THE NIGHT AT THE WORKS.
When Jem Starbuck, that evening, had been thrust out by his friends,
and the door he heard slammed and bolted behind him, he found himself
upon Sixth Avenue, at midnight of a night so inclement that even
that thoroughfare was almost deserted. The trains of the elevated
railway went thundering over his head, but the floor of the street was
checkered with the drifts of wet snow and the pools of water, in which
the mirrored gaslights glimmered a warning to the unwary step.
The rain had at this time stopped; it was the hour’s lull before the
downrush of the clearing northwester; and the flooded gutters still
ran riotously and poured into the sewer-gates with a roaring that was
audible a block or more away.
Starbuck walked some streets without conscious object. His heart beat
violently with the struggle still, and he felt sick and faint with the
passion of his anger. Remorse he had none; but he was ashamed at having
gone so far; at having held himself in no better control. Yet why had
Simpson dared to talk to him? “Damn the fool, I wish I’d killed him,”
thought James.
He spoke the words aloud; and, as he did so, came to a street corner;
the crossing was exceptionally deep with melted snow, and on the other
corner stood a policeman. Starbuck became conscious that he still held
the bloody knife; there was a sewer-opening below him, and he threw it
in. The rush of water was so great that it was gulped down without a
sound, disappearing instantly in the turbid vortex. James looked after
it a moment, moodily; he had little fear that he was in any danger
for his deed of that night; beyond doubt, the fellow was not mortally
wounded; and he would not dare to complain on his own account, and none
of their friends would ever peach.
He hesitated some moments; then, with the decisive step of a man who
has made up his mind, he turned and crossed Sixth Avenue. There was a
bar-room over the way, brilliant with a red electric light; he entered
it, and called for a twenty-five cent cigar and a glass of whiskey.
He was unused to drinking spirits; and the sharp liquor made him
shudder as he swallowed it; but not with cold or fear. The intellectual
predominated over the physical in his nature: such organisms are
cowardly before immediate physical pain or contest, but shrink at
nothing else. But one of his affectations had been to smoke cigars
instead of pipes; his was a nature nervous as any scholar’s; and he lit
the black havana and went out again, taking his way along Thirty-second
Street.
Fifth Avenue was less deserted than Sixth; it was: full of carriages
going to and from the ball. It was about the hour when Flossie broke
off her reverie in her boudoir and, ringing for her carriage, walked
to her window and looked out. James Starbuck may have seen the rose
light that streamed from her window; in fact, he did, and marked
the brilliancy of this and all the great houses on the Avenue, with
an imprecation on them for it; but he did not know Flossie Gower’s
house, nor much of her, save that she almost owned the oil works over
at Williamsburgh. But he stopped a moment, and looked up and down
the fine street; it was going to be colder, and he foresaw that the
weather would be terrible before dawn, though the ladies, well cottoned
in their carriages, would give no thought to it. But the business he
was on was not so safe for him at any other time; and he buttoned his
overcoat about him and walked rapidly down the side street, just as
Mrs. Gower’s carriage drove up at her front door.
He soon got beyond the respectable streets, the level even rows of
brown-stone houses standing shoulder to shoulder like well-drilled
servants in a livery; the shops began, and the iron-balconied
tenements, and the noise and sense of much humanity. The many sins of
the pavement were charitably hidden in the snow; but even then there
was a smell about the neighborhood that would have nauseated Mrs.
Gower; and even in the middle of the night there was noise of living,
and an undertone of working steam, throbbing still, among the sleeping
places of its human fellow-laborers. Nor were they all asleep; here and
there a lighted window, and what we needs must term a sound of revelry,
showed that some of these, too, like their Fifth Avenue superiors,
were wakeful to the pleasures of the night.
But the elevated trains had ceased running, as Starbuck crossed Third
Avenue: the toiling places of the human workmen, at least, were
stilled, and these were not needed to take them to and from their
benches in the social galley. Mankind--except indeed the policemen or
other watchers who had to see that mankind did no mischief while it
rested--was not at work.
Starbuck threaded his way through the streets along the river. The
forges, to be sure, were glowing brightly; for Iron gives his servants
no rest; Vulcan is a lord who knows no Sabbath; he compels, unlike
kindly Ceres, from eve till dewy morn, from seed to harvest. Starbuck
came to the wharves, heaped up with coal mountains, built over with
iron prisons for the gas; he looked about him, cautiously, for he
was physically a coward and afraid of footpads, of the lawless gangs
of roughs that infest the wharves. He had struck across the city too
directly, instead of walking up Fifth Avenue, as he should have done,
where he felt safe. He started once or twice in alarm, and his heart
took to palpitating again, as he saw a dark figure among the wharves;
but it would be only a policeman or a watchman, and he breathed more
freely; and at last he reached the ferry in safety.
He took a seat in one corner of the ladies’ cabin, pulling his
coat-collar up over his face. The boat was not full; but there were a
number of people still out, returning from supper after the theatres.
The warm weather they had had was breaking up the ice in the Sound;
and the paddies of the steamer went crashing and grinding through the
broken floes. Several times the wheels stopped, as if the pilot saw a
field of ice too large to be crushed through. At last, the clanking of
the chains told Starbuck they had reached the dock upon the Brooklyn
side.
He waited until all the other passengers had gone ashore. The night had
grown much colder; and the freezing snow and water crackled beneath
his feet. On this side the river, however, the streets were darker,
and quite deserted; and not one lighted window broke the high brick
housewalls that closed about him on either side.
The effect of the unaccustomed dram of spirit had quite left him by
this time; he threw open his coat for a moment, to light another cigar;
and then buttoned it tight about him, cursing the cold. He had walked
some half a mile or so, without meeting a living being, and had got
beyond the region of the tenements, and in the manufacturing district
of the city. Already he noticed the strong smell of oil, borne backward
through the city by the northwest wind. His way led downward to the
wharves; and he stopped before the familiar iron gate. He peered
through it; he knew it to be the watchman’s station, or rather that of
one watchman: there were two more down by the river side, whence the
greatest danger was always apprehended. But he only saw the acres of
tanks and stagings and pyramids of empty barrels, and beyond them, just
visible, the high forest of masts tapering into the black sky, where,
in the west, a few stars were already struggling out.
It was evident that the watchman, fearing, on such a night, no enemy
but winter and rough weather, had sought some shelter; but Starbuck did
not deem it wise to venture openly through the gate. He skirted the
high fence around toward the river, where he knew there was a sort of
swinging hatchway in the wooden wall; it was kept fastened only by an
ordinary dropping latch inside, and this by inserting a length of wire
in the crack, he easily lifted.
When he was fairly inside the yard, he sat down for a moment, smoking,
and looked about him. The nearest lights were across the river or on
the shipping in the stream; but the ground was white with snow, and the
huge storage-tanks rose up about him, visible by their very blackness,
like rocks at night in foaming water.
He got up, still smoking, but screening the cigar light in the hollow
of his hand, and went toward the water. A double bank of the petroleum
ships lay along the pier; but all was silent on board of them, the
watch, if watch was kept while they were moored, having evidently
followed the example of the watchman at the outer gate. Thus he made
his way, slowly, to the end of the pier, losing his footing now and
then in a snowdrift, or slipping suddenly into one of the great pits
full of freezing water that had collected in the hollows of the
ground. No vessels lay across the end of the pier, such mooring being
forbidden; and it was unencumbered except by the great iron letters
that stretched across it----THE SILAS STARBUCK OIL COMPANY. Starbuck
leaned across the rod that supported the first letter S, and reflected.
It was a curious fact that the identity of the name had never struck
him particularly before; he knew nothing of old Silas Starbuck, nor who
he was, nor whence he had come, nor even that Mrs. Levison Gower had
been his daughter. Carefully he walked around the end of the wharves;
thousands of men were at work there by day; but at night a more lonely
place it would be hard to find, and he met no one.
At last, it seemed as if the object of this unusual journey were
satisfied; and he began to retrace his steps toward the town. As he
passed the first piles of barrels, he stopped and looked at them again;
then picking up a stick, he struck one or two of them a smart blow.
They were empty, and it rang hollow. He pushed the stick among them
and between them to the ground; the snow that had fallen upon them had
melted, and the lowest tier were half submerged in a pool of water.
Then he left them and went on to the receiving-house.
Opposite him, and a few hundred yards to the right, were the stills;
lofty iron towers, under which a dull glow showed that the furnaces
were still doing their work. When he had left Steam City, the strike
was complete; but the oil still ran through the pipe-lines, and stokers
had still been found to feed these refining fires. He turned sharp to
the left; and the dull light was soon hidden behind the storage-tanks.
There was sure to be a watcher in the “tail-house,” if the stills were
at work, to mark the runs of oil; and Starbuck walked more slowly.
But his steps were muffled in the drifts of snow; moreover, he was
close by the blower, and the rapid whirling of the iron fans would
drown all other noise. When he got to the steps that led to the door
of the tail-house, there were fresh foot-prints in the snow; and he
ascended cautiously until his head was at the level of the window and
then looked in. The light inside came from a small tubular stove of
ridged iron, white-hot; and by its comfortable warmth a man sat in an
old armchair, his head upon his breast, asleep. Starbuck studied his
features for a few seconds and then opened the door and entered.
“Who is it?” cried the man, starting up.
“It’s only I, Ned,” answered Starbuck. “Don’t be so nervous.”
“Oh, is that all,” returned the other. “I was afraid it might be some
feller come to do a mischief,” he added, with a grin.
“I wanted to make sure it was your watch,” said James. “You don’t keep
a good one--if anything happens to-night I shall have to report you.”
“The h--l you will,” laughed the other.
“I’m pretty sure I heard a boat land, down by the end of the pier.”
“No?” said the other.
“I did indeed,” added Starbuck. “I wish you’d go down and see. I got
rumors of a plot in town, and came over to warn you.”
“No?” said the other, again. “Did ye though? And suppose I’m kilt--I’m
to come back and tell yer, I suppose? Why don’t you come along
yourself?”
“I want to take a turn by the spraying-house first,” answered James.
“I’ll join you there in a minute--on the wharf, I mean.” And as he
spoke, Starbuck left the little cabin and went down the steps.
“It ’ud be awk’ard if any fellow were to happen in here while we’re
both gone, wouldn’t it?” he called out; but Starbuck was already out of
hearing, threading his way through the darkness to the spraying-house;
the fountain not playing now, at night, when there was no sun to
brighten it, and the great well of oil lying still and sleeping, warmed
by the steam-pipes that were coiled, like warm-blooded serpents, in its
depths.
The man called Ned watched him go, the grin that had accompanied his
last remark quickly fading on his face; then, wrapping his overcoats
around him, he, too, went out and walked away with rapid steps through
the dark yard.
* * * * *
He left the door of the tail-house open behind him; and when, in a few
minutes, James Starbuck returned, he found the place already cold. He
shut the door to and sat down; the cigar in his mouth had gone out and
he opened the door of the stove with an old iron rod to stir the fire
and get a bit of live coal for a light. But he had no tongs; and indeed
the live coal seemed unnecessary, as he pulled out quite a bundle of
matches from his pocket. He let the glowing coals lie unheeded on the
floor, and looked at his watch by the light of the open stove-door. It
was three o’clock. And he cowered back in the chair, shivering.
It seemed so small a thing to do, after all! His lip curled with
scorn as he thought of his simple-minded associates and how great a
thing they made of it. It would fill perhaps a column in the morrow’s
paper--about as much space, perhaps, as might be allotted to the Duval
ball. Yet such things scared the stupid public; and they encouraged
his party, much as a boy is made proud by the loud report of his first
toy-cannon. His own ideas went so far beyond, that he regarded it as
little more than the bow-chaser some red rover fires across the bow of
a fat merchantman, by way of preliminary parley. He was tired, too; and
the earlier events of the night had been exciting.
However, he made an effort, and shook himself together. Time was going.
He got up and went to the runs. There were the two glass-covered
channels, side by side; and both were running oil. Outside the
little shed they entered two long wooden boxes or troughs, supported
on trestle-work, and running several hundred feet in a downward
inclination to the receiving-tanks, whence they were in turn conducted
to the spraying-house, a quarter of a mile away.
James Starbuck lifted up the iron rod he had used to poke the fire, and
brought it down with a crushing blow over the glass-topped runnels.
Then he struck a match across the stove, and standing in the doorway,
leaned over and touched the blue flame to the edge of the running oil.
For some reason it did not catch; and he tried another match. This he
fairly dropped into the oil; but with no better success, as the feeble
flame was put out instantly. “Damn the thing,” said he to himself; and
lighting another match, he waited until the flame was fairly burning,
and looked at the oil.
The little runnel he had touched, partly choked with broken bits of
glass, was full of a thick dark liquid, yellowish in color, but blue
with numerous big globules of water. It was almost the last run, too
crude or too impure to take fire at a spark. He looked at the other;
and in it he recognized the shining stream, and the strange metallic
lustre of the naphtha’s flow.
He took a small shovelful of red-hot coals from the little stove, and
got well out the doorway with it, standing down as many steps as he
could. For this was the light surface oil, taking fire at a spark, more
quick and dangerous than the cruder average. And with a careful aim, he
sent a handful of the burning coals into the now open trough.
Even with the care that he had used, the first blast of flame was
greater than he had thought possible; and he was hurled by the outward
rush of air, half-blinded, down the remaining steps of the ladder, and
fell into the deep snow. He ran back a few steps and looked up. Already
the shed was on fire, and the burning oil, running from it in the
trough, was spurting into jets of flame upon the trestle-work. Though
wet with rain, this structure, so long soaked with oil, was taking
fire rapidly. But there had been little noise as yet, and no signs of
an alarm. He ran back some distance, and took refuge beside a brick
storehouse, behind a pile of empty barrels.
He looked at his watch; it was a quarter past the hour; and for
once, whether from his running or some other reason, his heart beat
quickly. He paid no attention to the flaming trestle, but looked in the
direction of the spraying-house that he had left upon the stroke of
three. For he had left in the spraying-house a fifteen-minute fuse.
And, as he stood there, watch in hand, the whole earth shook beneath
him; and with a noise that was more terrible than loud the silence of
the city’s night was broken; and the iron roof of the spraying-house
was hurled to heaven on a pillow of yellow fire. And Starbuck crouched
behind his solid wall and screamed aloud.
It seemed many minutes before he heard the crash and rattle of the
falling plates of iron. Then a flood of blazing oil poured forth, and
ran in all directions, mixing with the pools of melted snow. Already
the trestle was a roaring mass of flame; the woodwork about the
receiving-tanks caught one after the other; and Starbuck ran wildly
to his distant gate in the fence and cowered there, behind a pile of
worn-out iron. He heard far off the shrieks of the sleeping watchmen,
and then hoarse shouting from the city. Then, like some titanic
minute-guns, the great tanks exploded, one after one, in majestic
sequence; and the stars of the sky were veiled in fires of the nether
world.
Then came the clang of bells in distant towers, and the shriller rattle
of the fire-engines, and shouts of frightened men. In brief time he
heard them crying at the outer gate, and saw them pouring into the
yard, swarming over the high fence, thousand upon thousand of them;
but the pouring oil now flowed steadily, in flaming streams, and cut
them off as with a sword of fire from the enclosure; he could see them
standing silent on the hither side, in motionless throngs, gazing with
pallid faces at the world of fire.
He heard, too, the shouts of the Norwegian sailors in their ships along
the wharves; the yellow flood flowed steadily toward them, its burning
stream melting the snow and riding faster on the water’s surface in
great blazing pools. One fire-river had already reached the end of
the wharf, and fell over it, in a cascade of flame, through the iron
colossal letters to the icy river. The tide took it rapidly down
among the ships; the first was now flaming, from the bowsprit up the
foremast, licking the tar and oakum from the iron rod. He heard the
groups of sailors, in a panic rush behind him where he sat; others
stayed at their posts and worked like demons, with capstans and cables,
to warp their vessels beyond the reach of danger. The city fire-boat
had come; and the burning oil-ship was cut adrift and dropped down
the river, the fire-engines of the steamer playing on it vainly; in a
few seconds, with a loud explosion, it was shattered to the water’s
edge. The very river was blazing like a crater’s mouth with patches
of the burning oil; and now, last of all, the huge storage-tanks, each
holding its hundreds of tons, were scattered into seas of burning gas.
No nook or cranny of the great yard but was lit with yellow light,
intenser, vivider than the sun’s; the sky above was like a molten plate
of copper, touched with swarms of scarlet sparks; and only beyond the
river, above the red-walled houses, were the cold pale streaks of dawn.
James went boldly out, mingling among the maddened crowd. His breath
had returned; and a faint smile was on his lips as he took his way
slowly back through the now thronged streets to the river. His
quickened blood poured sluggishly again; and his mind was busy with
thought. Do serpents pant in the heat of conflict; or does their blood
turn warm when they have withdrawn the sting? He had, perhaps, a faint
sense of gratified power; but the mere destruction of one piece of
property was, after all, so small a thing!
While he was crossing the ferry he looked up the river at the flaming
world that he had made; it was a fine spectacle, and he watched it
as calmly, as dispassionately, as Flossie Gower had done, when, not
knowing that it was her fortune that had gone, she saw it burn from Mr.
Wemyss’s window.