CHAPTER IV
IN LOWER NEW YORK
“Now,” thought Roy, as he sought out a shady bench and sat down, “if this book will tell me, I’m going to find out why this park is called Battery Park. I’ve often wondered.”
He opened his book and, turning to the index, readily found where to look for the information. Looking on the proper page, he read: “Battery Park and Battery Place take their name from the fortification begun in 1693 by Governor Fletcher to defend the city. The original battery was a line of cannons extending from the foot of Greenwich Street to the intersection of Whitehall and Water Streets.”
“That was a pretty nice row of cannons,” thought Roy, glancing up from his book to see about where these guns had stood. With the geography of the city he was quite familiar, as it had been necessary, during the search for the secret wireless, for Roy and his companions to acquaint themselves with the city in order that they could travel surely and speedily. After he had measured the distance with his eye, he turned back to the guide-book and read: “The land beyond this line was under water until after 1800.”
At first Roy did not grasp the significance of the statement. But when he read that the original shore-line of the lower end of Manhattan Island is marked approximately by Greenwich, State, and Pearl Streets, he was almost stunned.
“Why, gee whiz!” he muttered. “That means that all this park, which the book says contains twenty-one acres, and all the ground on either side of the lower end of the island for two or three blocks inland is made land. Just think of that.” In amazement he stared about the little park, then looked at the two broad blocks between Greenwich Street and “the farm.” “Made land,” he thought, “every inch of it. Why, they must have made hundreds of acres. I wonder where they got all the stuff to fill in with. What a lot of work it must have been! And what a pile of money it must have cost. But I suppose it’s worth millions and millions of dollars now.”
He picked up his guide-book again. “The land under water,” he read, “was ceded to Congress by the city for the erection of a fort to defend the city. The fort, about three hundred feet from shore, later called Castle Clinton, was built on a mole and connected with the city by a bridge. In 1822 it was ceded to the state; in 1823 it was leased to the city, and in 1824 it was leased as an amusement hall, known as Castle Garden. It was roofed over and was the scene of Lafayette’s reception in 1824. In 1835 Samuel F. B. Morse here first demonstrated the possibility of controlling an electric current. Here Jenny Lind sang in 1850, and in 1851 Kossuth was received here. In 1855 it became the Immigration Bureau. In 1891 Battery Park was filled in, and in 1896 the building was opened as an aquarium.”
“Gee whiz!” smiled Roy happily. “I’ve often heard of the aquarium. It contains one of the most famous collections of fishes in the world. But I never dreamed that it was such a famous old place as that. I’m going to see that, sure. It must be that queer, circular brownstone building near the harbor police station.”
Roy’s guess proved to be correct, as the sign above the entrance told him. But before entering he walked completely around the structure.
“Makes you think of a stone bandbox,” said Roy, with a chuckle. “It’s so much like that funny building on Governor’s Island that they look like twins. I’ll bet that was another fort.”
Roy was right again. His guide-book said that the old fort on Governor’s Island was known as Castle William.
In walking around the aquarium Roy discovered at intervals what looked like window spaces that had been walled in. But he knew that they must have been the embrasures for the thirty heavy guns with which the fort was armed.
When he had completed the circuit of the building, Roy went inside. In the centre of the floor was a tiled tank, like the hub of a wheel, while strung around the wall, like the tire of the wheel, were tanks and tanks of fishes, so arranged that the light shone through the tanks, perfectly illuminating everything in them.
Roy went directly to the circular tank in the centre. It contained a great sea-cow or manatee. Often Roy had read of these curious creatures and he knew at once what the thing was. It was as big as a fat pig and had a broad oval tail, with fore limbs in the form of flippers. The animal reminded Roy of the performing seals he had seen at a circus. He had read that at night the manatee is said to come out of the water. He wondered if it were true. He was particularly interested in this fish for he knew that it lived in the southern waters he would soon be sailing. He hoped that he would see some of them in the sea.
In the tank with the manatee were some flounders. Roy was amazed to note that they were almost white, like the sand in the bottom of the tank. He had often seen flounders, but never any of that color. It puzzled him until he remembered that the flounder, like many another creature, possesses the power of protective coloring. Roy wondered how it was possible for any creature to change its color to match its environment. But, like many a wiser person, he pondered over the matter in vain.
When he had grown tired of watching the sea-cow and the white flounders, he walked over to the ring of tanks, and, beginning at one side of the entrance, walked slowly around the building. Never had Roy dreamed that there could be such fishes as he now beheld. Not only did he find the familiar fishes of our own waters that he had caught or seen for sale in the markets, but also he saw strange and curious creatures from every part of the world. What astonished him most was the vivid coloring of some of the fishes from the tropics. Roy had often seen parrots and other tropic birds, and he knew that the birds in these hot regions were more brilliant in hue than our own birds. But he had never dreamed that the fishes would likewise be gaily colored. Yet here he beheld fishes of red and green and blue and yellow, as brilliant in color as any parrot or parrakeet he had ever seen.
When he had become tired of looking at fishes, Roy left the aquarium and again sought a shady seat. As he opened his book his glance rested on the words “Fort Amsterdam.”
“I wonder how many forts those old fellows had, anyway,” thought Roy. “I’ll just see what it says about Fort Amsterdam,” and he began to read: “Before the first great fire visited Manhattan in 1626, the lines of a fort were laid out, occupying the site of the present Custom House, the work being completed between 1633 and 1635. Fort Amsterdam, as the work was called, was built of earth and stone and had four bastions. It rose proudly above the group of small houses and became the distinctive feature of New Amsterdam. The main gate of the fort opened on the present Bowling Green, which from the earliest days was maintained as an open space. It was, in fact, the heart of the Dutch town. It provided a playground for the children, a site for the May-pole around which the youths and maidens danced, a parade-ground for the soldiers, and a place for the market and annual cattle show. Here also were held those great meetings with the Indians, at which treaties were arranged and the pipe of peace was smoked. In 1732 it was leased to three citizens who lived close at hand, for one peppercorn a year, as a private bowling ground, from which fact it takes its name.”
“Think of that,” mused Roy. “They used to smoke the peace-pipe there. Now the place is surrounded by sky-scrapers, trolley-cars run past it, subway trains rumble underneath it, and elevated trains thunder by within a few feet. I wonder what those Indians would think if they could ever come back to earth and see Manhattan Island now.” Roy chuckled at the idea, but when he thought of the Dutch cattle shows he laughed outright. “Wouldn’t a herd of cattle tethered in Bowling Green create a sensation now?” he said to himself. “I must take a look at that place.”
He jumped up and crossed the park, heading for the Custom-house at the eastern end. This was a huge building, some seven stories in height, that covered an entire block. Roy walked around it, pausing finally to admire the groups of beautiful statuary that adorned the front of the building. For a long time Roy gazed at the Custom-house, and the longer he looked the more beautiful he thought the building was.
He had often seen it on his previous visit, but he had been so preoccupied then that he had given little thought to it or any other building. Though he had learned well the geography of the city, in order that he might get about with facility, he had learned nothing of the history or meaning of New York. Now that he was looking at things from a new point of view, it seemed as though he had never seen them before. It was so with Bowling Green. Often he had passed the little fenced-in oval of grass, with its few benches and a tree or two, but it had been to him only a tiny bit of green. It had held no meaning. Now in fancy he saw the old fort with its little parade-ground, its gates open, and the Dutch soldiers marching out to drill. He pictured the boys and girls frolicking about the May-pole. And when he thought of the cattle shows, he laughed again.
Roy went into the tiny oval and sat down on a bench to think this all over. “It was almost three hundred years ago,” he mused, “when they built that old fort. That’s a long time. It’s so long that I suppose there isn’t a thing left that was standing in those days. That’s funny, too, for I’ve read that in England there are buildings hundreds and hundreds of years old. I wonder what’s the oldest thing here.”
Roy looked about but could find nothing that he thought seemed very old. “That’s the queer thing about New York,” was his comment. “There never has been much in it that is old. They keep tearing things down and building new things in their places all the time. No wonder they say that New York will never be finished. There isn’t anything old here.”
But Roy was mistaken, and when he fell to reading in his guide-book again he discovered it. For the fence that surrounded the little oval was almost a century and a half old. “This fence,” Roy read, “was imported from England in 1771 to enclose a lead equestrian statue of George III. On the posts were the royal insignia. In 1776, during the Revolution, the lead statue was dragged down and moulded into bullets by the colonists, and the royal insignia were knocked from the tops of the posts. The fractures can still be seen.”
Roy jumped up and ran over to the fence. Sure enough, each post showed plainly that its top had been broken off. Roy was amazed.
“To think that this fence was standing at the time of the Revolution,” he thought. “Why, Washington must have been here often and he probably looked at these broken posts just as I have.”
Doubtless Washington did see the posts. Certainly he must have been in the Bowling Green many a time. Only a short distance from the Bowling Green, in Fraunces Tavern, at Broad and Pearl Streets, Washington said farewell to forty-four of his officers at the close of the Revolution, a fact that Roy soon discovered from his guide-book. Immediately he hurried away to take a look at this beautiful old building of colonial design, made of yellow Dutch bricks. Roy admired it very much. A bronze tablet on the corner of the building stated that it was now the property of the Sons of the Revolution.
“Good!” thought Roy. “Now I know of two things in New York that haven’t been torn down. And I don’t believe they ever will be.”
When Roy looked further in his book he found there were many, many old things remaining, so many that he could not hope to see them in one day, and particularly not on this day, for it was already supper time. But there was one place that Roy was eager to see. The guide-book said that a tablet on the building at 41 Broadway marked the site of the first houses or huts erected on Manhattan Island by white men. They were built about 1613.
“I’ll just walk up Broadway,” thought Roy, “and see that tablet. Then I’ll go on up Broadway, get something to eat, and go back to the Lycoming after supper. I suppose I could get a meal aboard the Lycoming, but likely I’d have to eat with Captain Lansford.”
Roy walked slowly up the longest street in the world; for Broadway, extending far beyond the limits of New York City, and passing through one community after another, is still Broadway half a hundred miles from Bowling Green. He could hardly have gone otherwise than slowly if he had tried, for it was the evening rush hour. From every doorway people were pouring out into the street. The sidewalks were jammed. The roadway was so crowded with busses and trucks and drays and trolley-cars and automobiles that it was next to impossible to cross it. Bells were clanging, automobile horns honking, whistles blowing. Iron-shod hoofs rang on the pavements. Leather shoes scraped and shuffled on the stone sidewalks. And all these noises combined in one ceaseless roar that beat on the ear incessantly. But what most impressed Roy was the unceasing rush of people. Apparently there was no end to them. Doorways of high buildings fairly vomited human beings. But no matter how many persons issued forth, more remained to come out. Time and time again Roy had seen this evening rush for home, and always he was impressed by it. It seemed impossible that there could be so many workers in the city. But when he remembered that some of the tall buildings about him held as many as ten thousand persons,—almost as many people as there were in the whole town of Central City—the rush did not seem so incomprehensible. Every time Roy looked at the crowd he thought of the ceaseless flow of a rushing stream.
Roy paused when he reached 41 Broadway and read the tablet on the wall. But he passed on quickly, for the crowded sidewalk was a poor place to loiter, and the tumult of traffic drove from his head all thoughts of those sleepy old days when New York was New Amsterdam.
Roy was now in the very heart of that deep canyon formed by the huge buildings in lower Broadway. He knew that nowhere else in the world could one find structures like them. There they towered, ten, twenty, thirty, forty stories high, until it made one almost dizzy to look up at them. Like the traffic in the street, Roy had seen them often; but now, as always when he saw them near at hand, he marveled at these huge structures man had reared two and even three times as high as Niagara, while the gigantic Woolworth Building, more than four and a half times the height of Niagara, towered a full seven hundred and fifty feet above the sidewalk. As Roy looked up Broadway at it now he could not help feeling awed.
“Just think,” he muttered, “it’s two hundred feet longer than the Lycoming.”
Just then Roy came to a quick lunch room. His eye brightened as he caught sight of it, for he had had nothing to eat for several hours, and the salt breeze in the park had whetted an appetite already keen.
Roy entered and ate generously. He took his time about it. Now that he was relaxed, he found that he was really tired. When he came out of the restaurant he was amazed at the altered appearance of the street. The crowd had disappeared. Gone was the multitude of trucks, drays and motor-cars. A few belated pedestrians were hurrying along the street, and an occasional wagon rattled by. But now every hoof beat and every creak of wheel or wagon-body echoed through the deserted thoroughfare, flung back by the empty hives of buildings that had so recently swarmed with life. More than ever Roy thought of that rushing throng of humanity as a surging tide; but now it seemed as though a sluice-gate had somewhere been closed and only a few tiny trickles were seeping through.
But somehow the deserted thoroughfare seemed almost more attractive to Roy than it did when it was seething with traffic. There was so much he wanted to think about, so many things on every hand that demanded consideration; and connected thought was almost impossible when so many persons were rushing by and such a confusing babel of sound smote on the ear. So now he sauntered slowly up Broadway, thinking about his own situation, and pondering over the interesting things he had seen.
One by one lights shone forth in the great structures about him—lights so high that they seemed like yellow stars in the sky. Slowly the outlines of the individual buildings grew dim and uncertain as darkness came on. In place of the hulking massive structures of stone he had been looking at by daylight, Roy now found himself gazing at what seemed like fairy towers of twinkling, elfin lights. It was wonderful beyond description. But when Roy looked at the Singer and Woolworth Buildings, with their beautiful towers of ornate stone rising hundreds of feet above him and brilliantly illuminated by hidden lights, he was sure that he had never in his life seen anything so beautiful and so wonderful. He could find no words to express his delight. But he was conscious that the feeling of awe which had gripped him as he stared at these same colored shafts by day was gone. Now he felt only a sense of charm and delight.
He continued up Broadway until he came to the seething centre of life about City Hall. When he looked across the little park at the entrance of the Brooklyn bridge, and saw the bustling activity of Park Row, he could scarce believe that one short block could make so great a difference. Roy did not realize that Park Row was the heart of the night life of lower New York. Centred about it were the homes of many of New York’s great newspapers, where scores of workers had just gone on duty and where the “day’s work” was only fairly getting under way.
Roy made his way to the entrance of the Brooklyn bridge and watched in wonder the endless strings of trolley-cars swing round the terminal loops, the streams of pedestrians still pouring homeward toward Brooklyn, the line of carts still rattling up the cobbled roadway to the bridge. When he expressed his wonder to the bridge policeman at the information booth, that individual only smiled. For years he had watched the better part of a million people daily swarm to and fro across the bridge; and the tail-end of the evening rush, that seemed so impressive to Roy, was commonplace enough to him.
After a time the scene paled on Roy, and he started for home—his new home on the Lycoming. Knowing well the city’s geography, he did not retrace his steps but struck off directly for the western water-front, passing through a maze of deserted, dimly lighted, little streets that were flanked by dingy buildings of five or six stories. The contrast with the blazing centre of life he had just left was as striking as some sudden shift in scenes on the stage of a theatre. In the quiet and gloom Roy had abundant opportunity for thought. His mind returned to the problem immediately before him: how he should make good with Captain Lansford.
So engrossed in this problem did Roy become that he did not hear a stealthy footstep behind him, and was startled when a form appeared beside him, and a tough-looking fellow demanded a match.
“Sorry,” said Roy, “but I have no matches with me.”
“Then give me ten cents for beer,” growled the fellow in a still rougher tone.
“I have no money to give you,” said Roy firmly.
“You haven’t, eh?” sneered the fellow. “Then I’ll just take it.”
He grasped Roy’s shoulder, but Roy wrenched loose from him and drew back. Quick as a flash the ruffian shot his fist at Roy’s face. Taken unawares, Roy could not dodge the blow, and it landed full on his left eye. For an instant he was almost stunned and he could see nothing. Instinctively he drew back and raised his fists to protect himself. Roy knew that he was no match for this hulking fellow, who was almost as large as Captain Lansford, but he meant to fight to the limit to save the few dollars he possessed. Roy believed that the best defense was an offensive, and though he could hardly see the man before him, he rushed at him and struck out with all his might. The fellow was as much surprised as Roy had been an instant before and the blow struck him squarely on the chin. He had been coming toward Roy and the impact was terrific. It bent his head straight back and the fellow dropped to his knees. Roy should have finished him with another blow, but he could not hit a man who was down, even though the man had attempted to rob him. He stepped past the man and walked rapidly toward the water-front, frequently glancing over his shoulder lest he be pursued. But the surprised robber had had enough. When he was able to get to his feet he slunk quickly out of sight.
“I got out of that pretty lucky,” thought Roy. “I’d rather have a black eye any time than lose my money.”
But Roy almost changed his mind when he reached the ship, for the first person he met was Captain Lansford. By this time Roy’s eye was both swollen and discolored, and his face was flushed with excitement. As luck would have it, he met the captain in the full glare of a bright light.
“So you’ve been drinking, eh?” roared the captain. “Don’t you know that drinking is forbidden on this ship?”
“I haven’t been drinking, sir,” said Roy. “Some one——”
Captain Lansford cut him short. “Don’t make it worse by lying about it,” he said harshly.
Roy’s flushed face grew redder still with indignation. “You have no right to say that,” he declared hotly.
“Do you dare question my authority on my own ship?” thundered the irate commander.
“I don’t care whether you are captain of this ship or President of the United States,” said Roy boldly. “You shall not accuse me of either drinking or lying. I never touched a drop of liquor in my life and I am not a liar.”
“If you haven’t been drinking,” demanded Captain Lansford, “how did you get that black eye?”
“A man set on me and tried to rob me,” replied Roy.
“And you were sober and you let him hit you in the eye? Bah!”
“He hit me when I wasn’t expecting it,” explained Roy.
“And what did you do? Run? Or hand him your money?”
“I knocked him down,” said Roy grimly.
“It’s likely,” rejoined the captain. “Now go to your quarters and don’t ever let me hear of your drinking again.”
Anger flamed up in Roy’s heart. “Don’t you ever dare to accuse me of drinking again,” he cried hotly, taking a step toward his superior and looking him straight in the eye.
“Go to your quarters,” thundered the captain.
Roy turned and slowly mounted to the wireless house. At every step his heart grew heavier and heavier.
“A nice mess I’ve made of it,” he sighed, when at last he reached the wireless house and threw himself down on his couch. “I’ll never make good with the captain now, never.”