WITH MEN WHO DO THINGS
BY A. RUSSELL BOND
Author of “The Scientific American Boy” and “Handyman’s Workshop and Laboratory”
Chapter X
1100 FEET UNDER THE HUDSON—“NO WHISTLING ALLOWED!”
We were soon told, in answer ta our questions, that the shafts at each side of the river had been sunk to their full depth, and the “headings” had been pushed so far that there was only about a hundred feet more of rock to cut through.
The trip down that shaft seemed never-ending, and when we looked up from the bottom, the opening at the top showed as a tiny patch of light in the distance, “no bigger than a quarter,” as Will described it.
“I suppose the atmosphere down here is quite noticeably denser than on the surface,” said Will, puckering up his lips to see whether he could whistle.
“Don’t! Don’t do that!” shouted the superintendent, leaping forward and clapping his hand over Will’s mouth.
“Wha’—what ’s the matter?’ gasped Will, in astonishment.
“Simply this: our miners on this work are all southern Negroes, and a more superstitious lot you could n’t find anywhere, They have a strange notion that if any one whistles under ground, bad luck is sure to follow. More than once they ’ve quit work because of some silly superstition. Why, they stampeded out of the tunnel a couple of weeks ago, merely because a lady visitor came down to see the work. That meant bad luck sure, and nothing could induce them to go to work again until the next day,”
After our previous whistling experience, we were inclined to think that this was another joke on us, but we did n’t quite dare to say so. And when we asked some other engineers about it, we were assured that it was a fact.
At the bottom of the shaft, there was an electric “dinky” (locomotive) and a couple of “muck” cars. We climbed into one of the cars, and, at a signal to the “dinky skinner” (locomotive engineer), we were off. The moisture in the tunnel made such a thick fog that we could not see anything but the faint glow of the electric lamps, strung at infrequent intervals along the roof. Once in a while we passed the shadowy form of a workman, drawing back at the warning of our gong to let us pass,
At first, all other sounds seemed to have been drowned out by the noise of our train, which echoed strangely in that long rock cavern, but gradually another sound rose above the din, a sound that grew louder until it became fairly deafening.
And just then our train stopped, and we jumped. out to watch the drill gang at work. The racket was of a throbbing nature most distressing to the ears, and very trying for the nerves. Altogether, there must have been half a dozen drills, all going at once, pounding their steels into the rock like a riveting-hammer, at the rate of about 400 blows per minute, Once I visited a boiler-shop, and thought that the noise there was about as distracting as any noise could be, but that was quiet compared to this racket. Under the rapid blows the rock beneath the steels was reduced to a fine powder, which, in the case of all holes which slanted downward, was washed out by streams of water.
Before we went down the shaft, the superintendent explained just how the holes were arranged (see page 928). The upper half, or “heading” of the tunnel, was run about twenty yards in advance of the lower half, or “bench,” so as