d'
ye think of that? There he was, balanced on one foot, sir, with an
awful death on either side, and the wind just whooping--all because his
pipe went out. I wouldn't do it for--for-- Well, I wouldn't do it."

"Why didn't he wait to light his pipe until he got across?" I asked.

The foreman shook his head. "I give it up. He just happened to think of
it then, and he done it. That's the way they are, some of 'em. Why,
there was another fellow, Pat Reagan, as good a man as we've got, and he
went sound asleep one day last summer,--it was a nice warm day,--sitting
on the top-chord. That's a long, narrow girder at the very highest point
of the end-span. First thing we knew, there was Pat, legs dangling, head
nodding, comfortable as you please. A few inches either way would have
fixed him forever; but he stuck there, by an Irishman's luck, until two
of his mates climbed up softly and grabbed him. They didn't dare yell
for fear he'd be startled and fall."

While we were talking the wind had strengthened, and now every line and
rope on the structure stood out straight from the sides, and swirls of
spray from hoisting engines overhead flew across the yard, also
occasional splinters. The foreman hurried a man aloft with orders to
lash fast everything.

"There's a hard blow coming up," he predicted, "and it 'wouldn't do a
thing' to those big timbers on the tower if we left 'em around loose!
People have no idea what force is in the wind. Why, sir, I've seen it
blow a keg of railroad spikes off that tower clean across the yard. And
one day two planks thirteen feet long and two inches thick went flying
over the whole approach-works right plumb through the front of a saloon
out on the street. That made eight hundred feet the wind carried those
planks. As for coats and overalls, why, we've watched lots of 'em start
from the tower-top and sail off over Brooklyn city like kites--yes, sir,
like kites; and nobody ever knew where they landed."

"I don't see how the men keep their footing in such a gale," I remarked.

"Well," said he, "we order them down when it blows an out-and-out gale,
but they work in 'most anything short of a gale. And it's a wonder how
they do it. It's not so bad if the wind is steady, for then you can lean
against it, same as a man leans on a bicycle going around a curve;
but--"

"Do you mean," I interrupted, "that they walk narrow girders leaning
against the wind--against a hard wind?"

"Certainly; they have