RIDING UP ON AN EIGHTEEN-TON COLUMN.
Presently somebody yelled something, and this man moved away to his task; but we were joined almost immediately by another bridge-man, who told us how they ride the big steel columns from the ground clear to the cap of the tower. Two men usually ride on a column, their duty being to keep her from bumping against the structure as she lifts, and then bolt her fast when she reaches the top. Of course, as a tower grows in height, these rides become more and more terrifying, so that some of the men who are equal to anything else draw back from riding up a column.
These fears were justified just at the last on the New York tower, and a man named Jack McGreggor had an experience that might well have blanched his hair. They had reached the 325-foot level, and were placing the last lengths of column but one, and McGreggor was riding up one of these lengths alone. It was a huge mass twenty-five feet long, square in section, and large enough to admit a winding ladder inside. It weighed eighteen tons. As the overhead boom lifted the pendent length (with McGreggor astride) and swung it clear of the column it was to rest on, the foreman, watching there like a hawk, wiggled his thumb to the signal-man on a platform below, who pulled four strokes on the bell, which meant "boom up" to the engine-man. So up came the boom, and in came the column, hanging now in true perpendicular, with McGreggor ready to slide down from his straddling seat for the bolting.
Now the foreman flapped his hand palm down, and the signal-man was just about to jerk two bells, which means "lower your load," when rip—smash—tear! Far down below a terrible thing had happened: the frame of the engine had snapped right over the bearing, and out pulled the cable drum that was holding the strain of that eighteen-ton column, and down came the falls. It was just like an elevator breaking loose at the top of its shaft. The column started to fall; there was nothing to stop it; and then—and then a miracle was worked; it must have been a miracle; it is so extraordinary. That falling column struck squarely, end to end, on the solid column beneath it, rocked a little, righted itself, and stayed there! Which was more than Jack McGreggor did, for he came sliding down so fast—he came with a wild, white face—that he all but knocked the foreman over; and the foreman was white himself. And what that eighteen-ton column would have done to the bridge, and the boys on it, had it crashed down those three hundred and twenty-five feet, is still a subject of awed discussion.
All this time a dozen men have been swarming over the strut, hammering bolts, tightening nuts, hitching fast the "falls," making sure that all parts are rigid and everything ready for the lifting. At the front of the traveler two foremen, "pushers" they are called, yell without ceasing: "Hey, Gus! Hey! Hey, Jimmie! Put that winch in! Slack away them falls! What the mischief are you doing? Hey! Hey!" And they shake their hands and dance on their toes, for all the world like a pair of mad auctioneers.
The men work faster under this vigorous coaching. Four or five are stretched flat on their stomachs along the top girder, as many more cling to steep slanting braces, and some hang fast to the uprights, with legs twisted around them like Japanese pole-climbers. No matter what his position, every man plies a tool of some sort—wrench, chisel, or sledge, and presently all is ready.
Now the niggerheads start with a pounding and sputtering that make the bridge quiver. The big spools haul fast on the ropes, the falls stiffen, the booms creak, and with shouts from every one, the strut heaves and lifts and hangs suspended. The "pushers" yell at the niggerheads to stop. The men swarm over the load, studying every joint, then wave that all is well, and come sliding, twisting down just as the engines start again, all but two men, who sit at the ends and ride along with the hoist. Meantime the others are racing up the side frames, from slant to slant to the top of the truss, where they wait eagerly, yelling the while, at the points on either side, where presently the strut-ends must be adjusted and then bolted fast.
It seems like some mad school-boy game of romps. Now we'll all swing over this precipice! Whoop-la! Now we'll all run across this gulf! Wow! wow! wow! Every man in that scrambling crew is facing two deaths, or three deaths, and doing hard work besides. Look! There comes the strut up to its place, and nearly crushes Jimmie Dunn with its sharp edge, as a strut did crush another lad not so long ago. And see that man hang out in a noose of a rope, hang out over nothing, and drive in bolts. And see this fellow kick off on the free pulley-block and come sliding down. Hoooo! And there are the others jumping at the falls after him, and coming down with a rush, laughing. Risking their lives? One would say they never thought of it.
"Why, that's nothing!" said one of them; "we used to slide down the falls from the top of the tower. But you've got to know the trick or the ropes'll burn through your trousers. It's a great slide, though."
"Aren't you ever afraid of falling?" I asked a serious-faced young man who was running one of the niggerheads.