He said I must see somebody with more authority, and turned to his plans.
"You don't feel in danger yourself, do you," I persisted, "when you go up?"
"Don't, eh?" he answered. "Well, I nearly got cut in two the other day by a plate-washer. It fell over a hundred feet, and went two inches slam into a piece of timber I was standing on." Then he explained what havoc a small piece of iron—some stray bolt or hammer—can work after a long drop.
"That plate-washer," said he, "weighed only two pounds and a half when it began to fall; but it weighed as much as you do when it struck—and you're a fair size."
THE WORK OF THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS. A TOWER OF THE NEW EAST RIVER BRIDGE. THIS PHOTOGRAPH ALSO ILLUSTRATES THE NARROW ESCAPE OF JACK MCGREGGOR ON THE SWINGING COLUMN. (SEE [PAGE 192].)
"Is that based on calculation," said I, "or is it a joke?"
"It's based on the laws of gravitation," he answered, "and it's no joke for the man who gets hit. Say, why don't you go down in the yard and look around a little?"
I told him I would, and presently went down into the yard, a noisy, confusing place, where the wind was humming through a forest of scaffolding that held the bare black roadway skeleton a hundred feet overhead. It was a long street of iron resting on a long street of wood, with timber and steel built up in X's on X's, the whole rising in an easy slant to yonder grim tower that loomed heavy and ugly against the sky, a huge bow-legged H with the upper half stretched to a great length, and each leg piled up with more black X's held by two enormous ones between. It looked for all the world as if it had come ready made in a box and had been jointed together like children's blocks, which is about the truth, for this great bridge was finished on paper, then in all its parts, before ever a beam of it saw the East River. As I drew near its feet (which could take a row of houses between heel and toe) I had the illusion, due to bigness and height, that the whole tower was rocking toward me under the hurrying clouds; and at first I did not see the workmen swarming over it, they were so tiny.