without any trial! Why, there was nothing, sir, in that Nile River we
hadn't tackled a hundred times as boys right here in the St. Lawrence.
When you talk of cataracts it sounds big, but we've got rapids all
around here, just plain every-day rapids, that will make their cataracts
look sick. Of course we did it--did it easy; but when we got up to the
top of the whole business, where was our army? Back in Alexandria, sir!
And it makes a man sad to know that those boys in Khartum were dying
just then; it makes a man mighty sad to know that!"
One sees what ground there may be for such lament on turning up the
dates of this unhappy Nile expedition, and the heart aches at the sight
of those dumb figures. Think of it! the relief-party reached Khartum
about February 1, 1885--_too late by less than a week_. Khartum had
fallen; Khartum, sore-stricken, lay in fresh-smoking ruins. And when at
last British gunboats, firing as they came, steamed into view of the
tortured city that had hoped for them so long, there was no General
Gordon within walls to thrill with joy. General Gordon was dead, cut
down ruthlessly by the Arabs _a few days before_--killed on January 27,
with his countrymen so near, so short a distance down the river, that
their camp might almost have been made out with field-glasses. What a
difference here a little more hurrying would have made, a very little
more hurrying!
It would be interesting indeed if we might hear the whole story of these
months spent in fighting a river, in battling with cataract after
cataract, in rowing and steering and sailing and hauling a fleet of
boats and supplies for an army up, up, up into unknown rapids, through a
burning desert, such a long, long way. It would be an inspiration could
we know in detail what these pilots did and suffered, what perils they
defied, and how some of them perished--in short, what problems of the
river they went at and how they fared in solving them. That would make a
book by itself.
A few things we may know, however. This, for instance: that, while the
maps put down six cataracts in the Nile between Cairo and Khartum, say
fifteen hundred miles, there are, in truth, many more than six. Between
the second and third alone there are more than six, and some of them
bad. Also that the river beyond the third cataract curves away in a
great rambling S, so that Lord Wolseley planned to send an expedition,
as he actually did, straight on from that point by a short cut across
the desert. The important thing then, and the difficult thing, was to
reach the third cataract, and upon this all the skill of the voyageurs
was concentrated.
The first cataract, about five hundred miles above Cairo, is fairly easy
of ascent; the second cataract, some two hundred and fifty miles farther
on, is perhaps the most dangerous of all, and resembles its rival at
Lachine in this, that the Nile here strains through myriad foam-lashed
islands strewn in the channel for a length of seven miles, like teeth of
a crooked comb. A balloonist hovering here would see the river streaming
through these islands in countless channels that wind and twist in a
maze of silver threads. But to lads in the boats these silver threads
were so many plunging foes, torrents behind torrents, sweeping down
roaring streets of rock, boiling through jagged lanes of rock; and up
that seven-mile way the pilots had to go and keep their craft afloat.
[Illustration: HAULING A STEAMER UP THE NILE RAPIDS.]
Jackson described the boats used in this hazardous undertaking. There
were, first, the ordinary whale-boats, about twenty-five feet long and
five feet high, with a crew of ten Dongolese at the oars, and two or
three sails to catch the helpful northerly winds. Overhead was an
awning stretched against the scorching sun, and around the sides were
boxes and bags of provisions and ammunition,--five or six tons to a
boat,--piled high for shelter against bullets, for no one could tell
when a band of Arabs, lurking at some vantage-point, might fall to
picking off the men. At a cataract the crew would go ashore, save two, a
voyageur in the stern to steer and another in the bow to fend off rocks,
or, in case of need, give one swift, severing hatchet-stroke on the
hauling-rope. For, of course, the ascending power came from a line of
Dongolese, black fellows, with backs and muscles to delight a
prize-fighter, who, by sheer strength of body, would drag the boat,
cargo and all (or sometimes lightened of her cargo by the
land-carriers), up, up, with grunting and heaving, against the down-rush
of the river.
And woe to the boat if her hatchet-man fails to cut the rope at the very
second of danger! So long as the craft can live his arm must stay
uplifted; yet he must cut instantly when it is plain she can live no
longer. And here one marvels; for how can anything be plain in a
blinding, deafening cataract? And how shall the man decide, as they rise
on a glassy sweep and hang for an instant over some rock-gulf beaten
into by tons of water, whether they can go through it or not? Truly this
is no place for wavering nerve or halting judgment. The man must know
and act, _know and act_, because he is that kind of a man; and, even so,
in hard places above the second cataract two Indians from Caughnawaga,
Morris and Capitan, fine pilots both, held back their blades too long,
or, striking as the boat plunged, missed the rope, and paid for the
error with their lives.
[Illustration: CUTTING THE LINE--A MOMENT OF PERIL.]
And even with hauling-line cut in time, the pilots have only changed
from peril to peril, for now they are adrift in the cataract, and must
shoot down unknown rapids, chancing everything, swinging into shore as
soon as may be with the help of paddle and sail. Then is all to be done
over again--the line made fast, the black men harnessed on, and the risk
of a new channel encountered as before. Thus days or weeks would pass in
getting the whale-boats up a single cataract.
And sometimes they would face the still more formidable task of dragging
a whole steamboat up the rapids, with troops aboard and stores to last
for weeks. Then how the hauling-men would swarm at the lines, and shout
queer African words, and strain at the ropes, when the order came, until
knees and shoulders scraped the ground! This was no problem for
untutored minds, but took the best wits of Royal Engineers and gentlemen
from the schools, who knew the ways of hitching tackle to things so as
to make pulley-blocks work miracles. At least, it seemed a miracle the
day they started the big side-wheeler _Nassif-Kheir_ up the second
cataract with five hawsers on her, three spreading from her bow and two
checking her swing on either quarter, and her own steam helping her.
There stood five hundred Dongolese ready to haul, and there was the
whole floating population--pilots, soldiers, and camp-followers--gathered
on the banks to wonder and to criticize the job which nobody understood
but half a dozen straight little men in white helmets, who stood about
on rocks and snapped things out in English that were straightway yelled
down the lines in vigorous Dongolese. It was Trigonometry speaking, and
the law of component forces, and "Confound those niggers! Tell 'em to
slack away on that starboard hawser. Tell 'em to _slack away_!"
[Illustration: "OVER THEY WENT, THE WHOLE BLACK LINE OF THEM."]
It was respectfully presented to Mathematics, Esq., that the "niggers"
in question couldn't slack away any more without letting the hawser go
or tumbling into the rapids, for they were on one of the little islands,
on the brink of it, holding the steamer back while the land-lines hauled
against them.
[Illustration: HOW THE ENGINEERS WERE CARRIED OVER TO THE NILE ISLANDS.]
"Then in they go," ordered Trigonometry. "Tell 'em to get over to that
next island. Tell 'em to get over _quick_!"
And over they went, the whole black line of them, right through the
rapids, swimming and struggling in the buffeting surge, getting across
somehow, hawser and all, where white men must have perished. And the
steamboat had gained a hundred feet.
Then one of the front lines of haulers in turn had to move forward to an
island, to swim for it with six hundred feet of hawser slapping the
river as they dragged it. What a picture here as these naked men leaped
in, fearless, each with a flashing bayonet thrust in his thick white
turban! Mathematics, Esq., had no notion of trying this sort of thing
when _he_ changed islands, vastly preferring his pulley-blocks, and
would presently be hauled across on a rope trolley, as passengers are
swung ashore from wrecks by the life-saving men. That made a picture,
too!
Thus, slowly and with infinite pains, they worked the patient steamboat,
length by length, island by island, torrent by torrent, up through the
Great Gate (Bab-el-Kebir), up to the very head waters of the second
cataract; and there, with victory in their grasp, saw the forward hawser
snap suddenly with the noise of a gun, and the old side-wheeler swing
out helpless into the main rush of the river, swing clean around as the
side-lines held, and then start down. Whereupon it was: "Cut hawsers,
everybody!" and drop these pulley-blocks and tackle-fixings, useless
now, and let her go, let her go, since there is no stopping her, and
Heaven help the boys on board! Then, amid shouts of dismay, the big boat
_Nassif-Kheir_ plunged forward to her destruction, while the
mathematical gentlemen stared in horror--then stared in amazement. For
look! She keeps to the channel! She is running true! Wonder of wonders,
she is shooting the rapids, shooting the greatest cataract of the Nile,
where boats of her tonnage never passed before!
The _Nassif-Kheir_ was saved, and every man aboard her, and every box of
stores. She was saved by an humble Canadian pilot, who had never studied
trigonometry, but who stepped to the wheel when he saw the peril, and
steered her down those furious rapids as he had steered other boats down
other rapids on the old St. Lawrence. After that, when the expedition
found itself in trouble in the upper cataracts, say those of Tangoor or
Akashe or Ambigole or Dal, and when the Royal Engineers had drawn up
some neat plan with compasses and squares for doing a certain thing with
a boat, and had proved by the books that it _could_ be done, and agreed
that it should be done forthwith, then some one would usually say, just
at the last, as by an afterthought:
"I suppose we might as well have in one of those voyageur chaps, just to
see what _he_ thinks of it!"
And they usually had him in.
THE BRIDGE-BUILDER
I
IN WHICH WE VISIT A PLACE OF UNUSUAL FEARS AND PERILS
AS I went time and again to the great East River Bridge, the new one
whose huge steel towers were drawing to full height in the last months
of the century, I found myself under a growing impression that here at
last was a business with not only danger in it, but fear of danger.
Divers and steeple-climbers I had seen who pronounced their work
perfectly safe (though I knew better), and balloonists of the same mind
about perils of the air; there were none, they declared, despite a list
of deaths to prove the contrary. And so on with others. But here on the
bridge were men who showed by little things, and sometimes admitted,
that they were _afraid_ of the black-ribbed monster. And it seemed to me
that these were men with the best kind of grit in them, for although
they were afraid of the bridge, they were not afraid of their fear, and
they stuck to their job week after week, month after month, facing the
same old peril until--well--
I came upon this fear of the bridge the very first time I sought leave
to go upon the unfinished structure. It was in a little shanty of an
office on the Brooklyn side, where, after some talk, I suggested to an
assistant engineer, bent over his plans, that I would like to take a
picture or two from the top of the tower. That seemed a simple enough
thing.
"Think you can keep your head up there?" said he, with a sharp look.
I told him I had climbed to a steeple-top.
"Yes. But you were lashed fast then in a swing, and had a rope to hold
on to. Here you've got to climb up by yourself without anything to hold
on to, and it's twice as high as the average steeple."
"How high is that?" I asked.
"Well, the saddles are three hundred and forty feet above the river."
"Saddles?"
"That's what we call 'em. They're beds of steel on top of the towers for
the cables to rest on--nice little beds weighing thirty-six tons each."
"Oh!" said I. "How do you get them up?"
"Swing 'em up with steam-derricks and cables. Guess you wouldn't care
for _that_ job, hanging out on one o' those booms by your eyelashes."
"Perhaps not," I admitted. "But I'd like to watch it."
He said I must see somebody with more authority, and turned to his
plans.
"You don't feel in danger yourself, do you," I persisted, "when _you_ go
up?"
"Don't, eh?" he answered. "Well, I nearly got cut in two the other day
by a plate-washer. It fell over a hundred feet, and went two inches slam
into a piece of timber I was standing on." Then he explained what havoc
a small piece of iron--some stray bolt or hammer--can work after a long
drop.
"That plate-washer," said he, "weighed only two pounds and a half when
it began to fall; but it weighed as much as you do when it struck--and
you're a fair size."
[Illustration: THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS. A TOWER OF THE NEW EAST
RIVER BRIDGE. THIS PHOTOGRAPH ALSO ILLUSTRATES THE NARROW ESCAPE OF JACK
MCGREGGOR ON THE SWINGING COLUMN. (SEE PAGE 192.)]
"Is that based on calculation," said I, "or is it a joke?"
"It's based on the laws of gravitation," he answered, "and it's no joke
for the man who gets hit. Say, why don't you go down in the yard and
look around a little?"
I told him I would, and presently went down into the yard, a noisy,
confusing place, where the wind was humming through a forest of
scaffolding that held the bare black roadway skeleton a hundred feet
overhead. It was a long street of iron resting on a long street of wood,
with timber and steel built up in X's on X's, the whole rising in an
easy slant to yonder grim tower that loomed heavy and ugly against the
sky, a huge bow-legged H with the upper half stretched to a great
length, and each leg piled up with more black X's held by two enormous
ones between. It looked for all the world as if it had come ready made
in a box and had been jointed together like children's blocks, which is
about the truth, for this great bridge was finished on paper, then in
all its parts, before ever a beam of it saw the East River. As I drew
near its feet (which could take a row of houses between heel and toe) I
had the illusion, due to bigness and height, that the whole tower was
rocking toward me under the hurrying clouds; and at first I did not see
the workmen swarming over it, they were so tiny.
But they were making noise enough, these workmen, with their striking
and hoisting and shouting. There was the ring of hammers, the
_chunk-chunk_ of engines, the hiss of steam, the mellow sound of planks
falling on planks, and the angry clash of metal. Presently, far up the
sides of the tower, I made out painters dangling on scaffolding or
crawling out on girders, busy with scrapers and brushes. And higher
still I saw the glow of red-hot iron, where the riveters were working.
And at the very top I watched black dots of men swing out over the gulf
on the monster derrick-booms, or haul on the guiding-lines. And from
time to time the signal-bell would send its impatient call to the
throttle-man below, six strokes, four strokes, one stroke, telling him
what to do with his engine, and to do it quick.
The yardmen seemed to get on in the din by a system of strange yells.
Here were a score of sturdy fellows doing something with a long steel
floor-beam. They were working in scattered groups, some on the ground,
some on the roadway overhead. It was lower pulley-blocks, and spread out
flapping cables, and hitch fast the load, all without any hurry.
Suddenly a man at the left would put a hand to his mouth and sing out:
"Hey-y-y!" and a man overhead would answer: "Yeow-yeow-yeow!" and then
they all would cry: "Ho-hoo-ho-hoooo!" and up would go the floor-beam,
twisting as she lifted, a nice little load of ten tons, and presently
clang down on her lofty bed like a peal of high-pitched thunder.
I chanced to be talking with the yard foreman when there came such a
sudden clang, and then I saw an easy-going, rather stolid man pass
through a singular transformation. Like a piece of bent steel he sprang
back, every muscle in him tense, and up came his arms for defense, and
there in his eyes was the look I came to know that meant terror of the
bridge, and fear of sudden death. To me, unfamiliar with the constant
danger, that clang meant nothing; to him it was like a snarl of the
grave.
"Better stand back here," said he, and led me over by the
air-compressing engine, where we were out of range.
Then he told how a superintendent of construction had been nearly killed
not long before by a piece of falling iron, just where we were standing.
And looking up through the criss-cross maze, with openings everywhere
from ground to sky, with workmen everywhere handling loose iron, I
realized that this was a kind of slow-fire battle-field, not so very
glorious, but deadly enough, with shots coming from sky to earth every
ten minutes, every half-hour--who can know at what moment the man above
him will drop something, or at what moment he himself will drop
something on the man below! A tiered-up battle-field, this, where each
black X, with its hammers and bolts and busy gang, is a haphazard
battery against all the X's below, and a helpless target under all the
X's above.
"Why, sir," said the foreman, "that tower went into a reg'lar panic one
day because some fool new man on top upset a keg o' bolts. Sounded as if
the whole business was coming down on us."
I began to realize what tension these men work under, what vital force
they waste in vague alarms!
[Illustration: "'THERE WAS PAT, FAST ASLEEP, LEGS DANGLING, HEAD
NODDING, AS COMFORTABLE AS YOU PLEASE.'"]
"It's queer, though," continued the foreman, "how the boys get used to
it. See those timbers right at the top that come together in a point? We
call that an A-frame; it's for the hoisting. Well, the boys walk those
cross-timbers all the time, say a length of thirty feet and a width of
one. It's nothing on the ground, but up there with the wind
blowing--well, you try it. I saw one fellow do a thing that knocked
_me_. He stopped half-way across a timber not over eight inches wide,
took out his match-box, stood on his right foot, lifted his left foot,
and struck a match on his left heel. Then he nursed the flame in his
hands, got his pipe going good, and walked on across the timber. Wha'd'
ye think of that? There he was, balanced on one foot, sir, with an
awful death on either side, and the wind just whooping--all because his
pipe went out. I wouldn't do it for--for-- Well, I wouldn't do it."
"Why didn't he wait to light his pipe until he got across?" I asked.
The foreman shook his head. "I give it up. He just happened to think of
it then, and he done it. That's the way they are, some of 'em. Why,
there was another fellow, Pat Reagan, as good a man as we've got, and he
went sound asleep one day last summer,--it was a nice warm day,--sitting
on the top-chord. That's a long, narrow girder at the very highest point
of the end-span. First thing we knew, there was Pat, legs dangling, head
nodding, comfortable as you please. A few inches either way would have
fixed him forever; but he stuck there, by an Irishman's luck, until two
of his mates climbed up softly and grabbed him. They didn't dare yell
for fear he'd be startled and fall."
While we were talking the wind had strengthened, and now every line and
rope on the structure stood out straight from the sides, and swirls of
spray from hoisting engines overhead flew across the yard, also
occasional splinters. The foreman hurried a man aloft with orders to
lash fast everything.
"There's a hard blow coming up," he predicted, "and it 'wouldn't do a
thing' to those big timbers on the tower if we left 'em around loose!
People have no idea what force is in the wind. Why, sir, I've seen it
blow a keg of railroad spikes off that tower clean across the yard. And
one day two planks thirteen feet long and two inches thick went flying
over the whole approach-works right plumb through the front of a saloon
out on the street. That made eight hundred feet the wind carried those
planks. As for coats and overalls, why, we've watched lots of 'em start
from the tower-top and sail off over Brooklyn city like kites--yes, sir,
like kites; and nobody ever knew where they landed."
"I don't see how the men keep their footing in such a gale," I remarked.
"Well," said he, "we order them down when it blows an out-and-out gale,
but they work in 'most anything short of a gale. And it's a wonder how
they do it. It's not so bad if the wind is steady, for then you can lean
against it, same as a man leans on a bicycle going around a curve;
but--"
"Do you mean," I interrupted, "that they walk narrow girders leaning
against the wind--against a hard wind?"
"Certainly; they have to. But that's not the worst of it. Suppose a man
is leaning just enough to balance the wind, and suddenly the wind lets
up, say on a gusty day. Then where's your man? Or suppose it's winter
and the whole bridge is coated with ice, so that walking girders is like
sliding on glass. Then where is he, especially when it's blowing tricky
blasts? Oh, it's no dream, my friend, working on a bridge!"
And I, in hearty accord with that opinion, betook me back to the office,
where I read just outside the door this ominous notice: "All accidents
must be reported as soon as possible, or claims therefor will be
disregarded."
A workman came up at this moment, and, with a half-smile, asked if I
knew their motto, the motto of the bridge-men.
"No," said I; "what is it?"
"'We never die,'" said he, with a grim glance at the notice; "we don't
have to." Then, pointing overhead: "Come up and see us. I'll introduce
you to the boys."
II
THE EXPERIENCE OF TWO NOVICES IN BALANCING ALONG NARROW GIRDERS AND
WATCHING THE "TRAVELER" GANG
NOT that day, but later on, when I had arranged it. I accepted this
bluff invitation and became acquainted with "the boys," the ones who
"never die," and took in the fears and wonders of the bridge at closer
view. My permit was granted on the express understanding that I hold
nobody responsible for any harm that might befall. I was fortunate in
having with me as companion in this climb Mr. Varian, the artist, who
had faced perils of many sorts, but none like these.
First we clambered, pyramid fashion, up the pile of granite, big as a
church, that will hold the cable-ends; they call it the anchorage. From
the top of this we could look along the iron street that stretched away
in a slight up-grade toward the tower. We were on a level with the
roadway of the bridge, and far below us spread the housetops of
Brooklyn. Between our stone precipice and the iron street-end yawned a
gulf that we drew back from, with water in its deepest bottom. Here the
cables would be buried some day, sealed and cemented, piled over with
masonry, to hold for centuries.
Standing in the lee of a block that kept off the wind, we looked across
at the bridge, and planned how presently we might reach it by skirting
the moat-walls and drawing ourselves up at yonder corner where the
end-span rested.
Somehow, seen from here, the iron street looked delicate, not
massive; its sides were trellis-work, its top frames gently slanting,
and one could fancy the whole thing beautifully grown over with vines,
a graceful arbor-way suspended in mid-air. And down the length of
this came the strangest sounds--one would say a company of woodpeckers
of some giant sort making riot in an echoing forest.
_Br-r-r-ip-ip-ip-ip--br-r-r-r-up-up-up--br-r-r-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap._ What
was it? Now from this side, _up-up-up-br-r-r-up-up_, and ending
abruptly. Then straightway from near the top on the other side,
_ap-ap-ap-br-r-r-r-ap-ap-ap_. Then fainter from half-way down the
street, and then from all points at once, a chorus of hammer-birds
making the bridge resound in call and in answer, hammer-birds with
strokes as swift as the roll of a drum. What is it?
And look! Those points of fire that glow forth here and there and vanish
as the eye perceives them, tiny red lights, tiny yellow lights, that
flash from far down the iron street and are gone, that flash from all
along the iron street and are gone! What are they? What strange work is
doing here?