about a little. People come a long way to see her, for she's the largest
and finest fire-boat in the world. Pretty, isn't she? All brass and hard
wood and electric lights, everything shining like a pleasure-yacht.
Looks like a gunboat with rows of cannon all around her--queer, stumpy
little cannon, that have wheels above their mouths. Those are hose
connections, like hydrants in a city, where they screw fast the rubber
lines. She has twenty-one on a side; that makes forty-two "gates," as
the engineer calls them, without counting four monitors aloft--those
things on the pilot-house that look like telescopes with long red tails.
It was the monitors, especially "Big Daddy," that did such great work
against those North German Lloyders, in their drift down the river, in
1900, with decks ablaze and red-hot iron hulls. We shall hear all about
that day if we sit us down quietly in the fire quarters ashore and get
the crew started.
Stepping over-side again, here we are in the home of the fire-boat crew.
It's more like a club than an engine-house. No horses stamping about, no
stable; but pictures on the walls, and men playing cribbage or reading,
and nobody in a hurry. Plenty of time for tales of adventure, unless
that gong takes to tapping.
And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder brass column from the
sleeping-rooms. He's the lad who did fine things in that great fire at
the Mallory pier--saved a man's life and made the roll of honor by it.
We'll never get the story from him, but the other boys will tell us.
[Illustration: "INTO THIS STREET OF FIRE, BETWEEN THE TWO PIERS, STEAMED
THE BIG FIRE-BOAT, STRAIGHT IN, WITH FOUR STREAMS PLAYING TO PORT AND
FOUR TO STARBOARD, ALL DOING THEIR PRETTIEST."]
If ever fire-boats proved their value, it was that night in May, 1900,
when Pier 19, East River, caught fire, with all its length of
inflammable freight. Close to three o'clock in the morning it was, and a
hurricane from the northeast was driving the flames toward land. Before
the engines could start, a fire-wave had leaped across South Street and
was raging down the block. And another fire-wave had leaped across the
dock between Pier 19 and Pier 20, setting fire to a dozen barges and
lighters moored there, and to the steamship _Neuces_ of the Mallory
line. And presently all these were blazing, some with cargoes of cotton
and oil, blazing until the lower end of the island looked out of the
night in ghastly illumination, a terrible picture in red and black.
They say it was bright enough that night half a mile away for a man to
pick up a pin.
There is no harder problem for the engines than these fierce-driven
water-front fires that sweep in suddenly shoreward, for they must be
taken head on, with all the smoke in the firemen's faces, and water
often lacking, strange to say, although the river is so near. For the
fire-boats, however, the advantage is the other way; they attack from
the rear, where they see what they are doing, and can pump from a whole
ocean. Besides that, they attack with so formidable a battery that no
hook-and-ladder corps is needed to "break open" for them. The three-inch
stream from Big Daddy alone will tear off roofs and rip out beams like
the play of artillery; and if that is not sufficient, the boys have only
to hitch on the four-and-a-half-inch nozzle and set the two pumps
feeding it five thousand gallons a minute, or twenty tons of water.
Under that shock there is no wall built of brick and mortar that will
not crumble.
When the _New-Yorker_ came up on this memorable night the fifth alarm
had sounded and things were looking serious. Piers 19 and 20 were in
full flame, and every floating thing between them. Into this street of
fire steamed the big fire-boat, straight in, with four streams playing
to port and four to starboard, all doing their prettiest. She went ahead
slowly, fighting back the flames foot by foot, on pier and steamship and
kindling small craft that drifted by in fiery procession. And the air in
the men's faces was like the breath of a furnace!
[Illustration: GALLAGHER'S RESCUE OF A SWEDE FROM THE BURNING BARGE.]
Here it was that Gallagher won his place on the roll of honor in this
wise. For some time they had heard shouts that were lost in the din of
conflagration; but presently they made them out as a warning from
somebody somewhere that a man was on a burning barge just passing them.
It seemed incredible that a man could be there, alive and silent; but,
with the spirit of his trade, Gallagher determined to see if it were
true: he would board the barge anyhow; and as the _New-Yorker_ swung
close alongside, he sprang down to her deck, where things were a good
deal warmer than is necessary for a man's health. And as he leaped, John
Kerrigan, at the steering-wheel of Big Daddy, turned its mighty stream
against the barge, keeping it just over Gallagher's head, so that the
spray drenched down upon him while the stream itself smote a path ahead
through the fire.
Down this path went Gallagher, searching for a man, avoiding pitfalls of
smoke and treacherous timbers, confident that Kerrigan would hold the
flames back, yet see to it that the terrible battering-ram of water did
not strike him--for to be struck with the full force of Big Daddy's
stream is like being pounded by a trip-hammer.
Gallagher reached the cabin door, found it locked, put his back against
it and smashed it in. Then he went on, groping, choking, feeling his
way, searching for his man. And at last on one of the bunks he found
him, stretched out in a stupor of sleep or drowsed by the stifle of
gases. The man was a Swede named Thomas Bund, and he came out of that
cabin on Gallagher's back, came off that burning barge on Gallagher's
back, and if he does not bless the name of Gallagher all his days, then
there is no gratitude in Sweden.
Here we see the kind of service the fire-boats render. On this night
they saved the situation and a million dollars besides; they worked
against a blazing steamship, against blazing piers, against blazing
runaways; worked for eleven hours, until the last smolder of fire had
been drowned under thirty thousand tons of water. And not a year passes
but they do something of like sort. Now it is a steamship, say the
ill-starred _Leona_, that comes up the bay with a cargo of cotton
burning between decks. The _New-Yorker_ makes short work of her. Again
it is a blazing lumber district along the river, like the great McClave
yards, where the fire-boats fought for eight days and nights before they
gained the victory. But they _did_ gain it. Or it may be a fire back
from the river, like the Tarrant horror, where the land engines, sore
pressed, welcome far-carried streams from the fire-boats as help that
may turn the balance.
"Why, this fire-boat's only ten years old, sir," said Captain Braisted,
"and she's saved more than she cost every year we've had her." Then he
added, as his eyes dwelt proudly on the trim craft purring at her
dock-side: "And she cost a tidy sum, too."
Let us come now to that placid summer afternoon, to that terrible
Saturday, June 30, 1900, when tug-boats in the North River looked upon a
fire the like of which the river had never known and may not know again.
They looked from a distance, we may be sure, these tug-boats; for when a
great liner swings down-stream, a roaring, red-hot furnace, it is time
for wooden-deck craft to scurry out of the way. And here were three
liners in such case, the _Bremen_, the _Saale_, and the _Main_, all
burning furiously and beyond human help, one would say, for their iron
hulls were vast fire-traps, with port-holes too small for rescue, and
the decks swept with flame. It was hard to know that back of those steep
sides were men in anguish, held like prisoners in a fortress of glowing
steel that sizzled as it drifted--three fortresses of glowing steel.
Then up steamed the _New-Yorker_ and the _Van Wyck_, with men behind
fire-shields against the blistering scorch and glare, with monitors and
rail-pipes spurting out all that the pumps could send. The _New-Yorker_
took the _Bremen_, the _Van Wyck_ took the _Saale_; and there they lay
for hours, close on the edge of the fire, like a pair of salamanders,
engines throbbing, pumps pounding, pilots at the wheel watching every
movement of the liners, following foot by foot, drawing in closer when
they gained on the fire, holding away a shade when the fire gained on
them, fighting every minute.
"It's queer," said Captain Braisted, "but when you play a broadside of
heavy streams on a vessel's side, say at fifty feet, there's a strong
recoil that keeps driving the fire-boat back. It's as if you were
pushing off all the time with poles instead of water. And you have to
keep closing in with the engines."
"How near did you get to the _Bremen_?" I asked.
"Oh, we finally got right up against her, say after forty-five minutes.
You can cool off a lot of red-hot iron in forty-five minutes when you've
got forty-five tons of water a minute to do it with."
It was just as they came alongside that one of the crew made out a human
shape in the coal-chute some ten feet up the _Bremen's_ side. And
presently they saw others there, blackened faces, fierce and fearful
eyes. And above the fire crackle and the crash of water they heard men's
cries.
Straightway a ladder was brought, and three of the crew, Breen,
Kerrigan, and Hartmann, lifted it on their shoulders until the top rung
came up level with the coal-chute. But this, instead of bringing relief
to the fire-bound company, brought madness; for now they fought and
struggled so, each one wishing to go first, that none were able to go
at all. "They were like wild beasts," said one of the crew.
In this crisis Gallagher sprang up the ladder to the top, where he could
look in through the hole, the one hole in all the vessel's sides that
was large enough for a man's body to pass. And reaching in here, he
grabbed what was nearest, arm, leg, or shock of hair, and hauled it out
and lowered it down the ladder to Captain Braisted, who stood below him
and passed the bundle on. Then Gallagher grabbed again and again,
pulling forth by sheer strength one man at a time, taking them as they
came, Germans or Italians, officers or coal-handlers, anything that was
alive. Down came the tumbling mass, yelling, praying, fighting, a
miserable human stream; and when it was all over and the count was
taken, they had saved thirty-two lives.
Now one of the rescued men spoke up in broken English, and said that
there were others still on the _Bremen_, down in the engine-room. And
Gallagher volunteered to go aboard for the rescue if one of the men who
knew the vessel would come along to guide him. But no man offered this
service. It was too hazardous a thing, they said; where the fire was not
raging there was smoke and darkness, and the engine-room was far down in
the vessel. They had groped about themselves for half an hour in
despair, searching for the way out, and now that they had found it, they
were not fools enough to go in again.
"But you say there are others in there alive!" insisted Gallagher.
The rescued ones shook their heads blankly at this; in their minds the
law of self-preservation rode over all other things at this moment. Poor
men, they were half dazed by their sufferings and the shock!
[Illustration: SAVING THE MEN OF THE "BREMEN."]
"All right," cried Gallagher; "I'll go in and find 'em without any
guide. Hold the ladder, boys."
And up he went!
"I'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and without more words
these two climbed in through the coal-chute and started down the black,
hot, stifling ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got there
safely, and found eight men still alive, all Germans, engineers and
their assistants. But when the firemen called to them to hurry out for
their lives, they refused to move. Their duty was with their engines,
said they; they had to run the engines; they were much obliged to the
American gentlemen, but they could not leave their post.
Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their ears.
"But you will die!" they urged.
The Germans thought it very likely; still they could not leave.
"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; you will be burned
to death."
The Germans understood perfectly: they would be burned to death at their
engines; and as they were all of this mind and not to be shaken, the
firemen could only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return
journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, but at last their
good star prevailed, and they came without harm to their comrades, who
listened in wonder to the news they brought. It seemed such utter folly,
the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, yet there was something
almost splendid in their stubborn devotion to duty. Quietly they had
looked death in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not
flinched; and days later, when the steamer had burned herself out and
lay grounded in the mud, cold and black, the wreckers found these
faithful though mistaken men still at their posts, still by their
engines, where they had waited in spite of everything--where they had
perished.
All this time the _Van Wyck_ had been working on the _Saale_, but in a
harder fight, for the flames raged here as fiercely as on the _Bremen_,
while the smaller fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five
tons of water a minute, which was not enough.
So, now, when all had been done that could be for the _Bremen_, orders
came that the _New-Yorker_, too, turn her streams against the _Saale_,
and a little later the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the
unhappy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing island, and
presently grounded by the bow on the Communipaw mud-flats, and rested
there for the last agony.
The story of those tragic hours is not for telling now. There were more
heroic rescues. There were brave attempts at rescue that availed
nothing. The fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roaring
about them and water up to their knees surging past like a mill-race; it
was the return torrent from their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern
settled and the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. In a
large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman gave a noble picture of
resignation in the face of an awful death. Hemmed in there between fire
and water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads for cups of
water passed in through the port-hole, and waved "good-by" as the stern
gave a final lurch and went down.
[Illustration: FIRE-BOATS WORKING ON THE "BREMEN" AND THE "SAALE."]
Nor does this end the record of that day, for there was still the _Main_
to fight for, and at eleven o'clock that night the _New-Yorker_ steamed
up the river and caught the third liner as the flood-tide bore her
stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She had been blazing for
eight hours, and was red-hot now from the water-line up. It seemed
incredible that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they went
to work in the old way, and within an hour had dragged out through the
coal-hole a blackened and frightened company, more than a score of
boiler-cleaners and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through those
fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest bunkers far below the
water-level.
After this the fire-boats did other things.
THE AERIAL ACROBAT
I
SHOWING THAT IT TAKES MORE THAN MUSCLE AND SKILL TO WORK ON THE HIGH
BARS
A FEW years ago I had the pleasure of traveling for ten days with a
great circus, and in this way came to know some very interesting
people--elephant-keepers, lion-tamers, trapeze performers, bareback
riders, not to mention the bearded lady, the dog-faced boy, and other
side-show celebrities who used to eat with us in the cook-tent--there
was one gentleman, appareled in blue velvet, who ate with his feet, for
the reason that he had no arms, and would reach across for salt or
butter with an easy knee-and-ankle movement that was a perpetual
surprise.
What strange things one sees traveling with a circus! Every night there
is a mile of trains to be loaded, every morning a tented city to be
built. Such hard work for everybody! Two performances a day, besides the
street procession. And what a busy time in the tents! Leapers getting
ready, double-somersault men getting ready, clowns stuffing out false
stomachs and chalking their faces, kings of the air buckling on their
spangles. Ouf! How glad we all were when five o'clock came, and the
concert was over, and the "big top," with its spreading amphitheater and
its four great center-poles, stood silent and empty!
It was at this five-o'clock hour one day that I first saw little
Nelson, the ten-year-old trapeze performer, and that picture remains
among the pleasantest of my circus memories. I can recall more exciting
things, like the fight between two jealous wrestlers, or the mystery of
the lost Chinese giant, or the story of a wrecked train, when the wild
animals escaped and the fat lady was rescued with difficulty from a
burning car. And I can recall sad things, the case of that poor trapeze
girl, two weeks a widow, who nevertheless went through her act twice a
day and tripped away kissing her hands to the crowd while her heart was
breaking. And saddest of all was the case of beautiful "Zazel," once the
much-advertised "human cannonball," then suddenly a helpless cripple
after a fall from the dome of the tent. Her husband, one of the circus
men, told me how she lived for more than a year in a plaster case swung
down from the ceiling, and of her sweetness and patience through it all.
And she finally recovered, I am glad to say, so that she could walk--a
pale, weak image of this once splendid circus queen.
But let me come to Nelson. This sturdy little fellow was one of the
circus children, "born on the sawdust," brought up to regard lion cages
as the proper background for a nursery, and thinking of father and
mother in connection with the flying bars and bareback feats. It was
Nelson's ambition to follow in his father's steps and become a great
artist on the trapeze. Indeed, at this time he felt himself already an
artist, and at the hour of rest would walk forth into the middle ring
all alone and with greatest dignity go through his practice. He would
not be treated as a child, and scorned any suggestion that he go out and
play. Play? He had work to do. Look here! Do you know any _man_ who can
throw a prettier row of flip-flaps than this? And wait! Here's a
forward somersault! Is it well done or not? Did he come over with a
good lift? Like his father, you think? Ah! I can still see his chest
swell with pride.
Nelson was not a regular member of the show; he was a child, and merely
came along with his parents, the circus being his only home; but
occasionally, after much teasing or as a reward for good behavior, his
father would lead the boy forth before a real audience. And how they
would applaud as the trim little figure in black-and-yellow tights rose
slowly to the tent-top, feet together, body arched back, teeth set on
the thong of the pulley-line that his father held anxiously!
And how the women would catch their breath when Nelson, hanging by his
knees in the long swing, would suddenly pretend to slip, seem to fall,
then catch the bar cleverly by his heels and sweep far out over the
spread of faces, arms folded, head back, and a look that said plainly:
"Don't you people _see_ what an artist I am?"
This boy possessed the two great requisites in a trapeze performer,
absolute fearlessness and a longing to perform in the air--which longing
made him willing to take endless pains in learning. It would seem that
acrobats differ from divers, steeple-climbers, lion-tamers, and the rest
in this, that from their early years they have been strongly drawn to
the career before them, to leaping, turning in the air, and difficult
tricks on the trapeze and horizontal bars. The acrobat must be born an
acrobat, not so much because his feats might not be learned by an
ordinary man, but because the particular kind of courage needed to make
an acrobat is not found in the ordinary man. In other words, to be an
aerial leaper or an artist on the flying bars is quite as much a matter
of heart as of agility and muscle. There are men who know how to do
these things, but _can't_.
In illustration of this let me present three of my circus friends,
Weitzel and Zorella and Danny Ryan, trapeze professionals whose daring
and skill are justly celebrated. Zorella's real name, I may say, is
Nagel, and so far from being a dashing foreigner, he is a quiet-spoken
young man from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he learned his first
somersaults tumbling about on sawdust piles. And at sixteen he was the
only boy in the region who could do the giant swing. Whereupon along
came a circus with an acrobat who needed a "brother," and Nagel got the
job. Two days later he began performing in the ring, and since
then--that was ten years ago--he hasn't missed a circus day.
[Illustration: "AS THEY SHOOT TOWARD THE MAN HANGING FOR THE CATCH FROM
THE LAST BAR."]
The act that has given these three their fame includes a swing, a leap,
and a catch, which seems simple enough until one learns the length and
drop of that swing, and how the leapers turn in the air, and what
momentum their bodies have as they shoot toward the man hanging for the
catch from the last bar. It is Weitzel who catches the other two. He was
"understander" in a "brother" act before he learned the trapeze; and the
man who earns his living by holding two or three men on his head and
shoulders while they do tricks of balancing is pretty sure to build up a
strong body. And Weitzel needs all his strength when Danny springs from
the pedestal over there at the tent-top fifty-two feet away, and,
swinging through a half-circle thirty-six feet across, comes the last
sixteen feet flying free, and turning twice as he comes. For all his
brawny arms, Weitzel would be torn away by the clutch of that hurling
mass, were not the strain eased by the stretch of fourteen thongs of
rubber, seven on a side, that support his bar cords. And sometimes, as
the leapers catch, the bar sags full four feet, and then, as they
"snap off" down to the net, springs nine feet up, so that Weitzel's head
has many a time bumped the top support.
The catcher-man must hold himself ready for a dozen different leaps,
must watch for the safety clutch where the four hands grip first at the
elbows, then slide down the forearms to the wrists and hold there where
the tight-bound handkerchiefs jam; he must know how to seize Zorella by
the ankles when he shoots at him feet up after a backward double; he
must know how to land Danny when he comes turning swiftly with eyes
blindfolded and body bound in a sack.
All these feats are hard enough to do, yet still harder, one might say,
is the mere starting to do them. There are scores of acrobats, well
skilled in doubles and shoots and twisters, who would not for their
lives go up on the pedestal whence Ryan and Zorella make their spring,
and simply take the first long swing hanging from the trapeze. Nothing
else, simply take the swing!
The fact is, there is an enormous difference between working on
horizontal bars say ten feet above ground, and on the same bars thirty
feet above ground, or between a trapeze act with leaps after a moderate
swing, and the same act with leaps after a long swing. Often I have
watched Ryan and Zorella poised on the pedestal just before the swing
and holding the trapeze bar drawn so far over to one side that its
supporting wires come up almost horizontal; and even on the ground it
has made me dizzy to see them lean forward for the bar which falls short
of the pedestal, so that they can barely catch it with the left-hand
fingers, while the right hand clings to the pedestal brace. They need
the send of that initial spring to give them speed, but--
Well, there was a very powerful and active man in Columbus, Ohio, a kind
of local athlete, who agreed, on a wager, to swing off from the pedestal
as Danny and Zorella did. And one day a small company gathered at the
practice hour to see him do it. He said it was easy enough. His friends
chaffed him and vowed he "couldn't do it in a hundred years." The big
man climbed up the swinging ladder to the starting-place, and stood
there looking down. When you stand on the pedestal the ground seems a
long way below you, and there is little comfort in the net. The big man
said nothing, but began to get pale. He had the trapeze-bar all right
with one hand; the thing was to let go with the other.