The cabin passengers went below as usual, but hundreds of immigrants sat up as I did and watched the stars slide down the sky till at length dawn came with silver lights and startling revelations. I can still recall the thrills that overcame me when I realized the great waterways of that land-locked harbor and saw Long Island Sound stretching away on one hand like a sea and the magnificent Hudson River with its palisades on the other, while before me was the East River, nearly a mile in width.
What an entrance to a new world! A magnificent and safe ocean port which is also the meeting place of great water paths into the continent. No finer site could be imagined for a world capital. I was entranced with the spacious grandeur, the manifest destiny of this Queen City of the Waters. The Old Battery was pointed out to me and Governor's Island and the prison and where the bridge was being built to Brooklyn: suddenly Jessie passed on her father's arm and shot me one radiant, lingering glance of love and promise. I remember nothing more till we landed and the old banker came up to tell me he had had my little box taken from the «H's» where it belonged and put with his luggage among the «S's.» «We are going,» he added, «to the Fifth Avenue Hotel a way uptown in Madison Square: we'll be comfortable there,» and he smiled self-complacently. I smiled too, and thanked him; but I had no intention of going in his company. I went back to the ship and thanked Doctor Keogh with all my heart for his great goodness to me; he gave me his address in New York, and incidentally I learned from him that if I kept the key of my trunk, no one could open it or take it away; it would be left in charge of the customs till I called for it. In a minute I was back in the long shed on the dock and had wandered nearly to the end when I perceived the stairs. «Is that the way into the town?» I asked and a man replied, «Sure.» One quick glance around to see that I was not noticed and in a moment I was down the stairs and out in the street. I raced straight ahead of me for two or three blocks and then asked and was told that Fifth Avenue was right in front. As I turned up Fifth Avenue, I began to breathe freely; «No more fathers for me.» The old greybeard who had bothered me was consigned to oblivion without regret. Of course, I know now that he deserved better treatment.
Perhaps, indeed, I should have done better had I accepted his kindly, generous help, but I'm trying to set down the plain, unvarnished truth, and here at once I must say that children's affections are much slighter than most parents imagine. I never wasted a thought on my father; even my brother Vernon, who had always been kind to me and fed my inordinate vanity, was not regretted: the new life called me: I was in a flutter of expectancy and hope. Some way up Fifth Avenue I came into the great square and saw the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but I only grinned and kept right on till at length I reached Central Park. Near it, I can't remember exactly where, but I believe it was near where the Plaza Hotel stands today, there was a small wooden house with an outhouse at the other end of the lot. While I stared a woman came out with a bucket and went across to the outhouse. In a few moments she came back again and noticed me looking over the fence. «Would you please give me a drink?» I asked. «Sure I will,» she replied with a strong Irish brogue; «come right in,» and I followed her into the kitchen. «You're Irish,» I said, smiling at her. «I am,» she replied, «how did ye guess?» «Because I was born in Ireland, too,» I retorted. «You were not!» she cried emphatically, more for pleasure than to contradict. «I was born in Galway,» I went on, and at once she became very friendly and poured me out some milk warm from the cow; and when she heard I had had no breakfast and saw I was hungry, she pressed me to eat and sat down with me and soon heard my whole story, or enough of it to break out in wonder again and again. In turn she told me how she had married Mike Mulligan, a longshoreman who earned good wages and was a good husband but took a drop too much now and again, as a man will when tempted by one of «thim saloons.» It was the saloons, I learned, that were the ruination of all the best Irishmen and «they were the best men anyway, an'-an'-»; and the kindly, homely talk flowed on, charming me. When the breakfast was over and the things cleared away, I rose to go with many thanks, but Mrs. Mulligan wouldn't hear of it. «Ye're a child,» she said, «an' don't know New York; it's a terrible place and you must wait till Mike comes home an'-» «But I must find some place to sleep,» I said.
«I have money.» «You'll sleep here,» she broke in decisively,
«and Mike will put ye on yer feet; sure he knows New York like his pocket, an' yer as welcome as the flowers in May, an'-» What could I do but stay and talk and listen to all sorts of stories about New York, and «toughs» that were «hard cases» and «gunmen» and «wimmin that were worse-bad scran to them.» In due time Mrs. Mulligan and I had dinner together, and after dinner I got her permission to go into the Park for a walk, but «mind now and be home by six or I'll send Mike after ye,» she added, laughing. I walked a little way in the park and then started down town again to the address Jessie had given me near the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a mean street, I thought, but I soon found Jessie's sister's house and went to a nearby restaurant and wrote a little note to my love, that she could show if need be, saying that I proposed to call on the eighteenth, or two days after the ship we had come in was due to return to Liverpool. After that duty, which made it possible for me to hope all sorts of things on the eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth, I sauntered over to Fifth Avenue and made my way uptown again. At any rate I was spending nothing in my present lodging. When I returned that night I was presented to Mike: I found him a big, good looking Irishman who thought his wife a wonder and all she did perfect. «Mary,» he said, winking at me, «is one of the best cooks in the wurrld and if it weren't that she's down on a man when he has a drop in him, she'd be the best gurrl on God's earth. As it is, I married her, and I've never been sorry, have I, Mary?» «Ye've had no cause, Mike Mulligan.»
Mike had nothing particular to do next morning and so he promised he would go and get my little trunk from the custom house. I gave him the key. He insisted as warmly as his wife that I should stay with them till I got work: I told him how eager I was to begin and Mike promised to speak to his chief and some friends and see what could be done. Next morning I got up about five-thirty as soon as I heard Mike stirring, and went down Seventh Avenue with him till he got on the horse-car for down town and left me. About seven-thirty to eight o'clock a stream of people began walking down town to their offices.
On several corners were bootblack shanties. One of them happened to have three customers in it and only one bootblack. «Won't you let me help you shine a pair or two?» I asked. The bootblack looked at me.
«I don't mind,» he said and I seized the brashes and went to work. I had done the two just as he finished the first: he whispered to me «halves» as the next man came in and he showed me how to use the polishing rag or cloth. I took off my coat and waistcoat and went to work with a will; for the next hour and a half we both had our hands full. Then the rush began to slack off, but not before I had taken just over a dollar and a half. Afterwards we had a talk, and Allison, the bootblack, told me he'd be glad to give me work any morning on the same terms. I assured him I'd be there and do my best till I got other work. I had earned three shillings and had found out I could get good board for three dollars a week, so in a couple of hours I had earned my living. The last anxiety left me. Mike had a day off, so he came home for dinner at noon and he had great news. They wanted men to work under water in the iron caissons of Brooklyn Bridge and they were giving from five to ten dollars a day. «Five dollars,» cried Mrs.
Mulligan. «It must be dangerous or unhealthy or somethin'-sure, you'd never put the child to work like that.» Mike excused himself, but the danger, if danger there was, appealed to me almost as much as the big pay: my only fear was that they'd think me too small or too young.
I had told Mrs. Mulligan I was sixteen, for I didn't want to be treated as a child, and now I showed her the eighty cents I had earned that morning bootblacking and she advised me to keep on at it and not go to work under the water; but the promised five dollars a day won me. Next morning Mike took me to Brooklyn Bridge soon after five o'clock to see the contractor; he wanted to engage Mike at once but shook his head over me. «Give me a trial,» I pleaded; «you'll see I'll make good.» After a pause, «O.K.,» he said; «four shifts have gone down already underhanded: you may try.» I've told about the work and its dangers at some length in my novel, The Bomb, but here I may add some details just to show what labor has to suffer. In the bare shed where we got ready, the men told me no one could do the work for long without getting the «bends»; the «bends» were a sort of convulsive fit that twisted one's body like a knot and often made you an invalid for life. They soon explained the whole procedure to me. We worked, it appeared, in a huge bell-shaped caisson of iron that went to the bottom of the river and was pumped full of compressed air to keep the water from entering it from below: the top of the caisson is a room called the «material chamber,» into which the stuff dug out of the river passes up and is carted away. On the side of the caisson is another room, called the «air-lock,» into which we were to go to be «compressed.» As the compressed air is admitted, the blood keeps absorbing the gasses of the air till the tension of the gasses in the blood becomes equal to that in the air: when this equilibrium has been reached, men can work in the caisson for hours without serious discomfort, if sufficient pure air is constantly pumped in. It was the foul air that did the harm, it appeared. «If they'd pump in good air, it would be O.K.; but that would cost a little time and trouble, and men's lives are cheaper.» I saw that the men wanted to warn me thinking I was too young, and accordingly I pretended to take little heed. When we went into the «air-lock» and they turned on one air-cock after another of
