THE jump from Corey’s slip was never made but by two of the Brick Dust Gang, and though, as it turned out, they were not sorry they had taken it, they served as a warning to all the others of the gang against trying to emulate their daring.
Corey’s slip, as everybody knows, is part of Corey’s brick-yard, on the East side, near the Twenty-sixth street wharf, and the Brick Dust Gang are so called because they have a hidden meeting-place among the high piles of bricks which none of the other boys, nor the police, nor even the employees of the brick-yard have been able to find. It is known to exist, though, and the gang meet there to smoke and play the accordion and gamble for cigarette pictures, and to pursue such other sinful and demoralizing practices of East side youth as they elect.
The Brick Dust Gang must not be confounded with the Rag Gang of “The Bay,” near Thirty-third street, for, while the Rag Gang are thieves and toughs, the Brick Dust Gang are too young to be very wicked, and their “folks” are too respectable to let them go very far astray. The gang got along very well during the winter months, and the hole in the bricks was filled every afternoon after the public schools had closed, with from a dozen to twenty of them.
Buck Mooney was the leader, and no one disputed his claim, for he was a born leader in some respects, just as was his father, who could throw the votes of the Luke J. Mooney Star Social Club wherever they would do himself and the party the most good. But his son Buck was quick-tempered and stronger than he knew, and he had a way of knocking the younger and less pugilistic members of his crowd around which was injudicious; for by this he hurt his own popularity as well as their heads.
He was no bully though, and there was no one who could lead him in any show of physical prowess recognized and practised by the gang. So all through the winter he was easily the leader, and no one stood against him. His fall came in the spring. The coming of the spring meant more to the Brick Dust Gang than to almost any other crowd along the river front, for their knowledge of the brick-yard and its wharf enabled them to bathe in the river quite hidden from the police at any hour of the day, and this means a great deal to those who have felt the stifling heat of the tenements along the East River.
They bathed and swam and dived from the first of May until the autumn came and gave the water such a sharpness that they left it numbed and with chattering teeth, and they began at five in the morning and kept it up late into the night. They lived in the water, and were rather more at home in it than they were on the streets. The workmen in the brick-yard never interfered with them, because the boys helped them in piling the bricks and in unloading the scows and loading the carts; and the police could never catch them, for the reason that the boys always kept a part of the gang posted as sentinels in the yard.
Mooney and Tommy Grant were easily the best swimmers in the crowd. Tommy was four years younger than the leader, and small and consumptive-looking; but he was absurdly strong for his size, and his body was as hard and muscular as a jockey’s. The trouble began between the two at the swimming-match at Harlem for all comers, where they both entered for the one-mile race with a turn. The Harlem boys were not in it from the first, and the two down-town boys led all the others by a hundred yards. “The little fellow,” as Tommy was called by the crowds on the shore, was the popular favorite; and the crowd was delighted when he came plunging in ahead, swimming so much under water that only one bare shoulder and revolving arm told where he was.
Buck Mooney, the leader of the gang, was a bad second and a bad loser as well. He swore a great deal when his backers pulled him out of the water, and gave every reason for Tommy’s success, except that Tommy could swim faster than he could.
When Tommy appeared around the streets the next day with the big gold medal on his coat, and with the words “Champion of the East River” blazoned on it, Mooney felt worse than ever, and grew so ugly over it that some of the gang soon turned against him, and his hold over them disappeared. Little Tommy took his place without any formal election, and Mooney sulked and said unpleasant things about him behind his back.
They never came to blows, but they both grew to hate each other cordially,—principally through the stories their friends told of each to the other, as friends, true friends, are found to do, in all classes of society. So the breach grew very great and the gang was divided and lost its influence. One faction would refuse to act as sentinel for the other, and each claimed the meeting-place. On the whole, it was very unpleasant, and most unsatisfactory to those who loved peace.
It was evident that something must be done; either the gang must separate into two crowds or reunite again under one leader. It was a foolish, dare-devil young Irish boy that suggested how this last and much-desired result could be accomplished. There was a big derrick at the end of the wharf to lift the buckets of coal from the scows, when the place was used for a coal-yard.
Some of the more daring boys had jumped from the middle bar of this derrick, in emulation of Steve Brodie, whose jump from the Brooklyn Bridge and subsequent elevation to the proprietorship of a saloon had stirred up every boy in the East side. It was a dangerous thing to do, because there was an outer row of posts beyond the slip, and whoever jumped had to jump out far enough to strike the water beyond them. For, if he should not jump far enough—
What the Irish boy proposed was that some one should try to dive—not jump—from the very top of the derrick. The derrick was fifty feet above the water, and the outer line of posts was eight feet from the slip and fifteen feet from the line of the derrick. It looked like just what it was—an impossibility—for any one but the coolest and most practised diver.
“If a lad should do it,” objected one of the gang, “and ’ud hit them piles, there’d be no getting at him quick e’cept from the top of the derrick. He’d sink afore any one could get around the piles to him from the slip.”
“There’d be no need to hurry,” said another, grimly. “He’d keep till the police boat picked him up.”
“Well, the morgue’s handy,” commented another, flippantly, with a nod of his head toward Bellevue Hospital, back of them.
As ill luck would have it, Mooney came up just then, and they told him what they were discussing.
“I’ll bet Tommy Grant wouldn’t be afeard to try it,” said one of the youngest.
That was enough for Mr. Mooney. He said with a sneer that Tommy would be afraid, and of course Tommy was told of this at once, and Tommy, after a careful survey of the jump, said it was suicide. And then Mooney called him a coward, and said he’d do it, and he’d show him who was fit to lead the gang.
The elder boys told him not to be a fool, Tommy among the number; but he said they were cry-babies, and told them to keep quiet about it and to meet at the wharf at seven that evening.
The tide was low then, and the piles showed high above the water. At high tide they were covered, and besides there were very few people about at that hour.
At seven o’clock twenty of them gathered at the end of the wharf. They were badly scared and wished they were well out of it, but there was no stopping Mooney. The more they begged him not to do it, the more he laughed at them. He climbed the ladder to the top of the derrick alone, and stripped off every thread but his swimming tights and the scapular around his neck. The big posts rose out of the water in front of the slip—black, slimy-looking, and as pitiless as rocks.
Van Bibber and some of his friends in their steam yacht lying at anchor off the New York Yacht Club’s wharf saw the boy mounting the ladder and shouted to the other boys to stop him. The other boys would have liked to do what the gentlemen suggested, but it was too late. But Tommy ran half-way up the ladder, begging his rival to come down. Mooney swore at him to go back, and Tommy hung there half-way up and fearful to do more lest he should rattle the ex-leader of the gang.
The gentlemen on the yacht told two of the crew to jump into the rowboat and pick the young fool up, and the sailors ran to cast off the skiff.
Then they saw Mooney outlined against the dark background of the tenements, as motionless as a marble statue on a high pedestal.
He raised his arms slowly over his head until the finger tips met and interlaced, then he bent his knees and his body swung forward. There was a brief, breathless silence as he dived out and down, and then a yell from the yacht and a gasping cry from the boys, as they saw him throw out his hands wildly to save himself, and saw that he had misjudged the distance and would strike the posts. Some of the youngest boys turned sick and sank whimpering to their knees, and six of the older ones dived like one man into the water to pull him out. He had struck the posts with his arm, had turned, striking them again, and then sank without a cry into the river.
The sailors in the rowboat had just started toward the spot and the club men were cursing them for their slowness. The six boys in the water were shut off from Mooney by the posts, and slipped back after they had tried vainly to climb over them.
“He’s killed. He’ll be drowned. Ah, he’s sunk for good,” the boys wailed and cried in chorus.
Young Tommy from his post half-way up the ladder, saw that before the boat could reach his rival, or the boys could get around the piles to him, he would be drowned, and so he ran up the rest of the ladder, poised for just a second, and then took the second and last jump that was ever taken from Corey’s slip. He cleared the posts by an inch or two, turned in the water before he had gone half-way into it, and dived to where he saw the white body settling towards the bottom.
The sailors in the rowboat reached him in time to pull him out and carry him to the yacht with the bruised and unconscious body of his rival in his arms. Then the gentlemen sent Mooney over to the hospital, and wanted to make up a purse for Tommy, but he said it was “all right” and “hadn’t done nothin’ anyhow.” It took several weeks for Mooney’s leg and arm to knit, and he limped for months afterward.
The gentlemen on the yacht wanted to compromise by giving Tommy a medal, but he said he’d had enough trouble over the last medal, and asked why they did not give it to Mooney, for he had taken the jump in cold blood; “an’ I,” said Tommy, “just did it because I was in a hurry to get down.”
So Van Bibber and the other yachtsmen gave Mooney a very fine medal, which told that he was the “Champion Diver of the East River.” And now there are two leaders to the gang, though each protests that the other is the only one.