was not a stick of staging to support him (he had scorned
the bother of hauling up boards for so simple a job), and he was working
with both hands free, each leg standing on its stirrup, and several
hitches of life-line holding him to the shaft top by his waist.
This steeple-lassoing exploit was one of the things I certainly would
not attempt--would not and could not.
Strangely enough, as I hung here at rest I felt the danger more than
coming up. It seemed most perilous to rest my weight on the swing-board,
and I found myself holding my legs drawn up, with muscles tense, as if
that could make me lighter. Gradually I realized the foolishness of
this, and relaxed into greater comfort, but not entirely. Even veteran
steeple-climbers waste much strength in needless clutching; cannot free
their bodies from this instinctive fear.
I stayed up long enough to take three photographs (some minutes passed
before I could unlash my kodak), and here I had further proof of
subconscious fright, for I made such blunders with shutter and focus
length as would put the youngest amateur to shame. Two pictures out of
the three were failures, and the third but an indifferent success. There
is one thing to be said in extenuation, that a steeple is never still,
but always rocking and trembling. When Lawlor changed his stirrup
hitches or moved from side to side the old beams would groan under us,
and the whole structure rock. "She'd rock more," said Lawlor, "if she
was better built. A good steeple always rocks."
There wasn't much more to say or do up here, and presently we exchanged
jerks on the line for the descent. And Lawlor cried: "Lower away! Hang
on, now!" And I did over again my humble part of leg-spreading and
toe-steering, with the result that presently I was down on the
"bell-deck" again, receiving congratulations.
"Here's your knife," said Merrill, after he had unlashed me.
"What did you take it for?" I asked.
"Oh, men sometimes get a mania to cut the ropes when they go up the
first time. And that isn't good for their health. I was pretty sure
you'd keep your head, but I wasn't taking any chances."
After this came thanks and warm hand-grips all around, and then I left
these daring men to their duties, and went down the lower ladders. I am
sure I never appreciated the simple privilege of standing on a sidewalk
as I did, a few minutes later, when I left the Church of the Pilgrims
and came out into the pleasant autumn sunshine.
THE DEEP-SEA DIVER
I
SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MEN WHO GO DOWN UNDER THE SEA
IN old South Street, far down on the New York river-front, is a gloomy
brick building with black fire-escapes zigzagging across its face, and a
life-size diver painted over its door, in red helmet and yellow
goggle-eyes, to the awe and admiration of the young--to the awe and
admiration of anybody who comes through this wicked-looking street by
night, and smells the sea, and stares along miles of ships' noses that
reach right over the car-tracks, and finally stops at the black-lettered
announcement that wrecks are looked after here day or night, and
mysteries of the deep penetrated by gentlemen of the diving profession
in just such gigantic suits as this painted one.
None of this had I noticed, late one night (being occupied with the
silent, hungry ships, and the fire-cars trailing over the dim bridge),
until a brisk banjo-strumming caught my ear, and I paused at the house
of wrecks, whence the sounds came. Somebody back in these moldering
shadows was playing the "Turkish Patrol," and playing it remarkably
well.
I followed the light down a narrow passage, and presently came upon the
modern wrecker, in the person of Benjamin F. Bean, a large man smoking
contentedly at a table whereon rested a telephone and phonograph. The
phonograph was playing the "Turkish Patrol," and a single incandescent
lamp, swinging overhead, illumined the scene. There were coils of rope
about, and photographs of vessels in distress, and a bunk with tumbled
sheets at one side, where Mr. Bean slept, often with his clothes on,
while awaiting the ring of sundry danger-bells.
Divers fully expect to be objects of curiosity, for never do they work
except before wondering audiences; so this one found my visit natural
enough--was glad, I think, to talk a little and let the phonograph rest.
It must be rather lonely, after all, watching for wrecks hour after
hour, night after night, listening always for footsteps (the officer's
tramp or the thug's stealthy tread), listening always to the hoot of
passing vessels, listening always for bad news.
He explained to me what happens when the bad news comes, say a collision
up the Hudson, a ferry-boat on fire down the bay, a line of barges sunk
in the Sound, any one of a dozen ordinary disasters. In olden times such
tidings must have traveled from mouth to mouth, and the wreckers of
those days flashed their calls and warnings with beacon-fires. Now
electricity does all this much better with the click of a key; and
presently somebody, somewhere, has the office at the end of a wire
telling what the trouble is, and forthwith the man in charge puts
machinery in motion that will change this trouble into cash. _Br-r-r-r_
calls the telephone; up spring messenger-boys in distant all-night
stations, and in half an hour door-bells are ringing in Harlem or Jersey
City, and the men who ought to know things know them, and whistles are
sounding on big pontoons that can lift two hundred tons, and sleepy men
are tumbling out of their bunks, and great chains are clanking, and
tug-boats are sputtering forth for the towing of sundry hoisting-and
pumping-craft that go splashing along to the danger-spot with all
appliances aboard, pneumatic, hydraulic, not to mention savory hot
coffee served to the divers and the crew.
Most divers are poor story-tellers (perhaps because the marvelous grows
commonplace to them from over-indulgence in it), but the stories are
there in their lives, if only you can dig them out. I asked Bean if he
often went down himself, and found that he was still in active service,
after twenty-odd years of it, which certainly had agreed with him. He
was just back from a sad errand in Pennsylvania. A boy had gone swimming
in a slate-quarry, and been drowned; they had dragged for him, and fired
cannon over the water, but nothing had availed, and so, finally, a diver
was sent for from the city, the diver being Bean. The quarry was a great
chasm four or five hundred feet deep, with eighty feet of water filling
various galleries and rock shelves, in one of which the poor lad had
been caught and held. The question was in which one.
"Well," said Bean, coming abruptly to the end, "I went down and got
him."
That was his way of telling the story: he "went down and got him." There
was nothing more to say; nothing about the two days' perilous search
through every tunnel and recess of those rocky walls; nothing about the
three thousand excited people who crowded around the quarry's mouth,
awaiting the issue, nor the scene when that pitiful burden was hauled up
from the depths.
I asked Bean if he had ever been in great danger while under the water.
"Nothing special," he said, and then added, after thinking: "Once I had
my helmet twisted off."
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A DIVER. DRAWN FROM LIFE.]
"What, below?"
He nodded.
"How can a diver live with his helmet off?"
"He can't, usually. 'T was just luck they got me up in time. They say my
face was black as a coal." And he had no more to tell of this adventure.
With few exceptions, divers take their career in exactly this
phlegmatic, matter-of-fact way. I fancy a man of vivid imagination would
break under the strain of such a life. Yet often divers will go into
great details about some little incident, as when Bean described the
hoisting of a certain boiler sunk outside of Sandy Hook. It had been on
a tug-boat of such a name, it was so many feet long and wide, and other
things about the tide and the steam-derrick, and what the captain said,
the point being that this boiler had acted as an enormous trap for the
blackfish, of which they had found some hundreds of big ones splashing
about inside, unable to escape.
So our talk ran on, and all the time I was thinking how I would like to
see these things for myself. And it came to pass, as the subject kept
its hold on me, that I did see them. Indeed, I spent a whole summer
month--and found zest in it beyond ordinary summer pleasurings--in
observing the practical operations of diving and wrecking as they go on
in the waters about New York. I discovered other wrecking companies,
notably one on West Street, and from the head man here learned many
things. He took me out on a pier one day, where one of his crews was
rescuing thirty thousand dollars' worth of copper buried under the North
River. Every few minutes, with a _chunk-chunk_ of the engine and a
rattle of chains, the dredge would bring up a fistful of mud (an iron
fist, holding a ton or so) and slap it down on the deck, where a strong
hose-stream would wash out little canvas bags of copper ore, each worth
a ten-dollar bill in the market.
"This will show you," said the expert, "what a diver has to contend with
at the bottom of a river. He often sinks four or five feet in the mud,
just as those bags sink, and sometimes the mud suction holds him down so
hard that three men pulling on the life-line can scarcely budge him. And
when the mud lets go the diver comes out of it like a cork from a
bottle. You can feel him flop over, clean tuckered out with kicking and
working his arms. They let him lie there a minute or two to rest, and
then pull him up. Why, vessels will sink ten or twelve feet in the mud,
so that the diver has to take a hose down, and wash a tunnel out below
the keel, to get a lifting-chain under."
"Wash a tunnel out?" I inquired.
"That's what they do. You know how you can bore a hole in a sand-bank,
don't you, with a stream of water? Well, it's just the same with a
mud-bank down below, only you need more pressure. Sometimes we use a
stream of compressed air. The diver steers the hose just as a fireman
steers the fire-hose, and once in a while gets knocked over by the force
of it, just as a fireman does."
Tunneling mud-banks under water, with streams of water or streams of
compressed air, struck me as decidedly a novelty. I was to hear of
stranger things ere long.
My guide presently pointed out a splendidly built young man who was
shoveling mud off the deck, not far from us.
"There," said he, "is a case that illustrates the worst of this
business. That fellow is made to be a diver; he's intelligent, he's not
afraid, and he can stand having the suit on; he's been down two or three
times and done easy jobs of patching. If he'd keep straight for a year
or two, he could earn his ten dollars a day with the best of them. But
he won't keep straight. The poor fellow drinks. We can't depend on him.
And here he is, shoveling mud for a dollar and a quarter a day, and no
steady work at that."
[Illustration: "THE DIVER'S HELMET SHOWED LIKE THE BACK OF A BIG
TURTLE."]
Ten dollars a day seemed a handsome wage, and I asked if divers
generally earn so much.
"Good ones do, and a diver's day is only four hours' long, or less when
they go to great depths. And they draw a salary besides, and often
receive handsome presents. You ought to see our chief diver, Bill
Atkinson; he lives in a brownstone house." He paused a moment, and then
added: "But I guess they earn all they get."
A few days later I made Mr. Atkinson's acquaintance on board the
steam-pump _Dunderberg_, then busy raising a coal-barge sunk off
Fourteenth Street in the East River.
Atkinson was down doing carpenter-work on holes stove in her, and I
stood on deck beside the man "tending" him, and watched the bubbles boil
up from the diver's breathing, and the signals on a rubber hose and a
rope. It was less air or more air, by jerks on the hose. It was rags for
a leak, or a heavier hammer, or a piece of batten so-and-so long, with
nails ready driven at the corners--all were indicated by pulls on the
life-line or the startling appearance of hands or fingers (Atkinson's),
that would now and then reach above water and move impatiently. The
wreck was only five or six feet under, and the diver's helmet showed
like the back of a big turtle whenever he stood up straight on the
sunken deck.
Suddenly there is a scurry of barefoot youths along the pier timbers.
The diver is coming up. Now he lifts himself slowly under the crushing
weight, one short step at a time up the ladder. No man at all is this,
but a dripping three-eyed monster of rubber and brass, infinitely
fascinating to wharf loungers. The "tender" twists off the face-glass,
and Atkinson says something with a snap in it, and explains what he is
trying to do at the forward hatch. Then he leans over the rail on his
stomach and rests. Then he goes down again.
"He's the best-natured man I know, Bill is," remarked Captain Taylor,
commander of the _Dunderberg_; "but all men get irritable under water.
Why, I've had men who wouldn't swear for the world up in the air tell
me they rip out cuss words something terrible down on the bottom. Just
seems like they can't help it."
I noticed that the tender did not join in our talk, but stood with hands
on his lines and eyes on the water, absorbed in his responsibility; he
looked like an angler about to land a big fish. Neither did the men at
the air-pump talk. This feeding breath to a diver is serious business.
"How long would he live, do you think," I asked, "if the pump should
stop?"
"Mebbe a minute, mebbe two," said Captain Taylor. "I knew a Norwegian
who was down in fifty feet of water when the hose busted. It busted on
deck, where the tender heard it, and he started to lift, right away. It
couldn't have been over a minute before they had him up, but he was so
near dead the doctors worked three hours on him before he came around.
That'll give you an idea of how far gone he was."
The captain told of other desperate chances faced by divers in his
experience: of a hose and life-line fouled in a wreck; of an
escape-valve frozen shut, in winter-time, by the diver's congealed
breath; of a helmet smashed through by a load of pig-iron falling from
its sling; of a diver dragged off a wreck by a drifting pontoon--such a
record of thrilling escapes and tragedies as any wrecking-master could
run over. One realized why insurance companies refuse to take risks on
divers' lives, and why the diver's pay is large.
Before long Atkinson came up again, and announced that everything was
ready, holes stopped and suction length in place. Two men helped undress
him, while the others set the big eight-inch pipe to pumping out the
wreck, and soon it was spurting a thick stream over her side like a
fire-tower.