thumb?" I remarked.
"That's what it did!" said Atkinson.
After this there were more stories. I can't begin to say how many more.
Every time a diver goes down, one would say, something new happens to
him, something worth telling about. Hansen related an experience of his
with a conger eel. Atkinson told how a Dock Department diver named
Fairchild was blown to death under forty feet of water when twenty-eight
pounds of dynamite he was putting in for blasting went off too soon.
Timmans told how he fainted away once, one hundred and five feet down,
and another time let the water into his suit by pulling out a helmet lug
on a foolish wager. And that reminded Atkinson of the time his gasket
(the rubber joint under the collar) was cut through by the slam of an
iron ladder, and the air went out "Hooo," and a quick jerk on the
life-line was all that saved him. Last of all they told the story of old
Captain Conkling and the Holyoke Dam, a story known to every diver. It
seems there was a leak in this dam, and the water was rushing through
with so strong a suction that it seemed certain death for a diver to go
near enough to stop the leak. Yet it was extremely important that the
leak be stopped--in fact, the saving of the dam depended on it. So
Captain Conkling, who was in charge of the job, induced one of his
divers to go down, and reluctantly the man put on his suit, but insisted
on having an extra rope, and a very strong one, tied around his waist.
"What's that for?" asked Conkling.
"That's to help get my body out, if the life-line breaks," said the
diver.
"Go on and do your work," replied Conkling, who had little use for
sentiment.
It happened exactly as the diver feared. He was drawn into the suction
of the hole, and when they tried to pull him up both hose and life-line
parted, and the man was drowned, but they managed to rescue his body
with the heavy line, just as he had planned.
Then Conkling called for another diver, but not a man responded. They
said they weren't that kind of fools.
"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike way; "then I'll go
down myself and stop that hole." And he called the men to dress him.
At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years old, and had
retired long since from active diving. But he was as strong as a horse
still, and no man had ever questioned his courage.
In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I'll stop that hole," said he, "and
I don't want any extra rope, either."
He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped the hole, but it was with
his dead body, and to-day somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of
brave old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, helmet and
hose and life-line, buried in that mass of masonry. No man ever dared go
down after his body.
IV
WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING
TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen
observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that
reached down from hatch to cabin on the _Dunderberg_, and remarked,
while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into
the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing
with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit
when I got down into her--in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very
long without air from the pump."
"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.
"That's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or whatever they make
bleaching-powder of--barrels and barrels of it, with the heads broke in
after a storm, and it wasn't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you.
First they set men shoveling it out, with sponges in their mouths,
against the dust and gases, but one man coughed so hard he tore
something in his lungs or head and died. Then they sent for a
diver--that was me--and I worked hours down there hoisting and
shoveling, like I was at the bottom of the bay, only there was no water
to carry the weight. Say, but wasn't that suit heavy, and when I looked
out through my helmet-glasses it seemed as if I was digging through a
snow-field, with such a terrible dazzle it made my eyes ache to look at
it."
"I suppose you don't usually see much under water?" said I.
"Depends on what water it is," answered Timmans.
"All rivers around New York are black as ink twenty feet down," remarked
Atkinson.
"I know they are," said Timmans, "but I've seen different rivers. When I
was diving off the Kennebec's mouth, five miles southeast of the Seguin
light (we were getting up the wreck of the _Mary Lee_), then, gentlemen,
I looked through as beautiful clear water as you could find in a
drug-store filter. Why, it reminded me of the West Indies. I could see
plainly for, well, certainly seventy-five feet over swaying kelp-weed,
eight feet high, with blood-red leaves as big as a barrel, all dotted
over with black spots. There were acres and acres of it, swarming with
rock-crabs and lobsters and all kinds of fish."
"Any sharks?" said I.
Hansen and Atkinson smiled, for this is a question always put to divers,
who usually have to admit that they never even saw a shark. Not so
Timmans.
"I had an experience with a shark," he answered gravely, "but it wasn't
up in Maine. It was while we were trying to save a three-thousand-ton
steamer of the Hamburg-American Packet Company, wrecked on a bar in the
Magdalena River, United States of Colombia. I'd been working for days
patching her keel, hung on a swinging shelf we'd lowered along her side,
and every time I went down I saw swarms of red snappers and butterfish
under my shelf, darting after the refuse I'd scrape off her plates; and
there were big jewfish, too, and I used to harpoon 'em for the men to
eat. In-fact, I about kept our crew supplied with fresh fish that way.
Well, on one particular day I noticed a sudden shadow against the light,
and there was a shark sure enough; not such an enormous one, but twelve
feet long anyhow--big enough to make me uneasy. He swam slowly around
me, and then kept perfectly still, looking straight at me with his
little wicked eyes. I didn't know what minute he might make a rush, so I
caught up a hammer I was working with--it was my only weapon--and struck
it against the steamer's iron side as hard as I could. You know a blow
like that sounds louder under water than it does in the air, and it
frightened the shark so he went off like a flash."
"Perhaps he wasn't hungry," laughed one of the crew.
"Not hungry? I'll tell you how hungry those sharks were. They'd swallow
big chunks of pork, sir, nailed and wired to barrel heads, as fast as we
could chuck 'em overboard; swallow nails, wire, barrel heads, and all,
and then we'd haul 'em in by ropes, that did for fish-lines, only it
took twenty or thirty men to do the hauling. And there were plenty of
sharks 'round, only they never seemed to tackle a man in the suit."
"Some say it's the fire-light of the valve bubbles that scares sharks
off," commented Atkinson. "I don't know what it is, but I know the
bubbles shine something wonderful as you watch 'em boiling up out of
your helmet."
"Phosphorescence," I suggested, and then went back into the talk for
some broken threads.
"How about that steamer you were telling about," I asked; "the one that
was wrecked on the bar? Did you save her?"
"I should say we did," replied Timmans, "and I guess the company wished
we hadn't; it cost them more money than the job was worth. Why, if I
should start telling how we saved that steamer I don't know when I'd get
through. It took us eight solid months. Yes, sir, and that meant sixty
men to feed and pay wages to--forty in the wrecking-crew and twenty on
the tug. Oh, but we did have trouble--trouble all the time, but we had
fun, too, especially when some o' these gay Bowery lads we'd picked up
got loose on the mainland. Talk about scraps!"
Timmans paused as if for invitations to spin the whole yarn, and these
he immediately received.
"Tell about painting the alligator," urged Hansen.
"Oh, that was a bit of foolishness me an' another fellow done. He was a
Dutchman, and got me to help him catch an alligator one day. He said he
could bring him up North and get a big price for him. Well, we noosed
one after a whole lot of chasing in a lagoon, and kept him four or five
weeks, but he wouldn't eat, and the boys all gave us the laugh. So the
Dutchman got up a scheme to paint him white and put him back in the
lagoon. His idea was that this white alligator would scare out all the
other alligators, and then we'd capture mebbe twenty or thirty on the
banks, and make our fortune."
He paused a moment with a twinkling eye, and Hansen snickered.
"Well, we done it. We painted that alligator white, and put him back in
the lagoon, and you can shoot me if those other alligators didn't eat
him. Yes, sir; they chewed him clean up before we'd hardly got the ropes
off him."
"What did the Dutchman say?" asked Hansen, shaking with mirth.
"He stuck to it his idea was all right, but it was the blamed
alligator's fault for being too weak with fasting to fight the ones as
weren't painted, and he wanted somebody to help him catch another, but
nobody would."
[Illustration: A DIVER AT WORK ON A STEAMBOAT'S PROPELLER.]
Then Timmans came back to the saving of the wreck, and it really was an
amazing story of patience and ingenuity against endless obstacles. I
doubt if men from anywhere but America would have carried such a
hopeless undertaking through to success. First they rigged up a wire
railway from wreck to shore, and slid off a valuable cargo of alpaca,
silks, and beer bit by bit along the wire to land (where they
conscientiously drank the beer). Then they hitched a hawser to the
steamer, and by clever engineering managed to drag her off the bar
against the river current; but presently this current, sweeping down
from the mountains, grew too swift for the wrecking-tug, and she in turn
was dragged down stream against all the strength of her engines, and saw
herself threatened with destruction on the bar. Then the captain of the
tug, in his peril, ordered the hawser cut, and thirty-nine men of the
wrecking-crew were left to their fate on the abandoned wreck. Their
adventures alone would make a thrilling chapter, but they were rescued
finally from the half-sinking steamer, after she had somehow crossed the
bar and wrecked herself anew in the breakers some miles down the coast.
Then weeks passed while the wrecking-crew worked at patching the
steamer's holes so that she would float, and every day Timmans went down
in his suit and did blacksmith work and carpenter work on her torn
plates and beams, in constant danger of being crushed in the deep sand
trough she rocked and slid in. Sometimes the whole iron hull, beaten
against by the ocean, would go grinding along, breaking down a wall of
sand ten feet high, almost as fast as Timmans could walk. And to be
caught between her side and that wall would have ended his days
forthwith. Diving-suit and man would have been crushed like an
egg-shell.
Finally, when she was ready they made fast a sixteen-inch hawser, and
put on full steam to pull her off into deep water. Off she came, and all
was going well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came upon
them, and the steamer turned broadside to its fury, and the great
hawser snapped like a kite-string, and back she went on a coral-reef.
Once more they began at the beginning, and in time had another hawser
ready, and tried again. This time the hawser parted by grinding on the
beach as they dragged her.
Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch hawser, wound with wire,
that would resist the friction of rocks and sand, and all would have
happened as they hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that
thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the hawser strands,
piercing the wire and severing the big tow-line. The wrecking company
still shows the saw of that mischievous fish among its curiosities.
So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with details of how they
stopped some fresh leaks with sixty-five barrels of cement, and how they
quelled a mutiny and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up
a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hundred miles, until
they landed her home, two hundred and fifty-odd days after the
expedition started. All going to show the kind of stuff American
wreckers are made of.
V
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PUTS ON A DIVING-SUIT AND GOES DOWN TO A WRECK
ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the wrecking company, if he
would let me go down in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly,
with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling of people who,
on various occasions, had teased to go down, and then had backed out at
the critical moment, sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass
was being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, for Atkinson
seemed to imply that I, of course, would be different from such people,
and go down like a veteran, whereas I was as yet only _thinking_ of
going down!
"There's a wreck on the Hackensack," said he; "it's a coal-barge sunk in
twenty feet of water. We'll be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down
about noon, and I'll put the suit on you."
Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke as if the thing were
settled.
I thought it over that evening, and decided not to go down. It was not
worth while to take such a risk; it was a foolish idea. Then I changed
my mind: I would go down. I must not miss such a chance; it would give
me a better understanding of this strange business; and there was no
particular danger in it, only a little discomfort. Then I wavered again,
and thought of accidents to divers, and tragedies of diving. What if
something went wrong! What if the hose burst or the air-valve stuck! Or
suppose I should injure my hearing, in spite of Atkinson's assurance? I
looked up a book on diving, and found that certain persons are warned
not to try it--full-blooded men, very pale men, men who suffer much from
headache, men subject to rheumatism, men with poor hearts or lungs, and
others. The list seemed to include everybody, and certainly included me
on at least two counts. Nevertheless I kept to my purpose; I would go
down.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR GOING DOWN IN A DIVER'S SUIT.]
It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before slack water (slack
water is the diver's harvest-time), when the crew of the steam-pump
_Dunderberg_ gathered on deck to witness my descent and assist in
dressing me; for no diver can dress himself. The putting on a
diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous pair of rubber boots
reaching up to the chin, and provided with sleeves that clutch the
wrists tightly with clinging bands, to keep out the water. Thus incased,
you feel as helpless and oppressed as a tightly stuffed sawdust doll,
and you stand anxiously while the men put the gasket (a rubber joint)
over your shoulders and make it fast with thumb-screws, under a heavy
copper collar. Next you step into a pair of thirty-pound iron shoes that
are strapped over your rubber feet. And now they lead you to an iron
ladder that reaches down from rail to water. You lift your feet somehow
over the side, right foot, left foot, and feel around for the
ladder-rungs. Then you bend forward on the deck, face down, as a man
would lay his neck on the block. This is to let the helpers make fast
around your waist the belt that is to sink you presently with its
hundred pounds of lead. Under this belt you feel the life-line noose
hugging below your arms, a stout rope trailing along the deck, that will
follow you to the bottom, and haul you back again safely, let us hope.
Beside it trails the precious black hose that brings you air.
Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with its three goggle-eyes,
and prepares to screw it on. The men watch your face sharply; they have
seen novices weaken here.
"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, cheerfully.
I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt a very real emotion.
I watched two lads at the air-pump wheels as if they were executioners,
though both had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay pipe.
I thought how good it was to stay in the sunshine, and not go down under
a muddy river in a diving-suit.
"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the signals again--three
slow jerks on the life-line to come up, and so on.
Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars against the collar. I
see a man's hands through the round glasses crisscrossed over with
protecting wires; he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds the
face-glass before my last little open window. "Go ahead wid de pump,"
calls a queer voice, and forthwith a sweetish, warmish breath enters the
helmet, and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders.
"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," somebody calls; "if
you don't get enough, pull twice." I wonder how I am to know whether I
am getting too much or not enough, but there is no time to find out. I
have just a moment for one deep breath from the outside, when there is
no more "outside" for me; the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy
fingers are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, and
hands are fussing with hose and life-line, making them fast to lugs on
the helmet-face, one on each side, so that the hose drops away under my
left arm, and the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap on
my big copper crown, which means I must start down. That is the signal.
I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find I can. One step
downward, and I feel a tug at my trousers as the air-feed plumps them
out. Step by step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to my
waist, to my shoulders--to my head. With a roar in my ears, and a flash
of silver bubbles, I sink beneath the surface; I reach the ladder's end,
loose my hold on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region,
slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's careful handling)
on the barge's deck just outside her combings, and can reach one heavy
foot over the depth of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk
comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; indeed, I am
pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my sensations. It is true there is
a pressure in my ears, but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it
would have been different), and I feel rather a sense of exhilaration
from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole
suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my
armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales
would give me close to four hundred pounds.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN
UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.]
The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight
were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give
enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyant than is good for a
diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a
shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush--four hundred pounds
and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience like this,
one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down
more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a
vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as he
could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled.
Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet
out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line
and taking to his heels.
Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the reverse of amusing to a
diver, who must be raised and lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy
freight elevator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air-pressure.
I sat down on the deck and took note of things. The golden color of the
water was due to the sunshine through it and the mud in it--a fine
effect from a mean cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly
enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the squeeze of rubber
wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit over, and found the legs pressed
hard against my body with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer
and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive the latter into the
deck. I knew that divers use tools under water--the hammer, the saw, the
crowbar, etc.--almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to see
if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I had expected. I hit the
nail on the head nearly every time. Nor did the water resistance matter
much; my nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed quicker,
after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkinson's words about the
great fatigue of work under water.
I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the wreck. Strange to think
that if I stepped off I should fall to the bottom (unless the life-line
held me) just as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a
housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And then I felt the
diver's utter helplessness: he cannot lift himself; he cannot speak; he
cannot save himself, except as those lines save him. Let them part, let
one of them choke, and he dies instantly.
And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat sounded like cries of
distress, and the noise in my ears grew like the roar of a train. All
divers below hear this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one
with another: when two are down together, they communicate by taps and
jerks, as they do with the tenders above. I bent my head back, and could
see a stream of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the
escape-valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging to my
little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that rose slowly. The old
Hackensack was boiling all about me, and I saw how there may well be
reason in the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from the
helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent light in the bubbles) is
the diver's safeguard against creatures of the deep.
Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well--a delightful
experience, a thing distinctly worth the doing. It was time to feel for
the life-line and give the three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now? I
was a little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver (even
old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bearings. There! one, two,
three. And the answer comes straightway down the line--one, two, three.
That means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. Now the rope
tightens under my arms, and easily, slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden
water pales to silver, the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the
surface by the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How heavy I
have suddenly become without the river to buoy me! This climbing the
ladder is the hardest task of all; it is like carrying two men on one's
back. Again I bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my windows. A
twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, with a suck of air. The test
is over.
"You done well," is the greeting I receive; and the divers welcome me
almost as one of their craft. Henceforth I have friends among these
quiet men whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and look they
do without flinching) as they fare over river and sea, and under river
and sea, in search of wrecks.
THE BALLOONIST
I
HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK, WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT
I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly
well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him
"Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they
might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler
Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese
and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings,
or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher
Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.