First harvests

WHEN Jem Starbuck, that evening, had been thrust out by his friends, and the door he heard slammed and bolted behind him, he found himself upon Sixth Avenue, at midnight of a night so inclement that even that thoroughfare was almost deserted. The trains of the elevated railway went thundering over his head, but the floor of the street was checkered with the drifts of wet snow and the pools of water, in which the mirrored gaslights glimmered a warning to the unwary step.

The rain had at this time stopped; it was the hour’s lull before the downrush of the clearing northwester; and the flooded gutters still ran riotously and poured into the sewer-gates with a roaring that was audible a block or more away.

Starbuck walked some streets without conscious object. His heart beat violently with the struggle still, and he felt sick and faint with the passion of his anger. Remorse he had none; but he was ashamed at having gone so far; at having held himself in no better control. Yet why had Simpson dared to talk to him? “Damn the fool, I wish I’d killed him,” thought James.

He spoke the words aloud; and, as he did so, came to a street corner; the crossing was exceptionally deep with melted snow, and on the other corner stood a policeman. Starbuck became conscious that he still held the bloody knife; there was a sewer-opening below him, and he threw it in. The rush of water was so great that it was gulped down without a sound, disappearing instantly in the turbid vortex. James looked after it a moment, moodily; he had little fear that he was in any danger for his deed of that night; beyond doubt, the fellow was not mortally wounded; and he would not dare to complain on his own account, and none of their friends would ever peach.

He hesitated some moments; then, with the decisive step of a man who has made up his mind, he turned and crossed Sixth Avenue. There was a bar-room over the way, brilliant with a red electric light; he entered it, and called for a twenty-five cent cigar and a glass of whiskey. He was unused to drinking spirits; and the sharp liquor made him shudder as he swallowed it; but not with cold or fear. The intellectual predominated over the physical in his nature: such organisms are cowardly before immediate physical pain or contest, but shrink at nothing else. But one of his affectations had been to smoke cigars instead of pipes; his was a nature nervous as any scholar’s; and he lit the black havana and went out again, taking his way along Thirty-second Street.

Fifth Avenue was less deserted than Sixth; it was: full of carriages going to and from the ball. It was about the hour when Flossie broke off her reverie in her boudoir and, ringing for her carriage, walked to her window and looked out. James Starbuck may have seen the rose light that streamed from her window; in fact, he did, and marked the brilliancy of this and all the great houses on the Avenue, with an imprecation on them for it; but he did not know Flossie Gower’s house, nor much of her, save that she almost owned the oil works over at Williamsburgh. But he stopped a moment, and looked up and down the fine street; it was going to be colder, and he foresaw that the weather would be terrible before dawn, though the ladies, well cottoned in their carriages, would give no thought to it. But the business he was on was not so safe for him at any other time; and he buttoned his overcoat about him and walked rapidly down the side street, just as Mrs. Gower’s carriage drove up at her front door.

He soon got beyond the respectable streets, the level even rows of brown-stone houses standing shoulder to shoulder like well-drilled servants in a livery; the shops began, and the iron-balconied tenements, and the noise and sense of much humanity. The many sins of the pavement were charitably hidden in the snow; but even then there was a smell about the neighborhood that would have nauseated Mrs. Gower; and even in the middle of the night there was noise of living, and an undertone of working steam, throbbing still, among the sleeping places of its human fellow-laborers. Nor were they all asleep; here and there a lighted window, and what we needs must term a sound of revelry, showed that some of these, too, like their Fifth Avenue superiors, were wakeful to the pleasures of the night.

But the elevated trains had ceased running, as Starbuck crossed Third Avenue: the toiling places of the human workmen, at least, were stilled, and these were not needed to take them to and from their benches in the social galley. Mankind—except indeed the policemen or other watchers who had to see that mankind did no mischief while it rested—was not at work.

Starbuck threaded his way through the streets along the river. The forges, to be sure, were glowing brightly; for Iron gives his servants no rest; Vulcan is a lord who knows no Sabbath; he compels, unlike kindly Ceres, from eve till dewy morn, from seed to harvest. Starbuck came to the wharves, heaped up with coal mountains, built over with iron prisons for the gas; he looked about him, cautiously, for he was physically a coward and afraid of footpads, of the lawless gangs of roughs that infest the wharves. He had struck across the city too directly, instead of walking up Fifth Avenue, as he should have done, where he felt safe. He started once or twice in alarm, and his heart took to palpitating again, as he saw a dark figure among the wharves; but it would be only a policeman or a watchman, and he breathed more freely; and at last he reached the ferry in safety.

He took a seat in one corner of the ladies’ cabin, pulling his coat-collar up over his face. The boat was not full; but there were a number of people still out, returning from supper after the theatres. The warm weather they had had was breaking up the ice in the Sound; and the paddies of the steamer went crashing and grinding through the broken floes. Several times the wheels stopped, as if the pilot saw a field of ice too large to be crushed through. At last, the clanking of the chains told Starbuck they had reached the dock upon the Brooklyn side.

He waited until all the other passengers had gone ashore. The night had grown much colder; and the freezing snow and water crackled beneath his feet. On this side the river, however, the streets were darker, and quite deserted; and not one lighted window broke the high brick housewalls that closed about him on either side.

The effect of the unaccustomed dram of spirit had quite left him by this time; he threw open his coat for a moment, to light another cigar; and then buttoned it tight about him, cursing the cold. He had walked some half a mile or so, without meeting a living being, and had got beyond the region of the tenements, and in the manufacturing district of the city. Already he noticed the strong smell of oil, borne backward through the city by the northwest wind. His way led downward to the wharves; and he stopped before the familiar iron gate. He peered through it; he knew it to be the watchman’s station, or rather that of one watchman: there were two more down by the river side, whence the greatest danger was always apprehended. But he only saw the acres of tanks and stagings and pyramids of empty barrels, and beyond them, just visible, the high forest of masts tapering into the black sky, where, in the west, a few stars were already struggling out.

It was evident that the watchman, fearing, on such a night, no enemy but winter and rough weather, had sought some shelter; but Starbuck did not deem it wise to venture openly through the gate. He skirted the high fence around toward the river, where he knew there was a sort of swinging hatchway in the wooden wall; it was kept fastened only by an ordinary dropping latch inside, and this by inserting a length of wire in the crack, he easily lifted.

When he was fairly inside the yard, he sat down for a moment, smoking, and looked about him. The nearest lights were across the river or on the shipping in the stream; but the ground was white with snow, and the huge storage-tanks rose up about him, visible by their very blackness, like rocks at night in foaming water.

He got up, still smoking, but screening the cigar light in the hollow of his hand, and went toward the water. A double bank of the petroleum ships lay along the pier; but all was silent on board of them, the watch, if watch was kept while they were moored, having evidently followed the example of the watchman at the outer gate. Thus he made his way, slowly, to the end of the pier, losing his footing now and then in a snowdrift, or slipping suddenly into one of the great pits full of freezing water that had collected in the hollows of the ground. No vessels lay across the end of the pier, such mooring being forbidden; and it was unencumbered except by the great iron letters that stretched across it——THE SILAS STARBUCK OIL COMPANY. Starbuck leaned across the rod that supported the first letter S, and reflected. It was a curious fact that the identity of the name had never struck him particularly before; he knew nothing of old Silas Starbuck, nor who he was, nor whence he had come, nor even that Mrs. Levison Gower had been his daughter. Carefully he walked around the end of the wharves; thousands of men were at work there by day; but at night a more lonely place it would be hard to find, and he met no one.

At last, it seemed as if the object of this unusual journey were satisfied; and he began to retrace his steps toward the town. As he passed the first piles of barrels, he stopped and looked at them again; then picking up a stick, he struck one or two of them a smart blow. They were empty, and it rang hollow. He pushed the stick among them and between them to the ground; the snow that had fallen upon them had melted, and the lowest tier were half submerged in a pool of water. Then he left them and went on to the receiving-house.

Opposite him, and a few hundred yards to the right, were the stills; lofty iron towers, under which a dull glow showed that the furnaces were still doing their work. When he had left Steam City, the strike was complete; but the oil still ran through the pipe-lines, and stokers had still been found to feed these refining fires. He turned sharp to the left; and the dull light was soon hidden behind the storage-tanks.

There was sure to be a watcher in the “tail-house,” if the stills were at work, to mark the runs of oil; and Starbuck walked more slowly. But his steps were muffled in the drifts of snow; moreover, he was close by the blower, and the rapid whirling of the iron fans would drown all other noise. When he got to the steps that led to the door of the tail-house, there were fresh foot-prints in the snow; and he ascended cautiously until his head was at the level of the window and then looked in. The light inside came from a small tubular stove of ridged iron, white-hot; and by its comfortable warmth a man sat in an old armchair, his head upon his breast, asleep. Starbuck studied his features for a few seconds and then opened the door and entered.

“Who is it?” cried the man, starting up.

“It’s only I, Ned,” answered Starbuck. “Don’t be so nervous.”

“Oh, is that all,” returned the other. “I was afraid it might be some feller come to do a mischief,” he added, with a grin.

“I wanted to make sure it was your watch,” said James. “You don’t keep a good one—if anything happens to-night I shall have to report you.”

“The h—l you will,” laughed the other.

“I’m pretty sure I heard a boat land, down by the end of the pier.”

“No?” said the other.

“I did indeed,” added Starbuck. “I wish you’d go down and see. I got rumors of a plot in town, and came over to warn you.”

“No?” said the other, again. “Did ye though? And suppose I’m kilt—I’m to come back and tell yer, I suppose? Why don’t you come along yourself?”

“I want to take a turn by the spraying-house first,” answered James. “I’ll join you there in a minute—on the wharf, I mean.” And as he spoke, Starbuck left the little cabin and went down the steps.

“It ’ud be awk’ard if any fellow were to happen in here while we’re both gone, wouldn’t it?” he called out; but Starbuck was already out of hearing, threading his way through the darkness to the spraying-house; the fountain not playing now, at night, when there was no sun to brighten it, and the great well of oil lying still and sleeping, warmed by the steam-pipes that were coiled, like warm-blooded serpents, in its depths.

The man called Ned watched him go, the grin that had accompanied his last remark quickly fading on his face; then, wrapping his overcoats around him, he, too, went out and walked away with rapid steps through the dark yard.

He left the door of the tail-house open behind him; and when, in a few minutes, James Starbuck returned, he found the place already cold. He shut the door to and sat down; the cigar in his mouth had gone out and he opened the door of the stove with an old iron rod to stir the fire and get a bit of live coal for a light. But he had no tongs; and indeed the live coal seemed unnecessary, as he pulled out quite a bundle of matches from his pocket. He let the glowing coals lie unheeded on the floor, and looked at his watch by the light of the open stove-door. It was three o’clock. And he cowered back in the chair, shivering.

It seemed so small a thing to do, after all! His lip curled with scorn as he thought of his simple-minded associates and how great a thing they made of it. It would fill perhaps a column in the morrow’s paper—about as much space, perhaps, as might be allotted to the Duval ball. Yet such things scared the stupid public; and they encouraged his party, much as a boy is made proud by the loud report of his first toy-cannon. His own ideas went so far beyond, that he regarded it as little more than the bow-chaser some red rover fires across the bow of a fat merchantman, by way of preliminary parley. He was tired, too; and the earlier events of the night had been exciting.

However, he made an effort, and shook himself together. Time was going. He got up and went to the runs. There were the two glass-covered channels, side by side; and both were running oil. Outside the little shed they entered two long wooden boxes or troughs, supported on trestle-work, and running several hundred feet in a downward inclination to the receiving-tanks, whence they were in turn conducted to the spraying-house, a quarter of a mile away.

James Starbuck lifted up the iron rod he had used to poke the fire, and brought it down with a crushing blow over the glass-topped runnels. Then he struck a match across the stove, and standing in the doorway, leaned over and touched the blue flame to the edge of the running oil.

For some reason it did not catch; and he tried another match. This he fairly dropped into the oil; but with no better success, as the feeble flame was put out instantly. “Damn the thing,” said he to himself; and lighting another match, he waited until the flame was fairly burning, and looked at the oil.

The little runnel he had touched, partly choked with broken bits of glass, was full of a thick dark liquid, yellowish in color, but blue with numerous big globules of water. It was almost the last run, too crude or too impure to take fire at a spark. He looked at the other; and in it he recognized the shining stream, and the strange metallic lustre of the naphtha’s flow.

He took a small shovelful of red-hot coals from the little stove, and got well out the doorway with it, standing down as many steps as he could. For this was the light surface oil, taking fire at a spark, more quick and dangerous than the cruder average. And with a careful aim, he sent a handful of the burning coals into the now open trough.

Even with the care that he had used, the first blast of flame was greater than he had thought possible; and he was hurled by the outward rush of air, half-blinded, down the remaining steps of the ladder, and fell into the deep snow. He ran back a few steps and looked up. Already the shed was on fire, and the burning oil, running from it in the trough, was spurting into jets of flame upon the trestle-work. Though wet with rain, this structure, so long soaked with oil, was taking fire rapidly. But there had been little noise as yet, and no signs of an alarm. He ran back some distance, and took refuge beside a brick storehouse, behind a pile of empty barrels.

He looked at his watch; it was a quarter past the hour; and for once, whether from his running or some other reason, his heart beat quickly. He paid no attention to the flaming trestle, but looked in the direction of the spraying-house that he had left upon the stroke of three. For he had left in the spraying-house a fifteen-minute fuse.

And, as he stood there, watch in hand, the whole earth shook beneath him; and with a noise that was more terrible than loud the silence of the city’s night was broken; and the iron roof of the spraying-house was hurled to heaven on a pillow of yellow fire. And Starbuck crouched behind his solid wall and screamed aloud.

It seemed many minutes before he heard the crash and rattle of the falling plates of iron. Then a flood of blazing oil poured forth, and ran in all directions, mixing with the pools of melted snow. Already the trestle was a roaring mass of flame; the woodwork about the receiving-tanks caught one after the other; and Starbuck ran wildly to his distant gate in the fence and cowered there, behind a pile of worn-out iron. He heard far off the shrieks of the sleeping watchmen, and then hoarse shouting from the city. Then, like some titanic minute-guns, the great tanks exploded, one after one, in majestic sequence; and the stars of the sky were veiled in fires of the nether world.

Then came the clang of bells in distant towers, and the shriller rattle of the fire-engines, and shouts of frightened men. In brief time he heard them crying at the outer gate, and saw them pouring into the yard, swarming over the high fence, thousand upon thousand of them; but the pouring oil now flowed steadily, in flaming streams, and cut them off as with a sword of fire from the enclosure; he could see them standing silent on the hither side, in motionless throngs, gazing with pallid faces at the world of fire.

He heard, too, the shouts of the Norwegian sailors in their ships along the wharves; the yellow flood flowed steadily toward them, its burning stream melting the snow and riding faster on the water’s surface in great blazing pools. One fire-river had already reached the end of the wharf, and fell over it, in a cascade of flame, through the iron colossal letters to the icy river. The tide took it rapidly down among the ships; the first was now flaming, from the bowsprit up the foremast, licking the tar and oakum from the iron rod. He heard the groups of sailors, in a panic rush behind him where he sat; others stayed at their posts and worked like demons, with capstans and cables, to warp their vessels beyond the reach of danger. The city fire-boat had come; and the burning oil-ship was cut adrift and dropped down the river, the fire-engines of the steamer playing on it vainly; in a few seconds, with a loud explosion, it was shattered to the water’s edge. The very river was blazing like a crater’s mouth with patches of the burning oil; and now, last of all, the huge storage-tanks, each holding its hundreds of tons, were scattered into seas of burning gas. No nook or cranny of the great yard but was lit with yellow light, intenser, vivider than the sun’s; the sky above was like a molten plate of copper, touched with swarms of scarlet sparks; and only beyond the river, above the red-walled houses, were the cold pale streaks of dawn.

James went boldly out, mingling among the maddened crowd. His breath had returned; and a faint smile was on his lips as he took his way slowly back through the now thronged streets to the river. His quickened blood poured sluggishly again; and his mind was busy with thought. Do serpents pant in the heat of conflict; or does their blood turn warm when they have withdrawn the sting? He had, perhaps, a faint sense of gratified power; but the mere destruction of one piece of property was, after all, so small a thing!

While he was crossing the ferry he looked up the river at the flaming world that he had made; it was a fine spectacle, and he watched it as calmly, as dispassionately, as Flossie Gower had done, when, not knowing that it was her fortune that had gone, she saw it burn from Mr. Wemyss’s window.