POLAK JOE’S FINISH.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2580, 14 August 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

POLAK JOE’S FINISH.

(By Ja-ek Fletcher Cobb.)

It .was early morning and still dark ivlien Polak Job arrived at the founIrv, a long, dirty brick and steel building that squatted close to the canal bank. Silent, gloomy,, it loomed up in the darkness, the very echoes of its (u’iek walls hushed by the knowledge that men slaved; cursed, and died within from the awful heat and gases coming from its moulds. Joe made his way through the foundry, by instinct avoiding the open noulds and circling the pits and fircioles—silent traps of death in the darkless. The hot, acrid gases from the learning ovens made him cough, Ins ireath came in short gasps, and a harp pain gripped at his chest. He ursed and snarled at this evidence that ill the ventilators were closed. Ho tailed alongside one of the heavy steel olumns that' supported the roof, teaching up, lie grasped a chain that hn up out of sight into the darkness. Ie jerked it savagely ; there was the bund of moving- rusty squeaking hinge jints, a rattle of sheet iron, a glimpse jf the open sky that was quickly shut ff by the cloud of dust and smoke that fished through the ventilator. He pened several vents;/then made his ay to the cupolas—huge, pipe-l’.ke ibes of steel, lined with, fire-brick, .run-, big up through the roof in the centre : the foundry. He took out a m.ner s ial-oil lamp from a corner. It blaz--1 up at the touch of a match, giving it a heavy, rank odor, the fitful reel aze lighting up the repulsive face of ie man.

At the first glance this heavy-bodied llow seemed shorter than lie really as, the deception helped by the enor■oUS'breadth of his building shoulders, om which dangled long, thick, apese arms. His head was small and peiliarly shaped. From the. shoulders ; the top, neck and head presented one it, straight line. From the base of e skull the head slanted up to the oad, deep forehead, which, in turn, >ped down to the wicked and monkeyce little brown eyes, separated by a ng, flat nose. The widely distended istrils almost touched the thick-lipped ,d misshapen mouth. The hair on :is curiously shaped head grew raight out, thick, uucombable. His et were large and flat, the short legs ick and heavy to support the enorous body. When he moved he walk- ; with a swinging, sidewise motion, riling half around as he lifted each ot forward.

Smoking torch in hand, Polak Joe imbed the ladder t-o the cupola charg-g-floor. This was a square, lowiled, box-like room, covered on two les with heavy sheet iron. Another le was pierced by a number of wirtws set in the brick wall, their glasses frames staring out upon the piles pig-iron in the yard below. Oppo;e this Avail were the cupolas. The arging-doors were open, and the torl gases from the previous day’s heat me pouring out of the doors and fill--5 the cliarging-room with sulphurous mes. Coming up the ladder directly front of one of the cupolas, Joe reived the full’ force of the gas. He sped and choked, a sharp and tighting pain gripped his heart, his httle 3S bulged, his long, ape-like arms :ust out spasmodically as he pitched ward unconsciously, his face rasped the metal floor.

The current of cool air sucked from > lower half of the windows blew vmvards and revived him. He rollover on his back, a feeling of faint, i,dly sickness at the pit of liis stoch. Dimly through his numbed in he recalled the words of the foundoctor who had warned him of the es: “Joe, some day the gas is going get you, and then—good-bye!” Good-bye?” yes; that’s what the tor said. Did he mean that the gas dd kill ? Well, what if it did ? He n’t care.

oe got to his hands and knees, and ,vled over to a corner. Thrusting hand hack of a row of empty scrapes, he drew forth a dust-covered --bottle, half-filled with • villainous sky. He tilted the bottle to his idy lips,' mashed by the fall, and half the fiery whisky run down his tat. The alcohol bit into the open fids of his lips, but the pain didn’t n to bother him. The stimulant led a flush to mount his face, and ight a glowing brightness to the ted little eyes. ivo hours later, when Welch, the >la tender, arrived at the foundry, heavy iron doors were up, the sand om was tamped into place, and ,k Joe, stripped to the waist, the piration rolling from his hairy t, was heaving huge forkfuls of into the cupola. filch was a hot-headed Irishman se one eye gleamed balefully. He a short and irascible temper. He id at the big, knotty muscles that id and rippled on Joe’s shoulders arms' as he worked. Welch was an dally strong man himself, but, getIthe worst of repeated trials of (gth, had developed and nursed a igeful jealousy- against Joe, and r failed to take advantage of an rtunity to torment or abuse him. jof his pet diversions was to-' come jy . up behind and look steadily at back of Joe’s head. This never I to work Polak into such a frenzy fie would crouch, animal-like, and r and snarl at his tormentor. That i his superior strength he could j easily have bested Welch in a ;,he knew, but the idea of attackjirtb'never entered his mind. He -nothing about fighting with fists, ilch - gave vent to his , vicious huSlow. ,Coming up the ladder quiet- | stod half through the trapdoor, tnds resting on, the edge, and star-

ed steadily at the perspiring back. A minute passed. Joe became nervous, and missing the cupola struck the edge with his fork, spilling the coke. Instinctively he felt the glare of the one eye behind him. His nerves ran riot, liis muscles stiffened; as if against his. will he dropped the fork and whirled about, crouching. Welch laughed and dodged down through the trap. As his head disappeared through the opening Joe’s manner changed. He picked U p the fork, and with a swift, noiseless, catlike spring stood over the ladder, the steel-tined fork raised aloft like a spear.

Barely in time he checked his impulse. Fright, then wonderment, showed in his eyes. Slowly he lowered the fork, and pressed his right hand upon his breast, where he could feel lbs heart pounding hammer-like under the perspiring flesli. He shuffled over to a window, and, leaning out/drew great lungfuls of air into his aching chest. Scon the pain left him, and —as if the relief were a signal-—up through the trap-door came the coarse, brutal voice of Welch in. a stream of foul abuse and profanity.He damned the Polak to hurry with liis work.- Joe forgot his pain and answered back in kind, sputtering out the curses with spasmodic jerks of his lips. Welch was the first to stop, silenced by the cold deadliness of the ' blasphemy that i>oured in a steady stream from above. He shivered'and went about liis work, awed; Joe had never answered him like that before.

The -men avoided each other that morning. Joe had recourse several times to the bottle, going across once to Sweeney’s to have it refilled. His drinking didn’t interfere . with his work, beyond causing him to hurl the pigs of iron into the flame-clioked furnace With animal ferocity, as lie thought of Welch. At five minutes to eleven o’clock an accident to the blower shut off the wind from the cupola, and quiet reigned in the smoke-filled foundry. The slim, long-armed steel cranes stood silent sentinels bver the pits. The moulders gathered about the cupola in little groups to talk, crack jokes, and gibe one andtlier. Polak Joe, leaning out of a K window between the two cupolas, could hear and see all that passed below. Directly under him were several of the foundry foremen and Welch. Their talk gradually drifted from the commonplace to an argument that centred between. Welch and one of the foremen.

“I tell you,’’ said the cupola tender, ‘•'that every man has the same chance t-o succeed. It makes no difference what kind of a start he has; he can get up if he wants to.” The young foreman answered slowly and thoughtfully: “No; you’re wrong. Right here, for instance, is a case — Polak Joe. Do you meqn to tell me that he has the same chance, or ever has had the chance, that any one of us here has?”

“Hell!” snarled Welch. “He’s no man. He’s nothing but a damned animal.”

“No, Welch,” said the foreman. “Joe’s all right. He’ll do whatever he’s taught. But, boys,” the foreman continued sadly, “poor Joe was made wrong .in the first place, and you and I cannot rectify the fault.” As the foreman finished speaking there came a short puff of wind from the cupola towers, followed quickly by a throbbing roar as the full force of the blast went on again..

Joe slipped back from the opening, unseen. Standing in front of the furnace, he repeated to himself over and over, “Nothing but an animal.” His glance travelled from his misshapen feet to the long, dangling arms. He noticed for the first time his enormous, claw-like'hands. He slowly shook his queer head from side t-o side. Then his ears caught the sound of some one coming up the ladder, and a moment later, when the young foreman stood in the charging-room, Joe was stolidly throwing the limestone flux into the furnace.

, “Well, Joe,” he called cheerily, “how goes it?’ ’ Joe’s little eyes softened and gleamed as he turned and patted the foreman’s shoulder /with, his huge and hairy hand. “My frien’; my frien’l” he mumbled, and showed his big, ferocious white teeth in a smile of gentle gratitude. The foreman’s keeii eyes noted Joe’s pale face and bloody lips as he sniffed the gas-laden air. His quick glance measured the ceiling and its rafters. “Joe,” he said, “I’ll put a couple of fans in here in a few days, and meantime you he careful of the gas.”

As the foreman went down the ladder, Joe watched him and softly repeated, “My frien’!” Yet even bus friend believed him different from other men. It was after three o’clock when Joe ifiade his way from the foundry across to Sweeney’s. Sweeney’s saloon was the centre of a row of box-like houses built by a lumberman to rent to the foundry workers. A short bar ran across one side of the front room, behind which Sweeney, a short, thicknecked, bullet-headed man, working in his shirt-sleeves, handed out huge schooners of beer to the-thirsty ironworkers, or slid along the bar a bottle of his villainous whisky. Polak Joe came in and lounged against the bar, a sullen, brutal, repulsive creature. Unconsciously the other men drew away from him. He motioned to Sweeney, who shoved out the whisky bottle. Joe took two drinks and followed them with a big schooner 'of beer. Then he lounged back against the wall, his little Ap-e-like eyes'following each man as he came in, drank, and went out again. None spoke to him or invited him to this he mentally noticed in his new analysis of himself. Hd had several more drinks before Welch came in. , v ! '•

The cupola tender stooped as he came through the door. ! His huge six feet of muscle and bone filled the room, and his voice was harsh and rasping as lie banged his dinner bucket on to the •bar and demanded a drink. Sweeney glanced at him from under bis eyebrow s then quietly slipped a short piece of lead pipe up his sleeve before serving the drink. As Welch tossed off the whisky, his eye caught sight of Polak Joe’s reflection in the dirty mirror back of the bar. He set his glass back on the bar and turned slowly around and Jo-olced at Joe. , For a moment they glared at each other, then slowly Welch shifted his glance, descending over the misshapen face past the throat, until his eye rested oil the hairy chest exposed by Joe’s open shirt. A sneering grin played about his mouth, which presently flew open in a scornful laugh. As, Welch shifted liis look to liis chest, Joe became uneasy, nervous; a flush crept slowly over liis face; his hands twitched. Then, as Welch laughed, the demons of hell seemed to bo Jet loose in his brain- Snarling, he crouched and sprang for his., tormentor. Quick as he was, Welch was quicker. He sidestepped. His clenched first travelled up from his hip in a .sweeping and! well-timed blow; liis shoulders hunched forward, the whole weight and force of hie body landing fairly on Joe’s chin. The Polak’s body seemed to pause in ti*e air for the fraction of a second, then crumpled on to the floor, a small trickle of blood oozing out of his mouth and staining the sawdust. W T elch looked at the fallen man, curled liis lips in a sneer, turned to the bar, tossed off another drink, and walked out. -

Sweeney dragged the unconscious man out-of-doors, propped him against the side of the house and left him. It was veil on into the night when Polak Joe came to his senses, an awful pain in his head. Staggering into tils saloon, he drank several glasses of whisky. As he raised the last glass to his lips he caught sight of his swollen and bruised features reflected in the bar mirror. At the recollection of Welch’s blow his face was distorted, the whisky glass was crushed in his hand, he flung himself out into the night, a raging madman with murder in his heart. All through the night he walked and cursed. Near morning lie came back and stood on the canal bridge near the foundry. As bo stood loaning over and looking at the reflected points of light from the stars in the sluggish, flowing waters of tho canal, a thought came to him that grew, enlarged, and brought with it peace to his raging soul. He went at once into the foundry yard, and, searching among the pilep of pig-iron, after some time found what he wanted. When Joe deposited his find on the floor in the cupola charging-room the flaring miner’s torch held in liis hand showed a large pig ol : iron heavily coated with rust. He looked about him, then selecting a corner, carefully concealed it under a pile of scrap. Several times that morning when sure he was unobserved Joe uncovered the pig-iron and patting it, crooned to it -lovingly as a mother to her babe. Contrary to bis usual custom, he drank nothing that morning. It was a hot, close day, the air ‘hanging heavy and sultry in the foundry. At ten o’clock the middle pit gang shoved the huge truck ladle under the cupola spout. The middle pit was casting thirty-inch jiipe, and this necessitated the use of a fifteen-ton ladle, taking two taps from the cupola to fill it. As Welch tapped the second time the stream How-ed fair, then stopped. Angrily he sent tho needle-pointed steel bar into the breast hole, giving it a furious twist. This cleared the hole, and allowed the stream to flow: but in his anger and haste he had torn part of the breast out, and this necessitated trimming before the tap-hole would hold the° stopping-plug. Welch passed his hand over his sweaty forehead, cursed his luck, picked up a short, chisel-pointed bar of iron and stepped up on a box at one side of r the taphole. This raised him over the spout, his back to the ladle of molten iron. The steel cupola formed a wall in front of him. If anything should happen to tho ladle he would be caught like ar animal in a trap.

As Welch stepped up on the box there came ono of those unaccountable moments in the foundry when, as if at a given signal, all the machinery and noise stilled and was quiet.

A harsh, demoniac laugh caused Welch to look up. His face went deadly white. The sweat froze and dried on his scorched skin. Head thrown back, the iron bar in his hands, ho posed, held fascinated by what he saw. Again the discordant, demoniac laugh rang through the foundry, penetratingthe stillness like a trumpet-call. Men whirled in the direction of the cupola, and stood transfixed at what they saw. In the window between the cupolas stood Polak Joe, his long ape-like arms and hairy claws,swinging the rusty pig of iron' above Welch and the ladle of molten iron l . As the full sense of- what he intended to do came to them men groaned; others cursed under thtm breath. The more timid among them sought the shelter of the cranes and flasks, peering oiit from behind therii at the impending tragedy." Well they knew that once that rusty pig of iron was hurled into, the ladle of liquid metal it would blow the molten iron into the air, with the force of dynamite. Away down at the canal end of the foundry the huge wheels of- the inud-mixer rumbled and swished softly., making the second, coat for the loom cores.

“Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha !” rang the cackling laugh of Polak Joe again. “Ho! ho! Welch! 'How you like to- go to hell with damn ape—hey? Ha! ha! ha!” The laugh more than the words drove chill fear like a knife into the very heart of Welch. Now the stream of

iron was flowing slower. The ladle was nearly full. Along the f edge of the stream appeared a dark, molasses-co-lored streak: tho slag was flowing through the tap-hole. This caught Polak Joe’s eye. He straightened himself, swinging the pig of iron above his head to the limit of his arms; his little eyes blazed with the lust of murder; a wolfish snarl burst from his swollen lips. Men caught their breaths; Welch seemed to shrink within himself. A moment’s pause; then tho young foreman, running toward the cupola, cried: “Don’t do it, Joe!”

The fierce light died in Polak Joe’s eyes; lie twisted half around in the direction of the voice;' a sharp pain plucked at his heart; his feet, slipped; ho lost his balance, dropping-the pig of iron. It turned over once and struck Welch on the head, end on, crushing liis skull with a sound like the crinkling of stiff paper squeezed in the hand.

Polak Joe fell forward and plunged into the lacllo of molten iron feet first; a scream burst from his throat. Then followed a puff of dark smoko and an odor of "burning flesh, turning men sick. . . a pair of heavy shoes burned and sizzled on top of the molten iron, throwing out bright, flashy spurts of flame. Polak Joe had finished.