Newspapers / The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, … / Jan. 29, 1911, edition 1 / Page 15
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Dix Morgan he Fighting Engineer By Captain Fritz Duquesne. invention ought to save r.ilroad companies from r.ghty to ninety million dol- - , Why it was not thought I ,in't imagine. So far • n.’ taults or flaws in the of tearing up all the -ave cost us $.?o a ton, and em ^>ack to the mills, - for ten dollars a i', the same rails over .1 raking them away from Thr i-onsulting engineer (• ' irjjcst railroad interests r . >tates was addressing (>: l>rectr>rs in their of- - IVvminal Building, New explaining to them the nr white drawings of the . in i'is hands. p-"rd the device?’* ( R.-;n, a native of South ^ I'-.Triral railroad engineer \it d nvn the steel highways w>n in almost every yart of •,d under the most heroic ■iroumstances. He is . hi* friends as the ‘Fighting He got his idea when • railroad for the Japanese -e of the Russian guns in 'Iv.rinR the Russo-Japanese c ampaign he had fco iisc i and defective material, -• thinking out various make- t .e road he was building • a mental note of what he « lien he had the time, and 1 >r is the outcome of time, * . forced to have, through f worst calamities that can . lAn.’’ r boy entered and handed ->- a card. ; in right in.” ■ O' turned to the door as a iered man, over six feet in "—ed, led over the silent car- ■ H'.an whose head reachcd ; The big matx held his > nand and apparently re- • 1 ran he slowly turned and • *'l li'hind him, w’hilst the m 1 (*d a chair toward him ' iV i rn are on the other side, way,” and she turned ■ o; d witii gentk hsnd? to face f. :My husband is blind," , I sad gmile playing round • n they looked into tho=e of . man liefore her, as slie him into the chair. •n. allow me to introduce Morgan and to Mr. John the inventor, whose ma- naiil the consulting en- ''p priintecl to the prints on ' p wed. and then the talk •ir --V! dollars, miles of track, *'H hour'i, savings, speed?, " hch are business and are , enter into this snatch ■'.ngraphy of a man who has ►he lure of peril into all ;ankTProu5 ventures, which 1 ■'’,1 a mass of scars, breaks - irh as I have never be- I .'f-'.ii amount of experience, n iirvive. it in the chair before the V''d business men the glare • '■•«ht showed plainly the > *hat marked his features. xht eye there was the gash '-t's cruel path. On the left face there were eleven One eye had been shot •f tther blinded. Ilis left v' n a seini-helpless manner ' .'tnd be seemed to have no through Northwest Canada into the Arctic Ocean. He has the honor of being the only prospector who tra versed the river from one end to the other. He lived with the J£squiniaux and learned their mode of life, which he adopted in his further search for gold in the Arctic. Being unsuccess ful he decided to go to Siberia to try his luck there. Most men wor.W have gone down the west coast to some seaport from whence a steamboat could be taken to the other side of the Pacihc, biit not Dix Morgan. xM- ways unconventional and ever in search of a new excitcment he decidcd to cross from the American Contiiient to Asia in his own way, reversing tlic journey of the Mongols who crossed from Asia to America in the distant ages. He journeyed across .\laska be hind dogs in a three-hole biadockie lashed to a sledge, in the depth of the About this time there was a grpw- ing hostility between the Chinese and Japanese governments, Vv-hich resulted in the Chino-Japanese conflict. John Dix Morgan rushed his railroad work and finished it before war broke out The Japanese were very short of engineers and hav,ipg heard of Mor gan’s ability, engaged him as an ad visory agent to one of their naval commanders at two hundred yen (one hundred dollars) a day. While in this capacity he was obliged to go from ship to ship of the Japanese fleet ar ranging this, looking ov.er that, repairing everything, suggesting changes. • When the f^ect was ready for action the Japanese government ordered it to attack the Chinese, fleet at once. Morgan Vv’as asked to leave the ships before the expected battle. He re- aised, saying, “Tve started and I’ll were preparing for the fray. Signals were flashed from ship to ship. The gunners stripped themselves naked, a necessary condition, for in explosions the canvas and other material of clothing is likely to be blown into the flesh, thus causing infection. The Japanese w'ere maneuvering to a good position favorable for the delivery of a broadside when some sharp signals came up from the engine room. They were translated to me in a moment by a Japanese officer and I w^ent fly ing down the narrow ringing iron steps with the agility of a gorilla. Standing on the iron grating around the cylinders, with their mighty plunging piston rods, were the Jap anese engineers, holding a rapid con versation. The ship’s engines were throbbing like the heart of some mighty monster in the excitement of an approaching death duel. The in animate thing;s around us seemed to take on the spirit of battle. The elec tric lights flickered nervously, and the oilers with their long spouted cans and smoky lamps sprang from ing to bearing like agitated monkeys. Orders were shouted above the hiss ing of tlie steam and the rythmic groans of the living machinery. Greasy-browm faces with beady, glis tening eyes shown from the dark places around the hot engines. Smoke rose from the oil wickS and clogged It is?* asked the chief “‘Where anxiously. “I threw the coat on top of the cylin der to protect me from the heat and the chief followed my example. I then sprang over the rail and kneeling over the hot plates listened. A mo ment later I knew that the danger was external and in another, located in the packing box a bolt whose nut had about a sixty-second of an inch play. A few minutes’ w’ork with a spanner rectified matters and the Jap anese engineers smiled, and were thanking me w'hcn a mufded thud, fol lowing a signal to slow down, shook the ship. Again the thud and then a mighty boom. The Japanese in the engine room could restrain their feel ings no longer, and they cried to each other, it seemed to me, in the joy of battle. Their eyes glistened and their teeth shone white in their grimy faces, but they themselves and others clung to the iron work like mad apes, laughing. “CrashI Crash! Crash! cam^ from the iron walls of the ship as she slightly reeled. Every moment I ex pected a shell to come screeching, splintering, crashing, blazing through the ship’s side, scattering death and destruction. The din of the patter ing shot, the vibration of the striking shells and the recoil of our owm guns drove me dizzy as the huge battle- falling short and sending geyser-like sprays from the sea, which settled like» rain of a tropic storm upon us, A sh'ell passed screeching over our heads, so clo«e that the vacuum of its wake lifted some of us ofif our feet. An instant later another hit be low us, putting a gun out of commis sion. A French officer beside me was getting enthusiastic, every time the Chinese made a good shot, he cried, 'Tres bien! Tres bien!’ with such evident admiration that I could hardly think that he realized that he was a part of the target. Whilst was watching a shell whisked one of the Japanese officers off the deck, saw a splash, and where a man stood P n !l One day, under a sudden attaeV, three-quarters of my working force was wiped out and I b«a.t a hasty re treat, bolting towards Dalney on the little engine that was used for push ing my trucks about. The engine was not much faster than a horse and we had a devil of a running fight for some five miles, but succeeded in out stripping the Cossacks. “On my arrival at Dalney there was a huge Japanese army waiting to , be transported to the front, and there was a huge look of disappointment on the fa^es of the generals whei^ I told them the situation. “‘Well, you give up the road, eh?’ “‘No,’ I said, 'give me some men a millionth of a second before there I and a Colts machine gun and I build was nothing. it or die.' "Ohl That’s all I remembered, “They smiled but I got the gun When I came to niy senses 1 could [and before the sun set that day I was see that out of all who were on the on my way t© the head of the line deck there was only one other besides Jin command of a company of Jap- myself alive. It was the. Frenchman, anese and a machine gun. Never in Scattered around the deck were the the world’s history, 1 think, was a broken bodies of the others who had railroad built under such difticulty; to watched the fighting w’ith us. Blood start with, the route was unsurveyed, was running from my mouth, my left land I could not read the Japanese arm was broken, my shoulder blade 1 outline maps, which were nothing but was sticking through my skin and my a jumble of dots to me, like an tastro- collar bone was driven inward. My 1 nomical chart. Then there was the whole left side was shattered. The everlasting whistle of Cossack bullets Frenchman was sitting with his back and the continual thinning out of the against a broken turret, holding a soldiers who defended the line, .'vS well large wound together with one hand las the workers. as he bound it with the other, I “Anyway, I got the track down, tw-i* “‘W^hat happened?’ I cried. 1 miles a day, with bridges. Often 1 "‘Nothing,’ answ’ered monsieur, had to use my Remington or Luger ‘only the Chinese made an excellent for personal defense when we were shot, hit the turret, and killed every- rushed by a daring company of Rus- one but us. The doctor says you are sian horsemen. The further we got going to die and I shall live. 1 am into the country the more fighting we sorry to have to bid you good-bye.’ had t» do. We had been workihg “‘Thank yer,’ I said, in as pleasant thirty-one days when things got tone as I could, and I turned my to® hot. I sent for reinforcements, head to die, looking at the bclching and the Japanese^ heliographcd back, guns of the enemy, and again lapsed ‘Do not give up the line; every Jap- into unconsciousness. When 1 came anese will die with you if you will out of the hospital I was unacquainted hold it. They are all patriots. Re- with the new features they had given inforcements sent.’ me. I collected my two hundred yen “Fine sentiments, and it looked as if a day for the time I was in the I was not going to spend my four Mikado's service, and then I departed hundred yen a day. I heliographed for America. back O. K. and as though trying my "Just before the Russo-Japanese grit, ten minutes later a column of war broke out a letter came to me Cossacks swept into view. Then hell down in the Yakui valley, where I broke loose. I jumped on the truck was working on a hole in the ground and got a coolie to hand me ammuni- expecting to run across a vein of tion as fast as I could shoot it from gold. It said they wanted engineers my machine gun at the Russians. The and I was offered four hundred yen Japanese soldiers were brave enough a day to take risks. Did I accept? but not good shots, and I saw them W'ell, I take risks mostly for nothing, I falling all around without inHicting and here was two hundred dollars a much damage on the enemy. Besides day for amusing myself. It wasn’t that the Russians brought up a shell very long before I was on a Pacific throw'ing machine gun and opened liner bound for the Mikado’s island fire on mine. Here the coolies gave empire. Un exhibition wf exlraordirary st»- mpili “Mv first job was advisory agent'to icism, for they went on laying the / the transport officers, who were the track whilst the bullets flew as though most makc-shift meti I have ever seen, nothing out of the ordinary was hap- Things must go according to learning, I or they don’t go, with the Jap. The “My gun was getting .hot, my men war had been going on some time, and were almost wiped out, and the con- the Japanese were shaking up Gen- tinual bur.sting of the enemy’s shells eral Stossel pretty badly. Sixteen was making my head swim, at the miles cast of Port Dalney the Japs same time I had the satisfaction of were landing their troops, who were | knocking over dozens with the ma- Ont After Anoihet the Coolies Fell. .\rctic winter, and crossed the Behr ing Strait from Cape Prince of Wales to East Cape on the Asiatic sioe. In this journey he was accompanied b} two of those Arabs of the desert ice, the Esquimaux. When they were on ice the sledge was used, the biadockie acting like the body of an automobile. W’hen water was reached the dogs were put inside the biadockie wlvicli !>'hi-; arm to hang on. And ! ^^^s slid into the water and paddled •' It', ^eems to enjoy life, and ^y the Esquimaux to the next ice, rv a- a boy who has found his j ^he sledge hanging underneath. •'fhfArt. Rlind and crippled, rhr of heaven shut from his • to give up his perilous ■ ■ u his adventure, for now - ’..re? in the dark and builds »• -I mechanical things that ■ • ' ddd a little to his wealth, ' ♦ • b'mi.in comfort. " there was danger John '..an was in it; in it for money, f«:n; but in it, if he could ' lie wan not occupied in exploring he would be ■ iomewhere for some • 1 *tal, or building a railroad ' m^rica, Mexico, East In- ■ ' 'ir Japan. In the fifty-odd '1' :e he has visited most of i f’'*' .f the world, from the ' crtral America and East file Frozen North. For sev- ^'"'nths he prospected for gold ' ^^»rken7ie River, which runs In eighteen hours the journey from the .American continent to the Asiatic was made, and then the search for the precious yellow metal was continued. While it was still cold and the ice was thick, and the ground too frozen to be worked, Morgan journeyed from one tribe to the other in search for evidences of gold or silver, and when the summer suns melted the snow l:c prospected all the likely country, but to no avail, the search proved fnnl- le's besides eating up an enormous amount of money. Morgan decided to return to his home in the Lnited States. He was in Shanghai, on his road home, when he was engaged by a European syndicate to make a suivey for a proposed Trans-AL^iatic railway, and he has the honor of making the first Survey for a railroad north of the Arctic Circle. the air with soot hai invaded the lungs that labored for their life draught in whv: neliish temperature A peculiar muscular strain of the sup pressed excitement of intense expect ancy was in every face. There, in the burning, steaming iron prison^ with guns above, them, mighty roar ing boilers, under terrific pressure, magazines packed to the top with deadly explosives all around them, and to see the durned fight any-1 dangerous electric cables clinging like So he remained w'ith the fleet j vines to the steel walls abo\ e, stood at the i the little warriors of the engine room, I’d give two hundred yen .‘^ee it out. a day how.” and went into action with it battle of Yalu. Before and during ! unseen by their enemy and seeing him the fighting he was called from ship to ship to look over the various me chanical devices that make the mod ern marine fighting machine, for»at that time the Japanese w'ere in their infancy, as far as naval matters were concerned, and they needed consid erable help. Morgan was in. the engine room of the Komura when the opening shot of tlie hi-toric battle was fired. Here is his own description of what it means to be in the bow-els of a battle ship in action. ‘•W’e were in full view of the Chi nese fleet, which we could see through our glasses was clearing for action. The guns in the enemy's turrets w’ere changing their angles and I expected any minute to see the death dealing shells come screeching from the threatening muzzles. Our own craft not. On every side lurked death in a hundred forms, waiting to be freed from its harness. The mighty steel arms rose and fell in answer to the signal bell as they drove the huge engine of destruction forw^ard to its doom or victor^^ “‘W'hat is wrong?’ I asked the chief after I had surveyed the scene. ^ “ ‘That’s why I called you,’ he an swered, 'what is wrong? Next time the signal comes, “full speed.” listen, there is a strange knocking which we cannot locate. I have my fears.’ “Just then ‘full speed aliead’ clanged on the gong, and the huge pistons shot nervously through their cylinders, automatically my practiced ear an alyzed the myriad sounds around me, and I heard a strange little tap as the piston fcf the hi^h pressure cylinders ended its stroke. ship lurched this way and^that under the strain. Whether I was trem.bling or the ship, I could not say, but the iron beams around me seemed to have ague. From time to time I heard the signal gong clashing its orders above the terrible din. I was watching *he chief, w'ho was on the floor of the engine room. He listened at a tube and pointed to me and then waved his hand upwards. I knew I was wanted on deck. -‘Up the iron ladders I went like a soul escaping from hell, and a minute later I was between decks, in the fresh air and the blinding daylight. I could not see, so sudden was the light change, but I tried to walk to the bridge. I trod on something soft, living, and sprang back into some greasy substance and slipped on the deck. The shattering boom, the rattle of shot on the snip s side, the screech of big shells as they tried to grind into the ship’s vita!?, and the thun der thumps of our own guns that hurled defiance at the enemv. added to my temporary blindness, and for a few seconds rendered me incapable thought. I clung to the deck and aited for my eyes to adjust them selves to the light. In a few moments I got used to my surroundings and saw around me a horrible scene of carnage that would sicken me in the telling. “I decided to find out why I was wanted and so I made my wa}- over the dead bodies and blood-greasy decks to the top deck. W’’hen I got there some twenty-five Japanese offi cers and men, and a couple of Eur opeans were w’atching the progress of the battle. Already the Chinese ships were in ■distress. Most of their shots wcrt Japanese .were marching parallel to the line and were fast getting out of touch with their base of supplies. Be sides this the Cossack sharpshooters were doing some splendid work as the daily line of Japanese wounded that poured through Dalney proved. “At Dalney ‘.here were hundreds of tons of worn-out rails, which had been a shot as I was in my boyhood days down in South Carolina. “Well, things were going against me, and I had just decided to run, when a sudden stinging sensation filled my head and—further interest in the fight, I took none. *‘W''hen I came round I was lying under a soldier’s overcoat beside rny discarded by the Russians, useless, 11 railroad line. A big Japanese army guess, to anyone but an American, was camped on the ground, and a The Japanese generals, alarmed at couple of hundred dead Cossacks and their heavy losses, said that further Japanese were lying in mixed heaps advance against the Russians must about me 1 sat up and my head cease untif railroad material arrived swam so much that 1 fell back to the from some foreign port. They w'ere ground. A war correspondent, named a ‘blue funk,’ as the Britishers) William Dinwiddle, of New York. I say, v.'hen I suggested that they make think, came up and spoke. ‘Can I use of the old rails, and any old wood for ties. The Japanese regarded me in wonder. “ ‘That stuff is worn out,’ said the general I put my proposition up to. “ ‘W'eil,’ said I, ‘ ’t’ll be worn In again if j'ou give me my way.’^ And to my surprise they did. “Within tw'enty-four hours I had a bunch of coolies at my command, and was soon making a railroad out of dis carded material. We were not ten miles out when the Cossack scouts started to pick off my workmen w'ith such regularity that I estimated that I lost a man for every tw'enty ties put down. Even with such a terrific handicap I laid two miles of track a day, and as the rolling stock was ar riving in pieces and being assembled at Dalney very rapidly, the Japs looked on the venture ^ with high hopes, and were doing me all sorts of honor. Nevertheless I had my doubts about living long enough to complete the road to where the Jap anese intended to make a base. One after another the coolies fell, and one after another new ones stepped into their places. do anything for you, old man? Have a drink?’ “I sure did ‘‘‘You are very lucky,’ said the writer. 'A fight has rajed around you for two days, a^id two hundred or more have fallen in a hand-to-hand struggle around you, whilst you were unconscious from the wound in your head. The Japanese general ordered that you be rescucd at any cost, he wanted you to finish the railroad, if you could.’ “ ‘Well, why don’t they give me some attention,’ 1 asked. “ ‘Because the doctor said you were of no further immediate use to them as your eye was injured by a bullet, and you would be laid up any way. 1 tell you, your v/ork has saved the Japafiese from a serious check.’ “Well, to finish the story, I con* tributed one eye and a ouart of blood to the glory of the Mikado’s empire, and I was durned thankful I had one eye left to see myself spending the four hundred yen a day that I got for my trouble. Besides that J invented that machine which will revolutionize railroad track laying, which will mean more than four hun dred yen a day to me and that littla lady you sec leading me around.” Copyright, iQie, by Metropolitan News paper Syndicate.
The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Jan. 29, 1911, edition 1
15
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