to himself a story he had read of two little babies who went up once in
a balloon and sailed far, far away and never came back, but they might
have come back if only they had been strong enough to pull a string that
hung over them. Hello! So there was a string to pull! Well, any boy
could pull a string. He wasn't a baby. But where was the old string? He
must look about and find it. And sure enough he did find it, only it
turned out to be a stout rope, and he tugged at it valiantly until the
valve opened and the balloon began to descend, just as the story-book
said it would. And so occupied was Leo with keeping this valve open that
he never once looked at the wide view spread beneath him, nor knew
where he was until he came bumping into a treetop, and found himself
upset among the branches, which first tore his clothes to tatters and
then dropped him into a muddy canal, whence he emerged a sadly battered
and bedraggled aeronaut, yet happy. And even when his mother chastised
him that evening with a ram-rod (his father being a gun-maker) he
remained serene, for had he not gone up in a balloon, and was not the
whole of Cleveland admiring him, and would he not go up again (he knew
he would, despite all promises made under ram-rod stress) as soon as the
chance presented?
And within a year the chance did present, a bait of fifty dollars per
ascension being offered the lad, and the outcome was he ran away from
home, and saw no more of his family until years had passed and he had
grown accustomed to dangers of the air and diamonds of value in his
apparel.
"Isn't it queer," said Stevens, talking it over, "how a fellow will stay
away from his people when everything is all right, and get back to them
through trouble? After I started in to be a balloonist I never saw my
mother for seven years. Then I came once more to Cleveland to give an
exhibition at the very park where I first went up--they call it Forest
City Park. I was to perform on a slack wire nine hundred feet long,
stretched between two towers one hundred and fifty feet high. My wire
wasn't long enough to reach all the way, so they spliced on a length of
three hundred feet more, and before I began my feats I walked back and
forth over the wire to test it. I always do that. Then I walked to the
middle of the wire and pretended to slip and fall--that's a regular
trick to startle the crowd. You let yourself drop suddenly, catch on the
wire, and spring up again. Well, this time when I let myself drop I
didn't spring up again, and I didn't know anything more for nineteen
days, when I came to myself in the Huron Street Hospital. Somehow that
splice in the wire had broken, and I went straight to the ground,
breaking one arm, both wrists, and cracking my spinal column in four
places. It's a wonder I lived at all, they say, and during that hard
time my mother came to me, as mothers do. Oh, she doesn't love the
balloon business, I can tell you. But I love it. I've made over a
thousand ascensions, and never been badly hurt but once."
[Illustration]
We were far away now from our balloon-making, and I reminded Stevens
that we had still to tell the boys how to make a parachute.
"All right," said he; "here you are," and he gave me the following
directions: "The parachute is made of fourteen segments of tissue paper,
each one like this, measuring thirty-six inches long, six inches wide at
the base, and tapering like the pattern up to a point. These segments
must be pasted together lengthwise, the fourteen points joining at the
top of the parachute, and in each one of the fourteen side-seams a
length of eighty inches of No. 8 thread must be pasted, leaving two
inches sticking out at the top and about four feet hanging down below.
The short ends at the top must be tied together, and these made fast to
a piece of iron hoop pasted in the mouth of the balloon. Here the fuse
must be placed and lighted just as the balloon is ready to start. A
five-minute fuse will be long enough, and it must be so placed that when
it has burned its time the parachute will fall from the balloon. The
long ends below must be tied to a curtain ring, from which the little
basket hangs, with the kitten securely fastened in it by a piece of
cloth pierced with four holes for the four legs. This can be brought up
over the kitten's back and tied to the sides of the basket. In this way
the kitten is in neither danger nor discomfort. The boys must be careful
to make this plain to mothers and sisters, or their experiments may be
stopped by family orders. I'll guarantee one thing, though, if they
carry out these instructions carefully, your boy friends will have a
fine time."
I certainly hope they will.
THE PILOT
I
SOME STIRRING TALES OF THE SEA HEARD AT THE PILOTS' CLUB
OF all the clubs in New York, I know none where a man who values the
real things of life may spend a pleasanter hour than at the Pilots'
Club, far down on the lower water-front, looking out of lofty windows in
one of those great structures that make the city, seen from the bay, a
place of wonderful fairy towers.
Here on the walls are pictures that call up thrilling scenes, as this
painting of pilot-boat No. 11 (they call her _The Phantom_), rescuing
passengers from the _Oregon_, helpless in the great storm of 1886, sixty
miles beyond Sandy Hook. We shall find men sitting about these rooms,
smoking and reading, who can tell the story of that night in simple,
rugged words that will make the water devils dance before us.
Look at them! These are the pilots of New York, greatest seaport in the
world, with its tidy annual total of twenty-odd millions in tonnage
entered and cleared, against fifteen millions for London. These are the
boys (some of them nearing seventy) who bring the mighty liners in and
take them out, who fight through any sea at a vessel's blue-light
bidding, and climb her fortress sides by a slamming whip-lash ladder
that shames the flying trapeze. And this in trim derby hat (sometimes a
topper), with gloves and smart necktie, and some New-York "Heralds"
tucked away in a coat-tail pocket.
Look at them! These are the boys who stay out when every other floating
thing comes in, who face an Arctic rigor when masts are barrel big with
ice, and ropes like trees, and when climbing to a steamer's deck is like
skating up an iceberg. These are the boys who know, through fog and
darkness, the call of the whistling buoy that sings at the mouth of
Gedney's, and can say "Good morning" to every bobbing juniper-spar that
marks the long ship lane (red lights on starboard buoys, as you come in,
white lights on port buoys), who know the way even when the glass and
iron lamp-frames are all but sunk with ice--west-northwest and a quarter
west for a mile and a half, till the beacon lights of Waackaack and
Point Comfort line out straight on the Jersey shore, then west by south
until the Sandy Hook light lines with the old South Beacon, then a short
way northwest by west and a quarter west until the Conover Beacon lines
with Chapel Hill, and so on straight to the Narrows.
These are the boys who know every rock and shoal in this most
treacherous bay, with its thirteen lighthouses, its two light-ships, and
its eighty danger spots, marked by nun-buoys, bell-buoys, electric-light
buoys, whistling buoys, all familiar to them as their own homes.
Great boys they are for story-telling, these pilots, and by the hour I
have listened to their memories of the sea. Two things made deep
impression on me (so do we of less heroic lives take note of weakness in
the strong)--one, that many pilots cannot swim (the same is true of
deep-sea divers), the other, that pilots, even after years at sea, may
be victims of seasickness like any novice. Pilot Breed, for instance,
as trusty a man as stands at a liner's wheel, assured me that every time
he goes out for duty he goes out for torture, too. And he does his duty
and he bears the torture, so that after all we must count this rather
strength than weakness.
[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF THE OREGON'S PASSENGERS.]
"How can you do your work," I asked, "if you are in such distress?"
"Because I have to," he answered, with a wistful smile. "You know
sailors are often seasick, but they go aloft just the same and
work--because they have to. You could do it yourself if you had to. And
yet," he added, half shutting his eyes, "I've many a time been so bad
when we've tossed and tossed for days and nights on the watch for
vessels that I've come pretty near to dropping quietly overboard and
ending it."
This he said without any special emphasis, yet one could see that it was
true.
"Why don't you give up the life?" I suggested.
"Perhaps I would," said he, "if I could do as well at anything else.
Besides--"
Then came the queerest reason. His father, it seems, a pilot before him,
had suffered from seasickness for thirty-seven years, and then for
thirty years more had been quite free from it. "Now," said Breed, "I've
been a pilot for twenty-two years, so I figure if I stick to it fifteen
years more I may be like my father after that, and have no more
trouble."
Think of that for a scheme of life!
Presently another pilot joined us, and set forth a remarkable
experience. "I was taking the steamer _Lahn_ once," said he, "through a
heavy fog, and the captain and I were both on the bridge, anxious to
locate the light-ship. You know she lies eight miles off the Hook, and
gives incoming vessels their first bearings for the channel. Of course
we didn't expect to see her light--you couldn't see anything in such
weather--but we listened for her fog-horn. How we did listen! And
presently we heard it. You get accustomed to judging distances over
water by the sound, and I put that light-ship at five miles away, or
thereabouts, and I wasn't far wrong. Well, we headed straight for it,
and heard the fog-horn all the time for about a mile. Then it suddenly
stopped.
"'Hullo!' said I. 'What's up?'
"'Confound those light-ship people,' growled the captain. 'I'll make
complaint against them for stopping their horn.'
"'Wait a little,' said I, and kept listening, listening for the horn to
blow again, and all the time we were running nearer to the shoal. Pretty
soon we slowed down, and went on a couple of miles, then another mile.
It seemed as if we must have reached the light-ship, and the captain was
in a state of mind.
"Then suddenly the fog-horn sounded again, not four lengths away, sir,
and the queer thing is it had been sounding the whole blamed time--we
got positive proof of it afterward--only we hadn't heard it. The
explanation was that we had passed through two sound zones--that's what
the scientific people call 'em--and I can tell you those sound zones
make considerable trouble for pilots."
To this perplexing statement the others nodded grave assent, and Breed
capped the tale with a sound-zone story of his own. It was just off
quarantine, and he was turning a liner to bring her up to dock when
another liner came along, also running in. Breed gave the signal three
times for the other liner to port her helm, and she signaled back three
times for him to port his. By good luck each vessel did the right thing,
and they passed safely, but neither pilot heard the whistle of the
other, and each made angry complaint that the other had failed to
whistle: yet witnesses testified that both had whistled, and each one
swore that he had.
The truth was, according to the gentlemen who explain acoustic puzzles,
that these two steamers happened to be placed there down the bay like
two people in a whispering gallery, who cannot hear each other where
they are, but would hear plainly if they moved further apart or drew
closer together, so as to be in the foci of sound. Thus it was that
distant vessels heard both sets of whistles, although there was a nearer
region where these were inaudible.
Investigation has shown that these sound zones frequently establish
themselves at sea (they vary in extent with wind and tide), so that the
sound of horn or bell may be heard for a mile or two, and then become
inaudible for, say, two miles, and then become audible again, almost as
plainly as at first, for several miles more. The theory is that the
sound-waves somehow go skipping over the sea, like a flat pebble over a
mill-pond, in long jumps, and that a vessel under the highest part of
one of these jumps is out of the sound influence, but will come into it
again by going ahead a certain distance or going back a certain
distance. Whether this explanation be the true one or not, the facts are
abundantly vouched for, and are believed to explain various collisions
and wrecks that have long been looked upon as mysteries.
"There are lots of queer things about our business," reflected an old
pilot. "Now, you take steamers, they're just as different as people;
each one has her own ways, and most likely her own partic'lar kind of
crankiness. They talk about twin steamers, but there's no such thing.
You can have 'em both made in the same yard, with every measurement
alike, and they'll be as different, sir, as--as two violins. Why, I
never saw a craft that'd sail the same on both tacks; they're always
harder on one than the other. And as for compasses--well, I don't
suppose there's ever two that came into this port with needles pointing
just the same way. They all lean a shade one way or the other, same as
watches."
"Lean a shade!" put in another man. "I've known 'em to lean a whole lot.
I've known a steamer's compass to point plumb northeast instead of
north. And that time we nearly went on the rocks by it. We were coming
along past Fire Island, and the night was pretty thick. I felt something
was queer and wouldn't go below, although the captain wanted me to. I
kept looking up, looking up, searching for the north star, and pretty
soon I made it out, or thought I did, through a rift in the blackness.
"'Hold on!' said I to the captain, 'something's the matter with your
compass. There's the north star ahead of us, and it ought to be abaft
the bridge.'
"'North star nothing,' said the captain. 'You're tired, man; you need a
rest. Now, you just turn in for an hour, and I'll run her.'
"'You'll run her on the rocks,' said I, 'inside of fifteen minutes
unless you pull her out of here. I tell you that compass is crazy.'
"Well, sir, he began to get scared when he saw me so positive, and a
little later he pulled her out--just in time, too, for we were right on
the breakers of Long Island, thanks to that lying compass. I've heard
it's the magnetic sand at Shinnecock that devils compasses. You know
there's acres and acres of it along there."
This led to a discussion of magnetic sand, and it was edifying to see
how well informed these pilots are in the latest advances of science.
They set forth, for example, the clear advantage of literally pouring
oil upon furious waters, and were all agreed that the foam of a spent
wave, spreading around a life-boat, will often protect her against a
succeeding wave. The foam seems to act like oil in preventing a driving
wind from tossing up the surface--getting a hold on it, one might say.
"Taking it altogether," I asked, "do you men regard a pilot's life as
very dangerous?"
It was Breed who answered: "Taking it altogether," said he, "I regard a
pilot's life as about the most dangerous going. Here's a little thing to
show you how fast they go, these lives of pilots. When I was received as
apprentice there were eighteen other apprentices ahead of me, and the
only way we could get to be pilots was through somebody dropping out,
for there were never more than just so many licenses issued. Well, when
I had been an apprentice for three years the whole eighteen had been
received as pilots, and there were seven vacancies besides. That makes
twenty-five dead pilots in three years, and most of 'em killed. Why, in
the blizzard of 1888 alone ten of our boats were wrecked."
At this there was a solemn shaking of heads, then stories of the taking
off of this or that gallant fellow. There was Van Pelt, one of the
strongest men in the service--a pilot from a family of pilots--killed by
the stroke of a tow-line--a big hawser that snapped across his body like
a knife when the towing-bitts pulled out, and cut him clean in two.
Then there was that Norwegian apprentice, who was lost when they tried
to send a small boat after Denny Reardon on the _Massachusetts_, in the
storm of November, 1897. The _Massachusetts_ was loaded with lions,
tigers, and elephants--the whole Barnum & Bailey show--and Reardon had
just got her safely over the bar. There was a fierce sea on that night,
and Reardon waited at the steamer's side--waited and peered out at the
flare-up light, while the boys on the _New York_ tried to do the
launching trick. And in one of the upsets this Norwegian chap was swept
astern and churned to death in the screw-blades.
[Illustration: A PILOT-BOAT RIDING OUT A STORM.]
Then there was Harry Devere, a Brooklyn pilot, who happened to be out in
the cyclone of 1894, miles from land, in the little pilot-schooner, with
its jaunty "17" on the canvas. There they were, riding out the storm, as
pilot-boats do (facing it, not running), when up loomed a big West
Indian fruiter, burning a blue light forward, which meant she was in
sore need of a man at the wheel who knew the dangers in these parts. The
old ocean was killing mad that night, air and water straining in a death
struggle, and already four pilots had been carried on by liners, carried
on to Europe because there was no human way of putting them off.
To start for that vessel now was madness, and every man in the
pilot-crew knew it, and so did Devere. But he started just the same. He
said he would try, and he did--tried through a cyclone that was sweeping
a whole heaven of snow down upon the bellowing sea as if to smother its
fury. Down into this they went, three of them, and somehow, by a miracle
of skill, got the yawl under the vessel's lea. Then smash they were
hurled against the iron side, and Devere sprang for the rope ladder--a
poor, fluttering thing. He caught it, held fast, and the next moment was
torn away by a great wave that cast him back into the waste of waters.
And so he perished.
You ought to hear them tell these stories!
On the whole it seemed clear there is danger enough in this calling for
the most extravagant taste. And the chief danger is not this boarding of
vessels in storms, nor yet the dancing out of tempests in cockle-shell
craft, where a steamer would scurry to shelter; neither of these, but
the everlasting peril of being run down. That is a danger to break men's
nerves, for always, night and day, the pilot-boats must lie in the swift
track of the liners--right in the track, else they will pass unseen--and
it must be known that this is a narrow track, a funnel for the ships of
all the world, which pass ceaselessly, ceaselessly, converging from all
ports, diverging to all ports, in storm, in fog, in darkness, and there
the pilot-boats must lie, flying their square blue flags by day, burning
their flare-up lights every fifteen minutes by night, waiting, waiting,
in just such strained suspense as a man would feel before the rush of a
silent locomotive, sure to kill him if he does not see it, before the
rush of many silent locomotives which come while he sleeps, while he
eats, perhaps while he prays.
And constantly in the pilot records is this laconic entry: "No. 8 run
over and sunk; all hands lost." "No. 11 run over and sunk; one man
saved, the rest lost." "Pilot-boat _Columbia_ cut down by a liner; ten
men lost." No chance for heroic struggle here, no death with dramatic
setting and columns in the papers, but a stupid, blundering execution
while the men rest helpless on weary bunks, lulled by the surging
sea--"run over and sunk."
II
WHICH SHOWS HOW PILOTS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE FIGHT THE ICE-FLOES
NO study of pilot life can be complete without mention of the river
pilot who has to face perils in the rapids not a whit less real than
those faced by his brother pilot on the sea. I got my first glimpse of
the river pilot, oddly enough, in frozen December time, when even that
great waterway of northern America--I mean the St. Lawrence--was all but
a solid bed of ice, not quite, however, and to that chance I owed a
glimpse of Canadian boatmen at the hazard of their winter work, which is
none the less interesting for being unfamiliar.
It was fifteen degrees below zero, just pleasant Christmas weather in
Quebec, and the old river of saintly fame was grinding along with its
gorge of ice, streaming along under a dazzle of sun, steaming up little
clouds of frozen water-vapor, low-hanging and spreading over it like
tumbled fleece in patches of shine and shadow, quite a balloon effect, I
fancied, as I came down the cliff.
In a tug-boat office at the river's edge, chatting around a stove, yet
bundled thickly as if no stove were there, I found some half dozen
sharp-glancing men, who might have been actors in New York or noblemen
in Russia (I judge by the fineness of their furs), but were pilots here,
lower-river pilots who, as one of them assured me, are vastly more
important than the upper-river kind.
I learned also from one who wore a coat of yellowish-gray skins with
otter trimmings that they were a belated company, who would start
shortly for Orleans Island across the ice. That was Orleans Island there
to the left. No, it did not seem far, but I might find it far enough if
I tried to get there. At this they all laughed.
Meekly I sat down, as was befitting, and listened to the talk. They
conversed in bad French or worse English, and were most of them, strange
to say, Scotchmen who had never seen Scotland and never
would--Douglasses and Browns and McGregors, who couldn't pronounce their
own names, but could take a liner to the gulf, day or night, through the
reefs of Crane Island, past the menacing twin Pilgrims, by windings and
dangers, safe down to sea.
I asked the man what they were going to Orleans Island for, and he
explained that they lived there through the winter months--they and
other pilots, many others. It was a pilot colony, set out in midstream.
Yes, it was cut off from the land, quite cut off; they liked it so.
Sometimes they didn't come ashore for weeks; it was not exactly fun
fighting those ice-floes. And they all laughed again; well, not exactly!
Meantime several jolly little cutters, no higher than cradles, had
jingled up with more men in furs and one woman. Also boxes and bundles.
"Pilots?" I asked.
The man nodded.
"And the woman?"
"Dees lady, pilot's wife. She been seek." And he went on in a jargon
that is charming, but not for imitation, to explain that they would lay
the sick lady in the bottom of the boat and pile coats over her and
around her until it was tolerably sure she couldn't freeze. From the way
he spoke one would fancy they were about to start for the North Pole,
but I presently understood that this two-mile ice journey over the
crackling St. Lawrence--the crackling comes from the ice-crust breaking
as the tide drops under it--is about as hard a test of men's endurance
as any Arctic performance.
They were all gathered now save one, whose cutter tarried still. He was
a good pilot, but overfond of the convivial glass, and was no doubt this
very moment in some uproarious company, forgetful that the start was to
be sharp on the hour. Well, they would give him ten minutes more, say
fifteen minutes, _pauvre garcon_.
Then they fell to discussing winter navigation, and whether it would
ever come on the St. Lawrence as it had on rivers in Russia. A pilot in
coon-skins was sure it would come; they would put on one of these
new-fangled ice-crunching steamers to keep the main channel open, and,
_sacre bleu_, there you are! That would save five months every year. But
the others shook their heads; they didn't believe it, and didn't want it
anyway. A pilot, sir, must have a certain time to smoke his pipe!