tumbled off the elephant, pulling the lion's skin with him, and of
course that dragged Rajah along, too. The first thing we knew, there was
a big tiger on the ground, and people running about and screaming.
Pleasant, wasn't it?
[Illustration: PUTTING THE TIGER "RAJAH" AGAIN UPON THE ELEPHANT'S
BACK.]
"In another minute we'd have had a panic; but by good luck I was there,
and caught Rajah quickly around the neck and held him until the others
got a rope on him. Then we had a time getting him back on the elephant.
First I tried to make him spring up from a high pedestal, but he
wouldn't spring. Next I had them work a ladder under Rajah, so that he
sat on it; and then, with two men at one end and me at the other, we
lifted him slowly level with our shoulders, level with our heads, and
just there the tiger gave a vicious growl, and the two men lowered
their end. That made him work up toward my end, and in a second I had
Rajah's face close to my face, and both my hands occupied with the
ladder. I couldn't do a thing, and the only question was what _he_ would
do. He looked at me, looked at the elephant, and then struck out hard
and quick, missing me only by a hair; in fact, he didn't miss me
entirely, for one of his claws just reached the corner of my eye--see, I
have the scar still. But he jumped on the elephant, and we kept the
mastery that day. Still, it was bad business, and I saw we couldn't take
such chances again. That was Rajah's last ride."
V
WE SPEND A NIGHT AMONG WILD BEASTS AND SEE THE DANGEROUS LION BLACK
PRINCE
THE general opinion among wild-beast tamers is that the tiger is more to
be feared than the lion. The one will kill a man as easily as the other,
but the lion gives fair warning of his murderous intention by rushing at
his victim with a roar, whereas the tiger, true representative of the
cat tribe, sneaks up with semblance of affectionate purr, only to set
his fangs suddenly into the very life of his victim. The lion has
somewhat greater muscular power than the tiger, but the latter has
greater quickness.
The tamer Philadelphia told me once that he had seen a lion fasten his
fangs in the shoulder of a dead horse and drag the carcass, weighing
perhaps a thousand pounds, a distance of twenty feet. If a lion and a
strong horse were to pull in opposite directions, the horse would drag
the lion backward with comparative ease; but if the lion were hitched
behind the horse, facing in the same direction, and were allowed to
exert his strength in backing, he could easily pull the horse down upon
his haunches, so much greater is his strength when exerted backward from
the hind legs than in forward pulling.
A lion springing through the air from a distance of six feet would knock
down a horse or bullock with a single blow of his forearm, backed by the
momentum of his three hundred pounds' weight, and a full-grown lion in
the jungles will jump twenty-five or thirty feet on the level from a
running start. In captivity the same lion would clear a distance about
half as great. A lion can jump over a fence eight or ten feet high, but
not at a bound. He catches first with his forelegs, and drags his body
after him. Tigers will jump a trifle higher than lions. But of all wild
animals, the leopards are the greatest jumpers, being able to hurl their
lithe and beautiful bodies, curled up almost into a ball, to
extraordinary heights. They bound with ease, for instance, from the
floor of the cage so as to touch a ceiling twelve feet high.
For a short distance a lion or a tiger will outrun a man, and can equal
the speed of a fast horse, but they lose their wind at the end of half a
mile at the most. They have little endurance, and are remarkably weak in
lung power. Their strength is the kind which is capable of a terrific
effort for a short time. It would take six men, for instance, to hold a
lion down in his first struggles, even after his legs were tied.
One day Philadelphia, wishing to test the affection popularly supposed
to exist between a lion and a mouse, put a mouse in the cage of a
full-grown Nubian lion. The lion saw the mouse before it was fairly
through the bars, and was after him instantly. Away went the little
fellow, scurrying across the floor and squealing in fright. When he had
gone about ten feet, the lion sprang, lighting a little in front of him.
The mouse turned, and the lion sprang again. This was repeated several
times, the mouse traversing a shorter distance after each spring of the
lion. It was demonstrated that a lion is too quick for a mouse, at least
in a large cage.
Finally the mouse stood still, trembling, while the lion studied it
with interest. Presently he shot out his big paw, and brought it down
directly on the mouse, but so gently that the little fellow was not
injured in the least, though held fast between the claws. Then the lion
played with him in the most extraordinary way, now lifting his paw and
letting the mouse run a few inches, now stopping him as before. Suddenly
the mouse changed his tactics, and, instead of running when the lion
lifted his paw, sprang into the air straight at the lion's head. The
lion, terrified, gave a great leap back, striking the bars with all his
weight, and shaking the whole floor. Then he opened his great jaws and
roared and roared again, while the little mouse, still squealing, made
his escape. Of the two, the lion was the more frightened.
Speaking of Philadelphia, I used to wonder, as I watched him manage
Black Prince on horseback, whether the lion was really in earnest as he
struck and roared with such apparent viciousness, or whether he had
simply been trained to play a part. Certainly the lion looked as if his
one desire was to kill the little man who teased him so with rod and
whip, smiling all the time under his yellow mustache.
One night Black Prince sprang ten feet through the air straight at
Philadelphia, who saved his life by dodging, but did not escape the
sweep of the lion's forearm. No one knew that, however, for the tamer
showed no sign of injury, but brought his heavy whip down with a
stinging cut over the lion's head, and went through the "act," holding a
handkerchief to his face now and then, but smiling as before. When he
left the ring, it was found that one of the lion's claws had laid his
cheek open almost from eye to lip.
"He meant to kill me that trip," said Philadelphia, as they bound up his
face.
"We will never show that lion again," declared the manager, much
excited.
"Oh, yes, we will!" answered the wounded tamer. "I will make him work
to-morrow as usual." And he did, teasing and prodding him that day as
never before, as if daring him to do his worst.
The climax was reached one night in January, when Black Prince came
within an ace of killing this daring tamer, and certainly would have
done so had not his attention been diverted just at the critical moment
by the horse he was riding. He paused in the very act of springing, as
if undecided whether to destroy the man or the horse, and that pause put
the tamer on his guard, while the watchful grooms rushed in through the
iron gates and drove Black Prince from the ring.
Speaking to me afterward of that night, Philadelphia said: "I knew the
critical moment had come, and that it would not do to push matters any
farther. If I had made Black Prince do his jump when he balked and
turned on me, he would have sprung at my throat, caught me between his
fore paws, and fastened his fangs in my neck or breast. It would have
been impossible for ten men to have dragged him off, and I should have
been killed there in the sight of the spectators, just as my nephew,
Albert Krone, was killed in Germany some years ago by a Russian bear."
In conclusion, let me recall a night that I spent among the wild beasts
of the famous Hagenbeck menagerie. That, by the way, is a thing worth
doing if one values strange sensations.
It is two hours after midnight. The snow lies crisp under foot, the
stars and electric lights shine quietly in the still night. Before me
rises a big building, its walls pictured with springing lions and
pyramids of tigers. As I enter, a long roar from within tells me that
the animals are not all asleep. The roar, a lion's, comes three times
with increasing volume, and at the fourth is answered by another of
equal volume; then two lions roar together, the sounds coming quicker
and quicker, with an increasing staccato that ends finally in hoarse
barks.
Taking a little alarm-clock that the night watchman loans me, I go back
among the cages, where I am to keep strange vigil. A small wooden door
at the right takes me into an open space ranged with cages and wagons,
the former containing some barking dogs. From here I pass into a
circular shed, where are more wagons and dogs, and at the farther end by
the wet, sticky-looking seals I reach a small door leading into a low
passage, beyond which are the wild beasts.
I push aside a curtain covering the entrance against drafts, and see
before me a picture never dreamed of by humdrum New-Yorkers sleeping
within stone's throw. The cages, ranged in double row, form an alleyway,
divided at intervals by gas-stoves, on which water is heating. In front
of the big group of lions and tigers sleeps one of the grooms, stretched
on a cot bed. He wears a pink shirt and blue drawers, and his bare feet
are turned to the gas-stove, which burns night and day. Another groom
sleeps farther on, beside the Tibet goats, and still another near the
ponies, opposite the small cage of the lioness Mignon. They sleep so
soundly that a riot would scarcely waken them; yet, by some subtle
sense, they would be on the alert in an instant if anything were wrong
in the cages.
Three animals rouse themselves as I step into the darkness which shrouds
the big cage--the lion Yellow Prince is one of them--and as I approach
the bars three pairs of burning eyes glare at me through the shadows. I
venture to turn on the electric light and peer into the cage. Here are
three leopards, the three royal Bengal tigers, and a full-grown lion,
making no more noise between them than a sleeping child.
I return to the farther end of the shed, where the five-year-old lioness
Helena, alone in her cage, is walking back and forth drowsily, as if on
the point of dropping off for her night's rest. Indeed, she does this
presently, turning on her side, and stretching her legs out perfectly
straight, with no bend at the joints. It was Helena who, in a fit of
nervous fright a year or two ago, sprang upon Betty Stuckart, the famous
prize beauty, and nearly killed her. Since then she has lived in
solitary confinement.
The stillness now would be absolute but for a very curious sound, which
comes out of the gloom beyond the big cage of leopards and tigers. It is
the elephant Topsy sleeping. There is no stranger sight in a menagerie
than that of an elephant asleep. The huge legs are bent to right angles
at the knees, the trunk is curled into the mouth, and the whole suggests
a shapeless mound of mud or clay, or a half-inflated balloon. Head and
tail are alike; the ears lie flat; the eyes are quite concealed in
wrinkled flesh, but from somewhere within this seemingly dead mass comes
a long, hissing sound, like the exhaust from a steam-pipe. This sound
continues for several seconds and then stops, to be repeated after an
interval of silence.
[Illustration: A ROYAL BENGAL TIGER.]
So complete is the illusion of the sleeping elephant's not being alive
at all, but only a mound of dead matter, that, abstractedly, I set the
alarm-clock down upon the flat bone of the forehead. No sooner have I
done so than I spring back startled, leaving the clock ticking on the
elephant's head. There has been no noise or movement, no indication of
displeasure, no effort to do me harm. But suddenly, in the middle of
the huge, mud-colored mass there has appeared a round, red circle about
two inches in diameter. The elephant has simply opened his eye. The eye
does not roll, or move, or wink. It merely remains open on me for a few
seconds, a round, staring circle, and then disappears as suddenly as it
came.
Leaving Topsy, I resume my wanderings among the cages. The whole place
is asleep, and I am seized with intense desire to awaken something. I
take a long straw, and tickle Black Prince on his black nose. His eyes
open instantly, and the heavy paw swings round like the working-beam of
an engine, only more quickly, to crush the straw for its impertinence. I
tickle him again, and again he strikes, with force enough to knock down
a horse. As I continue, his blows grow quicker and heavier, and his big
tusks snap at the troublesome straw. Finally, in desperation, he starts
up, and, throwing back his magnificent head, looks at me out of his
brown, wicked eyes, lifts his chin, curls down his lower lip a little,
and bellows forth a low, plaintive sound, more like the mooing of a cow
than the roar of a lion. Then, apparently ashamed of this uninspiring
sound, he shakes his mane and roars in genuine lion fashion.
So the hours of the night pass, and at last, having seen everything and
grown weary of experiments, I seat myself on a trunk near Black Prince's
cage, and am soon buried in my meditations. The tips of the tigers'
noses begin to change from red to green, and then back again; the
leopards' tails are no longer straight, but end in snake-heads with
forked tongues darting out. I overhear curious conversations among the
lions, and presently men in blue shirts and pink drawers come marching
past, each carrying an alarm-clock. Then a curious thing happens: with
a sweep of her trunk, the elephant Topsy lifts Jocko, the monkey, out of
his red box.
"You must unlock the cages," says Topsy.
"All right," says Jocko. And he does.
Then all the lions, tigers, leopards, boar-hounds, Tibet goats, bears,
ponies, and wild boars join in the procession, while the alarm-clocks
beat time. Black Prince walks first, and, presently wheeling the line
toward me, lifts his fore paw and says:
"Mein Herr, it is six o'clock."
THE DYNAMITE WORKER
I
THE STORY OF SOME MILLIONAIRE HEROES AND THE WORLD'S GREATEST POWDER
EXPLOSION
THERE is illustrated in this career of the explosive maker a splendid
fact touching courage, that, once a man has begun to practise it, the
habit holds him with stronger and stronger grip, so that he _must_ be
brave whether he will or no. I think a fireman, for instance, who for
years had jumped at the tap of a bell into any peril, would show the
same fine courage all alone, let us say, in some crisis on a desert
island. He couldn't turn coward if he tried.
It is good to know, too, that these fearless qualities may be
transmitted from father to son, so that we have whole families born, as
it were, to be brave, and we see the son of a pilot facing the seasick
torture for twenty-odd years, as his father faced it before him for
thirty. Nor is it possible to be in close relations with a very brave
man without yielding in some measure to his personality; heroes produce
heroes through a sort of neighborhood influence, just as surely as
thieves produce their kind. Thus the brother-in-law of a lion-tamer,
though previously a mild enough man, takes to taming lions, and does it
well. And wives of acrobats find themselves one day quietly facing
perils of the air that would surely have blanched their cheeks had they
married, let us say, photographers.
All of which brings me to a remarkable family of explosive makers--the
Duponts of Wilmington, who for generations now have had practical
monopoly in this country of the powder-making business, including
dynamite and nitroglycerin. In this enterprise a great fortune has
accumulated, so that the Duponts of to-day are very rich men, far beyond
any need of working in the mills themselves, and have been for years.
Yet, work in the mills they do, all of them, practically, and direct in
detail every process of manufacture, and face continually in their own
persons the same terrible dangers that the humblest mixer faces. There
has grown in their hearts through the century, along with riches, a
great pride of courage, like that of the officer who leads his men into
battle--a pride far stronger than any longing for idleness or pleasure.
And they _cannot_, if they would, leave these slow-grinding mills, where
any day a spark may bring catastrophe to make the whole land shudder, as
it has shuddered many times after the fury of these giant magazines.
There came a day, for instance--this was a long time ago--when a swift
flame swept through one of the mixing-rooms, nearly empty of powder at
the time, yet so permeated with the stuff in floor and walls that
instantly the building was burning fiercely. No man can say what started
it. The cause of trouble at a powder-mill is seldom known; it comes too
quickly, and usually leaves no witness. A nail overlooked in a workman's
heel may have done the harm by striking a stone, though of course there
is an imperative rule that all footgear made with nails be left outside
the walls; or a heavy box slid along the wooden floor may have brought a
flash out of the dry timbers. At any rate, the flash came, and the blaze
followed on it so swiftly that the building was wrapped in fire before
men inside could reach the door, and they presently burst out blazing
themselves, for their clothing, as it must be, was sifted through with
explosive dust. Indeed, it is always true in fires at powder-mills that
the workmen themselves are a serious menace to the buildings by reason
of their own inflammability.
So the next thing was a plunge into the placid Brandywine, which winds
across the yards between willow-hung banks. In went the men, in went
young Alexis Dupont, and with a little hiss their flaming garments were
extinguished. Then, as they struck out into the stream, they looked back
and saw that the wind was carrying a shower of sparks from the burning
building to the roof of a cutting-mill near by, where tons of powder
lay. For one of the sparks to reach the tiniest powder train would mean
the blowing up of this mill, and almost certainly the blowing up of
another and another by the concussion, for it is in vain that they try
to protect powder-mills by scattering them over wide yards in many
little buildings. When one explodes, the great shock usually sets off
others, as a falling rock turns loose an avalanche.
All this young Dupont realized in a single glance. There would be an
awful disaster presently, with many lives imperiled, unless those
falling firebrands could somehow be kept off that roof. To know this was
to act. Millionaire or not, peril or not, it was his plain duty as a
Dupont to fight those sparks, and, without a moment's wavering, he
turned back and scrambled up the bank.
[Illustration: YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL.]
"Come on, boys!" he cried; "start the bucket line," and a moment later
he was climbing to the roof of the threatened mill, where he did all
that a brave man can do--stamped out the falling embers, dashed water
again and again upon the kindling fire as the men passed up full
buckets, and for a time seemed to conquer. But presently the fire flamed
hotter, the sparks came faster, and the water came not fast enough. He
saw--he must have seen--that the struggle was hopeless, that the mill
beneath him was doomed, that the explosion must come soon. From the
ground they shouted, calling on him to save himself. He shouted back an
order that they pass up more water, and keep passing water. There was
only one thing in the world he wanted--water.
The men below did their best, but it was a vain effort, for in those
days the roofs of powder-mills were made of pitch and cement--not of
iron, as to-day--and by this time the fire had eaten its way nearly
through. Alexis Dupont, working desperately, stood there with flames
spreading all around him. It was plain to every one that the minutes of
his life were numbered. Again they shouted--and--
The explosion came like an execution, and out of the wreck of it they
bore away his crushed and broken body. The last thing he knew was that
he had played the game out fairly to the end--he died like a Dupont,
said the men.
Such was the spirit of the second generation (Alexis Dupont was a son of
old Eleuthere, founder of the line), and later we find the same courage
in the third generation, as on March 29, 1884, when La Motte Dupont, one
of the grandchildren, took his stand inside the dynamite-mill--his
mill--when it was threatened by fire, and stayed there after every man
had left it, struggling with hand and brain against the danger until the
explosion, coming like a thousand cannon, crashed his body deep into a
sand-heap and left it with the life gone out.
I suppose this is only an instance of nature's tendency to furnish
always what is needed, to raise up a hero for each emergency; but it is
encouraging to know that the very finest kind of courage may be thus
developed by the mere pressure of moral responsibility in a man under no
master, but free to be a craven if he will. We have seen something like
this in the splendid devotion of fire-department chiefs, who often
outshine all their men simply because they cannot resist the gallant
spirit in their own hearts.
Now for the exception to this rule of persisting courage, an exception
sometimes presented in the lives of explosive makers (and in the other
lives, too), and showing that in certain cases courage may suddenly and
strangely disappear. A man may be brave for years, and then cease to be
brave. The wild-beast tamer may awaken some morning and discover himself
afraid of his lions. The steeple-climber who has never flinched at any
height may shrink at last. The pilot in the rapids, the acrobat on his
swing, the diver sinking to a wreck, may feel a quaking of heart unknown
before. Here is apparent contradiction, for how can courage be made by
habit and then unmade? I don't know. I merely give the facts as I have
found them, and it is quite certain that a sturdy Irishman who has
shoveled powder all his life and waded in it knee-deep, as if it were so
much coal-dust, may, for no reason he can put finger on, find himself
lying awake of nights reflecting on what would happen if a spark should
strike under one of the big rollers he feeds so carelessly, or,
remembering uneasily that dream of his wife's about a white horse--every
powder-man knows the close relation between dreams and explosions,
and--well, they will all tell you this, that the only thing for a man to
do when his heart feels the cold touch of fear is to quit his job. If he
doesn't his knell is sounded, he is marked for sacrifice, his tigers
will rend him, the deep waters will overwhelm him, a swift fall will
crush him--he will surely die.
[Illustration: EFFECTS OF DYNAMITE EXPLODED UNDER WATER.]
The greatest catastrophe in the records of powder-making came because a
man ignored such plain warning of his own fear. At least, the workmen at
the Dupont mills will tell you this if you can get them to break through
their usual reserve. The man was William Green, and, whatever his fault,
he paid the fullest price for it. Green was stationed in one of the
magazines, with the responsibility of sealing up hexagonal powder, a
very powerful kind used by the government in heavy guns. This powder
comes pressed into little six-sided cakes of reddish color, which are
packed in large wooden boxes lined with tin, and it was Green's duty to
solder the tin covers tight with a hot iron. In each box there was
enough of this powder to blow up a fortress, and it is no wonder the
occupation finally told on Green's nerves. He said to his wife that
sooner or later a speck of grit would touch his iron and make a spark,
and then-- The theory is that a spark is required to explode powder
which will only burn harmlessly at the touch of a hot iron or a flame.
However this may be (and I should add that the theory is disputed),
Green felt that he was in danger, and by that fact, say the powder-men,
if for no other reason, he _was_ in danger. And one day--it was October
7, 1890--the spark came; surely that was a most important spark, for it
caused the explosion of one hundred and fifty tons of gunpowder, the
instant death of thirteen men and one woman, and the serious or fatal
injury of twenty-two men and nine women.