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.
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.
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.
Only an earthquake could have wrought such terrible destruction. The city of Wilmington was shaken to its foundations. Great chasms were rent in the solid rock under the exploding magazines. Trees were torn up by the roots. Iron castings, weighing tons, were hurled clean across the Brandywine. Iron columns thick as a man's waist were twisted and bent like copper wire. Horses outside the yards were found with legs missing; men were found stripped clean of their clothes, and this curious fact was developed, that a man or a horse in the region of explosion would have shoes blown from the feet (iron shoes or leather shoes) if the legs were on the ground at the moment of shock, but would keep shoes on if the legs were lifted. Thus poor Green was found with both feet shod, and so identified, although his body had no other stitch of covering, and the explanation was that he probably saw the spark in time to spring away, and was actually in the air when the explosion came.
In my investigations I have heard various stories showing what uncertainty there is as to the behavior of dynamite in the presence of fire. Workmen who handle it constantly in blasting operations say you can put fire to a stick of dynamite without danger, and it will simply burn away in bluish flame. On the other hand, they admit that in every fifty or a hundred sticks there may be one where the touch of fire will bring explosion.
THE EXPLOSION IN THE NEW YORK CITY TUNNEL.
It is quite certain this was the case in New York's recent tunnel accident near One Hundred and Eightieth Street, and I have some facts of interest here obtained from a workman who was in the main gallery at the time. This man heard a shout of warning, and, looking down the rock street, saw a puddle of blazing oil from one of the lamps lapping at the side of a heavy wooden box. He knew that the box was full of dynamite, and as he looked he saw the yellow oil flame turn to blue. That was enough for him, and he started to run for his life. But the explosion caught him in the first step, lifted him from the ground, and bore him on, while his legs kept up the motions of running. He was running on the air.
As he was thus hurled along his knee struck a large stone between the siding and the north heading, and he fell on his face, half dazed. The air was thick with strangling fumes, there was a frightful din about him—yells and crashing stones. Every lamp had been blown out, and in the utter darkness he could see the glaring eyeballs of fleeing negroes, who cursed in awful oaths as they ran. He pressed his mouth close to the ground, and found he could breathe better. He felt some one step over him, and seized a leg. The leg kicked itself free and went on. He groped about with his hands, and touched an iron rail; it was the little track for hauling the dumping-cars. He crept along this painfully to the siding, then down the siding to the shaft, where, in the blackness, he found a frantic company—negroes mad with fright, Italians screaming and praying, Irishmen keeping fairly cool, but wondering why, oh, why! the elevator did not come, and several men stretched on the ground quite still or groaning quietly.
Time lacks for the rest of the story; they took out men dressed in a collar and shirt-band only—everything else blown off, and some whose faces were mottled with fragments of stone, a kind of dynamite tattooing, and some grievously injured. There are no limits to the fury of dynamite, once it sets out to be cruel.