Cleveland Moffett

“ 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?" ”

“ Now and then there is a creaking of the basket or a rustle of fabric, as you pass from one wind current to another, but as you drift along there is perfect stillness. I know nothing like the peace of a balloon sweeping in a storm. You feel like a disembodied spirit. You have no weight, no bonds; you fly faster than the swiftest express train. More than once Carlotta has raced a train going fifty miles an hour and beaten it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [183] we might reach it by skirting the moat-walls and drawing ourselves up at yonder corner where the end-span rested. ”

“ Here was a tamer in sorest need, for the weight of the lions kept the iron doors from opening and barred out the rescuers. In the audience was wildest panic, and the building resounded with shouts and screams and the roars of angry lions. Women fainted; men rushed forward brandishing revolvers, but dared not shoot; and for a few moments it seemed as if the tamer was doomed.
But Bonavita's steady nerve saved him. As Denver opened his jaws to seize a more vital spot, the tamer drove his whip-handle far down into his red throat, and then, with a cudgel passed in to him, beat the brute back. ”

“ Every man in the crew realized that the false work might give way at any moment, for the whole structure was groaning and shivering as they swung against it, and they knew that if it went at all it would go as one piece, without a moment's warning. And that would mean sudden death in the river under the crush of a broken bridge. Yet no man shirked his duty, and long after midnight they were there on the scows still, fighting the logs with bridge-men's grit and the comfort of steaming hot coffee—well, we may call it coffee. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an instant, as happens in crowds, the balloon became the center of a struggling mass of people, who slowly pressed in from all sides to see what the matter was. Now, when twenty-five thousand people are all pressing slowly toward one point, it is apt to fare ill with those at that point; and had not Carlotta acted on a flash of inspiration there would surely have been disaster in that merciless crush. She looked over the shouting, swaying multitude, and in a second saw the danger—saw women held helpless and fainting in that jam of bodies ”

“ A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like the roar of battle. Our cab heaves with the tugging of a captive balloon. Our speed increases amazingly. We seem constantly on the point of running straight through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden and disconcerting swayings around curves that all lead, one will vow, straight into black chasms under the dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that this plunging engine must necessarily go off the rails in two or three minutes, say five at the latest ”

“ I thought of the lion-tamer, whose skill is shown not so much by what happens while he is in the cage as by what does not happen. A hundred ways there are of doing the wrong thing with one of [150] these boats, and only a single way of doing the right thing. For four miles the pilot must race along a squirming, twisting, plunging thread of water, that leaps ahead like a greyhound, and changes its crookedness somewhat from day to day with wind and tide. In that thread alone is safety; elsewhere is ruin and wreck. ”

“ It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before slack water (slack water is the diver's harvest-time) , when the crew of the steam-pump Dunderberg gathered on deck to witness my descent and assist in dressing me; for no diver can dress himself. The putting on a diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous pair of rubber boots reaching up to the chin, and provided with sleeves that clutch the wrists tightly with clinging bands, to keep out the water. ”

“ It was the riveters driving the endless red-hot bolts that hold the bridge together, driving them with hammers that you work with a trigger, and aim like a fireman's hose, hammers with rubber pipes dragging behind that feed in compressed air from an engine. Long past are the days when bolts were driven by brawny arms and the slow swing of a sledge. Now the workman, leaning his stomach against an iron club, touches a spring, and, presto! ”

“ Far down on the sidewalk were little faces of distorted people; far up at the steeple-top were legs kicking at ropes. And off over red housetops was the river, and the great towers of New York spread with silver plumes by the steam jets.
"Now you can see the stirrups working," said Walter, and, looking up, I saw a figure swing back from the steeple, an arm shoot out, and a length of rope go wriggling around the shaft, cast like a lasso. Then the rope was drawn into a noose, and the noose hauled tight. ”

“ Such is the story-book lion-tamer, and I may as well say at once that outside of story-books he has small existence. There is scarcely any truth in this theory of hate for hate and conquest by fear. It is no more fear that makes a lion walk on a ball than it is fear that makes a horse pull a wagon. It is habit. The lion is perfectly willing to walk on the ball, and he has reached that mind, not by cruel treatment, but by force of his trainer's patience and kindness and superior intelligence. ”

“ You look up through a round window, twenty inches or so in diameter, into the great bag, swelled out fifty or sixty feet in diameter, and perfectly tight, so that every line and veining of the net shows plainly through the silk in exquisite tracery, and wherever the sun strikes it you see a spread of gold and amber melting away in changing colors to the shaded parts. The balloon seems to be perfectly empty, perfectly still, yet it swings you upward and upward like a live thing. You get to feel that your balloon is alive. ”

“ I don't know what I could do with this new train, only three cars, and going eighty or ninety miles an hour. That's a hard proposition."
"Would you reverse her?"
"No, sir. All engineers who know their business will agree on that. I'd shut the throttle off, and put the brakes on full. But I wouldn't reverse her. If I did, the wheels would lock in a second, and the whole business would skate ahead as if you'd put her on ice."
Then we talked about the nerve it takes to run an engine, and how a man can lose his nerve. It's like a lion-tamer who wakes up some morning and finds that he's afraid. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a disaster to the tug-boat America that brought me there, this ill-fated craft having been cut half through in the North River and sunk by a great liner she was helping into dock. The America went down forthwith in sixty feet of water—sank so suddenly that all aboard her had to cast themselves into the water and fight for it. The fireman and the cook, not knowing how to swim, fought in vain, and ended their lives there. It is astonishing how many men who follow the sea as a business cannot swim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ OF all the clubs in New York, I know none where a man who values the real things of life may spend a pleasanter hour than at the Pilots' Club, far down on the lower water-front, looking out of lofty windows in one of those great structures that make the city, seen from the bay, a place of wonderful fairy towers.
Here on the walls are pictures that call up thrilling scenes, as this painting of pilot-boat No. 11 (they call her The Phantom) , rescuing passengers from the Oregon, helpless in the great storm of 1886, sixty miles beyond Sandy Hook. ”

“ THERE is a place in New York—the very last place one would think of—where stories without end may be heard about locomotives and the men who drive them; it is not a place of grime and steam, but a quiet and luxurious club spreading over the top floor of a very tall building on Forty-second Street, and here every day at luncheon-time railroad officials gather: superintendents, managers, and various heads of departments, men who may have grown prosperous and portly, but are always proud to talk about the boys at the throttle, and recall experiences of their own in certain exciting runs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A magnificent swimmer he must have been, this rudely awakened tourist, for the passengers, crowded astern, could follow the black speck that was his head bobbing along steadily, undisturbed, one would say, by dangers, apparently going up-stream as the steamboat gained on him—really coming down-stream with the full force of the current, and yielding to it entirely, all strength saved for steering. Not a man on the boat believed that the swimmer would come out alive, and, helpless to save, they stood there in sickening fascination, watching him sweep down to his death. ”

“ The occasion of this general surprise and apprehension was a tall man dressed entirely in white, who appeared day after day swinging on a little seat far up the side of this or that church steeple, or right at the top, hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, or, higher still, working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching movement, up various hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from the heaven-challenging office buildings down near Wall Street. ”

“ The surest time of year to find the pilots at home is the winter season; for then, with navigation frozen up, they have weeks to spend drifting along in the sleepy village life, waiting for the spring. There, in many a hearth-fire circle,—only, alas! the hearth is a commonplace shiny stove more often than not,—we may listen to tales without end of rapids and river, while the men smoke solemnly, and the women do beadwork and moccasins for the next year's peddling. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The glow of the furnace lights up continuously. There is no sense of fear any longer. It is too splendid, what we are doing. Of course it means instant death if anything breaks. Let the massive side rod that holds the two drivers snap, and a half—ton knife sweeping seventy miles an hour will slice off our cab and us with it like a cut of cheese. Did not an engineer go to his death that way only last week on the Union Pacific run? ”

“ These Bullard watches coolly, and from time to time reaches back past me to turn the injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my head. For the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head forward at the lookout window, right hand down by the air-brake valve, left hand across the throttle lever, with only a second's jump to the reversing lever that rises up from the floor straight before him. As we race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the chime whistle, making its deep voice challenge the darkness. At curves he eases her with the brakes. ”