after week, month after month, facing the
same old peril until--well--

I came upon this fear of the bridge the very first time I sought leave
to go upon the unfinished structure. It was in a little shanty of an
office on the Brooklyn side, where, after some talk, I suggested to an
assistant engineer, bent over his plans, that I would like to take a
picture or two from the top of the tower. That seemed a simple enough
thing.

"Think you can keep your head up there?" said he, with a sharp look.

I told him I had climbed to a steeple-top.

"Yes. But you were lashed fast then in a swing, and had a rope to hold
on to. Here you've got to climb up by yourself without anything to hold
on to, and it's twice as high as the average steeple."

"How high is that?" I asked.

"Well, the saddles are three hundred and forty feet above the river."

"Saddles?"

"That's what we call 'em. They're beds of steel on top of the towers for
the cables to rest on--nice little beds weighing thirty-six tons each."

"Oh!" said I. "How do you get them up?"

"Swing 'em up with steam-derricks and cables. Guess you wouldn't care
for _that_ job, hanging out on one o' those booms by your eyelashes."

"Perhaps not," I admitted. "But I'd like to watch it."

He said I must see somebody with more authority, and turned to his
plans.

"You don't feel in danger yourself, do you," I persisted, "when _you_ go
up?"

"Don't, eh?" he answered. "Well, I nearly got cut in two the other day
by a plate-washer. It fell over a hundred feet, and went two inches slam
into a piece of timber I was standing on." Then he explained what havoc
a small piece of iron--some stray bolt or hammer--can work after a long
drop.

"That plate-washer," said he, "weighed only two pounds and a half when
it began to fall; but it weighed as much as you do when it struck--and
you're a fair size."

[Illustration: 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. (SEE PAGE 192.)]

"Is that based on calculation," said I, "or is it a joke?"

"It's based on the laws of gravitation," he answered, "and it's no joke
for the man who gets hit. Say, why don't you go down in the yard and
look around a little?"

I told him I would, and presently went down into the yard, a noisy,
confusing place, where the wind was humming through a forest of
scaffolding that held the bare