As vessels labour through the wintry seas along our coasts, and the on-shore winds roar through the rigging, while the fog, mist or snow hangs like a curtain all around, it is surely a comfort to those at sea to know that all along the dangerous coast men specially trained, and equipped with the most efficient apparatus known, are always ready to stretch out a helping hand.
MOVING PICTURES
Some Strange Subjects and How They Were Taken
The grandstand of the Sheepshead Bay race-track, one spring afternoon, was packed solidly with people, and the broad, terra-cotta-coloured track was fenced in with a human wall near the judges' stand. The famous Suburban was to be run, and people flocked from every direction to see one of the greatest horse-races of the year. While the band played gaily, and the shrill cries of programme venders punctuated the hum of the voices of the multitude, and while the stable boys walked their aristocratic charges, shrouded in blankets, exercising them sedately—in the midst of all this movement, hubbub, and excitement a man a little to one side, apparently unconscious of all the uproar, was busy with a big box set up on a portable framework six or seven feet above the ground. The man was a new kind of photographer, and his big box was a camera with which he purposed to take a series of pictures of the race. Above the box, which was about two and a half feet square, was an electric motor from which ran a belt connecting with the inner mechanism; from the front of the box protruded the lens, its glassy eye so turned as to get a full sweep of the track; nearby on the ground were piled the storage batteries which were used to supply the current for the motor.
As the time for the race drew near the excitement increased, figures darted here, there and everywhere, the bobbing, brightly coloured hats of the women in the great slanting field of the grandstand suggesting bunches of flowers agitated by the breeze. Then the horses paraded in a thoroughbred fashion, as if they appreciated their lengthy pedigrees and understood their importance.
At last the splendid animals were lined up across the track, their small jockeys in their brilliantly coloured jackets hunched up like monkeys on their backs. Then the enormous crowd was quiet, the band was still, even the noisy programme venders ceased calling their wares, and the photographer stood quietly beside his camera, the motor humming, his hand on the switch that starts the internal machinery. Suddenly the starter dropped his arm, the barring gate flew up, and the horses sprang forward. "They're off!" came from a thousand throats in unison. The band struck up a lively air, and the vast assemblage watched with excited eyes the flying horses. As the horses swept on round the turn and down the back stretch the people seemed to be drawn from their seats, and by the time the racers made the turn leading into the home-stretch almost every one was standing and the roar of yelling voices was deafening.
All this time the photographer kept his eyes on his machine, which was rattling like a rapidly beaten drum, the cyclopean eye of the camera making impressions on a sensitised film-ribbon at the rate of forty a second, and every movement of the flying legs of the urging jockeys, even the puffs of dust that rose at the falling of each iron-shod hoof, was recorded for all time by the eye of the camera.
The horses entered the home-stretch and in a terrific burst of speed flashed by the throngs of yelling people and under the wire, a mere blur of shining bodies, brilliant colours of the jockeys' blouses, and yellow dust. The Suburban was over, and the great crowd that had come miles to see a race that lasted but a little more than two minutes (a grand struggle of giants, however), sank back into their seats or relaxed their straining gaze in a way that said plainer than words could say it, "It is over."