Chapter I: WILL first tell a story, fresh in my memory, about a New Jersey (5)

I followed his advice, and presently passed near a number of small brick buildings so very innocent-looking that I found myself saying, "What! _this_ blow up, or _that_ little sputtering shanty wreck a town?" It seemed ridiculous. I learned afterward that I had walked through the most dangerous part of the works; it isn't size here that counts.

I paused at several open doors, and got a whiff of chemicals that made me understand the dynamite-sickness of which I had heard. No man can breathe the strangling fumes of nitric acid and nitrated glycerin without discomfort, and every man here _must_ breathe them. They rise from vats and troughs like brownish-yellow smoke; they are in the mixing-rooms, in the packing-rooms, in the freezing-house, in the separating-house, everywhere; and they take men in the throat, and make their hearts pound strangely, and set their heads splitting with pain. Not a workman escapes the dynamite-headache; new hands are wretched with it for a fortnight, and even the well-seasoned men get a touch of it on Monday mornings after the Sunday rest.

In walking about the works I noticed that the several buildings, representing different steps in the manufacture of explosives, are united by long troughs or pipes sufficiently inclined to allow the nitroglycerin to flow by its own weight from one building to another, so that you watch the first operations in dynamite-making at the top of a slope, and the last ones at the bottom. Of course this transportation by flow is possible for nitroglycerin only while it is a liquid, and not after it has been absorbed by porous earth and given the name of dynamite and the look of moist sawdust. As dynamite it is transported between buildings on little railroads, with horses to haul the cars.

I noted also that most of the buildings are built against a hillside or surrounded by heavy mounds of earth, so that if one of them blows up, the others may be protected against the flight of debris. Without such barricade the shattered walls and rocks would be hurled in all directions with the energy of cannonballs, and a single explosion would probably mean the destruction of the entire works.

At one place I saw a triangular frame of timbers and iron supporting a five-hundred-pound swinging mortar, that hung down like a great gipsy kettle under its tripod. In front of this mortar was a sand-heap, and here, I learned, were made the tests of dynamite, a certain quantity of this lot or that being exploded against the sand-heap, and the mortar's swing back from the recoil giving a measure of its force. The more nitroglycerin there is in a given lot of dynamite, the farther back the mortar will swing. It should be understood that there are many different grades of dynamite, the strength of these depending upon how much nitroglycerin has been absorbed by a certain kind of porous earth.

In a little white house beyond the laboratory I found the superintendent of the works, a man of few words, accustomed to give brief orders and have them obeyed. He did not care to talk about dynamite--they never do. He did not think there was much to say, anyhow, except that people have silly notions about the danger. He had been working with dynamite now for twenty-five years, and never had an accident--that is, himself. Oh, yes; some men had been killed in his time, but not so many as in other occupations--not nearly so many as in railroading. Of course there was danger in dealing with any great force; the thing would run away with you now and then; but on the whole he regarded dynamite as a very well behaved commodity, and much slandered.

"Then you think dynamite-workers have no great need of courage?" I suggested.

"No more than others. Why should they? They work along for years, and nothing happens. They might as well be shoveling coal. And if anything does happen, it's over so quick that courage isn't much use."

Having said this, he hesitated a moment, and then, as if in a spirit of fairness, told of a certain man at the head of a nitroglycerin-mill who on one occasion _did_ do a little thing that some people called brave. He wouldn't give the name of this "certain man," but I fancied I could guess it.

This nitroglycerin-mill, it seems, was on the Pacific coast, whence they used to ship the dynamite on vessels that loaded right alongside the yards. One day a mixing-house exploded, and hurled burning timbers over a vessel lying near that had just received a fresh cargo. Her decks were piled with boxes of explosives--wooden boxes, which at once took fire. When this "certain man" rushed down to the dock, the situation was as bad as could be. There were tons of dynamite ready to explode, and a hot fire was eating deeper into the wood with every second. And all the workmen had run for their lives!

"Well," said the superintendent, "what this man did was to grab a bucket and line, and jump on the deck. Yes, it was burning; everything was burning. But he went to work lowering the bucket overside and throwing water on the flaming boxes. After a while he put 'em out, and the dynamite didn't explode at all; but it would have exploded in a mighty short time if he had kept away, for the wood was about burned through in several places. I know that's a true story, because, well--because I _know_ it."

"Don't you call that man brave?" I asked.

The superintendent shook his head. "He was brave in that particular instance, but he might not have been brave at another time. You never can tell what a man will do in danger. It depends on how he feels or on how a thing happens to strike him. A man might act like a hero one day and like a coward another day, with exactly the same danger in both cases. There's a lot of chance in it. If that man I'm telling you about had been up late the night before, or had eaten a tough piece of steak for breakfast, the chances are he would have run like the rest."

III

HOW JOSHUA PLUMSTEAD STUCK TO HIS NITROGLYCERIN-VAT IN AN EXPLOSION AND SAVED THE WORKS