The Project Gutenberg eBook of Careers of Danger and Daring
Title: Careers of Danger and Daring
Author: Cleveland Moffett
Illustrator: Jay Hambidge
George Varian
Release date: July 13, 2010 [eBook #33146]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
CLEVELAND MOFFETT
JAY HAMBIDGE AND GEORGE VARIAN
AND OTHERS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1903
The Century Co.
Copyright, 1898, by
S. S. McClure Co.
Copyright, 1901, by
Cleveland Moffett.
—————
Published October, 1901
THE DEVINNE PRESS.
Dedication
MY TWO LITTLE CHILDREN
ANNE EUNICE
AND
CLEVELAND LUSK
IN LOVE AND THE HOPE THAT
IT MAY HELP THEM, AS THEY
GROW UP, TO FORM HABITS OF
COURAGE AND USEFULNESS.
AUGUST, 1901. C. M.
CONTENTS
The Steeple-Climber | ||
| PAGE | ||
| i | In Which We Make the Acquaintance of "Steeple Bob" | 3 |
| ii | How They Blew Off the Top of a Steeple with Dynamite | 14 |
| iii | The Greatest Danger to a Steeple-Climber Lies in Being Startled | 21 |
| iv | Experience of an Amateur Climbing to a Steeple-top | 29 |
The Deep-Sea Diver | ||
| i | Some First Impressions of Men Who Go Down Under the Sea | 40 |
| ii | A Visit to the Burying-ground of Wrecks | 54 |
| iii | An Afternoon of Story-telling on the Steam-pump Dunderberg | 63 |
| iv | Wherein We Meet Sharks, Alligators, and a Very Tough Problem in Wrecking | 71 |
| v | In Which the Author Puts on a Diving-suit and Goes Down to a Wreck | 78 |
The Balloonist | ||
| i | Here We Visit a Balloon Farm and Talk with the Man Who Runs It | 87 |
| ii | Which Treats of Experiments in Steering Balloons | 99 |
| iii | Something About Explosive Balloons and the Wonders of Hydrogen | 110 |
| iv | The Story of a Boy Who Ran Away in a Big Balloon | 117 |
The Pilot | ||
| i | Some Stirring Tales of the Sea Heard at the Pilot's Club | 130 |
| ii | Which Shows How Pilots on the St. Lawrence Fight the Ice-floes | 141 |
| iii | Now We Watch the Men Who Shoot the Furious Rapids at Lachine | 148 |
| iv | What Canadian Pilots Did in the Cataracts of the Nile | 160 |
The Bridge-Builder | ||
| i | In Which We Visit a Place of Unusual Fears and Perils | 173 |
| ii | The Experience of Two Novices in Balancing Along Narrow Girders and Watching the "Traveler" Gang | 182 |
| iii | Which Tells of Men Who Have Fallen from Great Heights | 197 |
The Fireman | ||
| i | Wherein We See a Sleeping Village Swept by a River of Fire and the Burning of a Famous Hotel | 209 |
| ii | What Bill Brown Did in the Great Tarrant Fire | 222 |
| iii | Here We Visit an Engine-house at Night and Chat with the Driver | 233 |
| iv | Famous Rescues by New York Fire-boats from Red-hot Ocean Liners | 241 |
The Aërial Acrobat | ||
| i | Showing That it Takes More Than Muscle and Skill to Work on the High Bars | 255 |
| ii | About Double and Triple Somersaults and the Danger of Losing Heart | 264 |
| iii | In Which the Author Tries His Hand with Professional Trapeze Performers | 272 |
| iv | Some Remarkable Falls and Narrow Escapes of Famous Athletes | 284 |
The Wild-Beast Tamer | ||
| i | We Visit a Queer Resort for Circus People and Talk with a Trainer of Elephants | 293 |
| ii | Methods of Lion-tamers and the Story of Brutus's Attack on Mr. Bostock | 304 |
| iii | Bonavita Describes His Fight with Seven Lions and George Arstingstall Tells How He Conquered a Mad Elephant | 317 |
| iv | We See Mr. Bostock Matched Against a Wild Lion and Hear About the Tiger Rajah | 328 |
| v | We Spend a Night Among Wild Beasts and See the Dangerous Lion Black Prince | 339 |
The Dynamite Worker | ||
| i | The Story of Some Millionaire Heroes and the World's Greatest Powder Explosion | 348 |
| ii | We Visit a Dynamite-factory and Meet a Man Who Thinks Courage is an Accident | 358 |
| iii | How Joshua Plumstead Stuck to His Nitro-Glycerin-Vat in an Explosion and Saved the Works | 367 |
The Locomotive Engineer | ||
| i | How it Feels to Ride at Night on a Locomotive Going Ninety Miles an Hour | 377 |
| ii | We Pick Up Some Engine Lore and Hear About the Death of Giddings | 388 |
| iii | Some Memories of the Great Record-breaking Run from Chicago to Buffalo | 395 |
| iv | We Hear Some Thrilling Stories at a Round-house and Reach the End of the Book | 406 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
About one half the chapters in this book appeared serially in "St. Nicholas Magazine," the other half in the "New York Herald," and two chapters on the Locomotive Engineer, and one on the Wild-Beast Tamer appeared in "McClure's Magazine." Thanks are extended to all these for permission to republish.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
Divers at Work Near a Wreck | Frontispiece |
"I had To Crawl Around and Over it" | 5 |
At the Top of St. Paul's, New York | 10 |
"Then my Partner Stood on my Shoulders" | 12 |
"Sometimes in Hard Places You have to Throw Your Nooses Around the Shaft" | 16 |
Picture of the Falling Steeple, Photographed just after the Dynamite Exploded. The Falling Section was 35 Feet in Length and Weighed 35 Tons | 20 |
Looking from the Ground Upward at St. Paul's Spire, Broadway, New York City | 25 |
Gilding a Church Cross, Above New York City | 30 |
How the Steeple-Climber Goes up a Flagpole | 37 |
Portrait of a Diver. Drawn from Life | 43 |
"The Diver's Helmet Showed like the Back of a Big Turtle" | 46 |
Diver Standing on Sunken Coal Barge | 51 |
The Men at Work with the Air-Pump | 57 |
"I Stayed Down until that Chain was Under the Shaft" | 60 |
The Man who Attends to the Diver's Signals | 65 |
A Diver at Work on a Steamboat's Propeller | 75 |
The Author going Down in a Diver's Suit | 80 |
The Author after his First Dive. The Face-Plate has been Unscrewed from the Helmet | 83 |
"Balloon-Cloth by Hundreds of Yards" | 88 |
"Fields that Look like an Eskimo Village" | 89 |
"A Pair of Great Wings made of Feathers and Silk—which, alas! would Never Fly" | 91 |
Professor Myers in his "Skycycle" | 93 |
How the Earth Looks when Viewed from a Height of One Mile. (Photographed from a Balloon.) | 96 |
Mme. Carlotta Steering a Balloon by Tipping the Foot-Board | 100 |
"In Spite of all their Skill these Indians Found Themselves Presently Lifted into the Air, Canoes and all" | 103 |
Mme. Carlotta Calls for Assistance from Another Balloonist Three Miles Away | 107 |
A Balloon-Picnic at the Aëronauts' Home | 112 |
"Stevens Came Down once with a Parachute Two Miles out in the Atlantic Ocean—and was Promptly Rescued" | 119 |
The Rescue of the "Oregon's" Passengers | 132 |
A Pilot-Boat Riding out a Storm | 138 |
River-Buoys on the Bank for the Winter | 145 |
"Big John" Steering a Boat Through the Lachine Rapids | 150 |
| By permission of William Notman & Son | |
Fred Ouillette, the Young Pilot | 153 |
The Indian Pilots Rescue Passengers from the Steamer on the Rocks | 156 |
"Man Overboard!" an Indian Canoe to the Rescue | 158 |
The Pilot, "Big John" | 162 |
Hauling a Steamer up the Nile Rapids | 165 |
Cutting the Line—a Moment of Peril | 167 |
"Over they Went, the whole Black Line of them" | 169 |
How the Engineers were Carried over to the Nile Islands | 170 |
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 | 175 |
"There was Pat, fast Asleep, Legs Dangling, Head Nodding, as Comfortable as you Please" | 179 |
"The Iron Street Looked Delicate, not Massive" | 184 |
Warming Their Lunches at the Boiler-fire | 186 |
A Strange Way to go to Meals | 186 |
"Its Mascot Kitten, Curled up there by the Ash-Box" | 189 |
Riding up on an Eighteen-Ton Column | 191 |
On the "Traveler." Hoisting a Strut | 195 |
Walking a Girder Two Hundred Feet in Air | 203 |
Burning Oil-Tanks | 210 |
"Snyder, White as a Ghost, Raced Ahead of the Fire" | 213 |
"The very Streets Are Burning" | 215 |
Use of the Scaling Ladders | 218 |
A Hot Place | 224 |
A Falling Wall | 231 |
A Rescue From a Fifth Story | 234 |
At Full Speed | 239 |
"Into the Street of Fire, Between the Two Piers, Steamed the Big Fire-Boat, Straight in, with Four Streams Playing to Port and Four to Starboard, all Doing their Prettiest" | 243 |
Gallagher's Rescue of a Swede from the Burning Barge | 245 |
Saving the Men of the "Bremen" | 250 |
Fire-Boats Working on the "Bremen" and the "Saale" | 253 |
"As they Shoot toward the Man Hanging for the Catch from the Last Bar" | 259 |
"Four Elephants was Enough for any Man to Leap Over" | 267 |
Circus Professionals Practising a Feat of Balancing | 279 |
Through a Paper Balloon at the End of a Great Feat | 289 |
How the Lioness was Captured on the Open Prairie | 295 |
Man in Cage with Lions | 301 |
Beginning the Training | 305 |
Coming To Close Quarters | 307 |
The Lion Destroys the Chair | 308 |
The Tamer's Triumph. Reading his Newspaper in the Lion's Cage | 310 |
Bianca Rescues Bostock from "Brutus" | 315 |
Bonavita's Fight with Seven Lions in the Runway | 320 |
"Rajah's" Attack upon Bonavita in the Runway | 331 |
The Tiger "Rajah" Kicked by the Quagga | 334 |
Putting the Tiger "Rajah" Again upon the Elephant's Back | 337 |
A Royal Bengal Tiger | 345 |
Young Dupont Working to Save the Powder-Mill | 351 |
Effects of Dynamite Exploded under Water | 354 |
The Explosion in the New York City Tunnel | 356 |
"Everything was Blown to Pieces" | 361 |
"He went to Work Throwing Water on the Burning Boxes" | 365 |
"A Swift, Heavy Car was Plunging toward the Open Door" | 372 |
"He Knew that a Second Explosion might Come at any Moment" | 375 |
"A Place where Yellow Eyes Glare out of Deep Shadows" | 379 |
At the Throttle | 385 |
"They Struck the Mississippi Bridge at Full Speed" | 390 |
"As the Drivers began to Turn I Jumped on the Cow-Catcher" | 397 |
A Record-Breaking Run | 401 |
"Drawn by the Idea of its Going so Blamed Fast and Being so Strong" | 409 |
"Convicts had Revolvers all Right that Trip and Denny Threw up his Hands" | 413 |
CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING
THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER
I
IN WHICH WE MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF "STEEPLE BOB"
The occasion of this general surprise and apprehension was a tall man dressed entirely in white, who appeared day after day swinging on a little seat far up the side of this or that church steeple, or right at the top, hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, or, higher still, working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching movement, up various hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from the heaven-challenging office buildings down near Wall Street. At these perilous altitudes he would hang for hours, shifting his ropes occasionally, raising his swing or lowering it, but not doing anything that his sidewalk audience could see very well or clearly understand. Yet thousands watched him with fascination, and a kodak army descended upon neighboring housetops, and newspapers followed the movements of "Steeple Bob" in thrilling chronicle.
That is what he was called in large black letters at the head of columns—"Steeple Bob"; but I came to know him at his modest quarters on Lexington Avenue, where he was plain Mr. Merrill, a serious-mannered and an unpretentious young man, very fond of his wife and his dog, very fond of spending evenings over books of adventure, and quite indifferent to his day-time notoriety. I call him a young man, yet in years of service, not in age, he is the oldest steeple-climber in the business, ever since his teacher, "Steeple Charlie," fell from his swing some years ago in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and died the steeple-climber's death.
I often saw books of the sea on Merrill's table, and accounts of whaling voyages; and he told me, one evening (while through an open door came the snores of his weary partner), about his own adventurous boyhood, with three years' cruising in Uncle Sam's navy on the school-ships Minnesota and Yantic (he shipped at the age of twelve) and two years at whale-fishing in the North Sea. Quite ideal training, this, for a steeple-climber; he learned to handle ropes and make them fast so they would stay fast; he learned to climb and keep his head at the top of a swaying masthead; he learned to bear exposure as lads must who are washed on deck every morning with a hose, and stand for inspection, winter and summer, bare to the waist. And he gained strength of arm and back swinging at the oar while whale-lines strained on the sunk harpoon; and patience in long stern-chases; and nerve when some stricken monster lashed the waters in agony and the boat danced on a reddened sea.