But they were making noise enough, these workmen, with their striking and hoisting and shouting. There was the ring of hammers, the chunk-chunk of engines, the hiss of steam, the mellow sound of planks falling on planks, and the angry clash of metal. Presently, far up the sides of the tower, I made out painters dangling on scaffolding or crawling out on girders, busy with scrapers and brushes. And higher still I saw the glow of red-hot iron, where the riveters were working. And at the very top I watched black dots of men swing out over the gulf on the monster derrick-booms, or haul on the guiding-lines. And from time to time the signal-bell would send its impatient call to the throttle-man below, six strokes, four strokes, one stroke, telling him what to do with his engine, and to do it quick.
The yardmen seemed to get on in the din by a system of strange yells. Here were a score of sturdy fellows doing something with a long steel floor-beam. They were working in scattered groups, some on the ground, some on the roadway overhead. It was lower pulley-blocks, and spread out flapping cables, and hitch fast the load, all without any hurry. Suddenly a man at the left would put a hand to his mouth and sing out: "Hey-y-y!" and a man overhead would answer: "Yeow-yeow-yeow!" and then they all would cry: "Ho-hoo-ho-hoooo!" and up would go the floor-beam, twisting as she lifted, a nice little load of ten tons, and presently clang down on her lofty bed like a peal of high-pitched thunder.
I chanced to be talking with the yard foreman when there came such a sudden clang, and then I saw an easy-going, rather stolid man pass through a singular transformation. Like a piece of bent steel he sprang back, every muscle in him tense, and up came his arms for defense, and there in his eyes was the look I came to know that meant terror of the bridge, and fear of sudden death. To me, unfamiliar with the constant danger, that clang meant nothing; to him it was like a snarl of the grave.
"Better stand back here," said he, and led me over by the air-compressing engine, where we were out of range.
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! A tiered-up battle-field, this, where each black X, with its hammers and bolts and busy gang, is a haphazard battery against all the X's below, and a helpless target under all the X's above.
"Why, sir," said the foreman, "that tower went into a reg'lar panic one day because some fool new man on top upset a keg o' bolts. Sounded as if the whole business was coming down on us."
I began to realize what tension these men work under, what vital force they waste in vague alarms!
"'THERE WAS PAT, FAST ASLEEP, LEGS DANGLING, HEAD NODDING, AS COMFORTABLE AS YOU PLEASE.'"