The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-02-25
MERMAms oUTDONE
New York Correspondence Cincinnati
 Tir,ae e,+or

New York Correspondence Cincinnati
 Times-Star.
 The famous Hippodrome spectacle of l the mermaids rising from the sea was entirely eclipsed, though, unfortunately
 for only a limited audience of tug cap tains and watermen, when the man in
 charge of the compressed air apparatus
 in the new subway tunnel under the East
 river had momentary fit of absent
 mindedness. Had weather conditions been favorable, large number of small boys, usually to be observed in semi
 aquatic recreation along the waterside
 would have enthusiastically enjoyed a
 spectacle regarding them for weeks of
 loafng round to see something happen. As it was, with the thermometer down around zero and 50-mile gale shipping
 the wave tops off of Hellgates hurly burly only a weather hardened score or
 so saw two sand hogs" sensationally ap- pear in the outer world, very unexpect-
 edly removed from their burrowing be- meath the river bed.
 The pair, clad in the oilsl1ins in which they had been working, shot up without
 
 face, within 50 feet of a passing tug.
 They had ascended with such velocity through a hundred-foot depth of water. that they kept right on going when they | reached the surface, and rose, together, 30 feet in the air, before they flopped l back into the river. The tug captain was so startled that he blew all the signals in the East river code in rapid success sion, beginning with the usual and we'll
 known codihcation of coming ashore for drink and ending wit ha Improvisation of the moment calling for warships to re- pei submarines. The captains crew,
 however, promptly launched a dinghy and picked the struggluing workmen out of the icy water. One man was all but speechless. The other, of build and development to make Jess Willard look like a tennis player, was more indig- nant than astonished or hurt. What | happened?" he exclaimed in asnwer to inquiries by the tug crew. why that
 (colloquial term indicating mental and
 moral deficient, hopeless through time and eternity) turned loose all the air and pushed us through the goof"
 He then consented to wait to see an
 ambulance surgeon if he could have a
 booze and cigarette, meanwhile, and said that his companion would be all right in few minutes if given the same f1rst-aid treatment. In this he proved to be wrong
 A foreman of the tunnel workmen, who arrived to look after the sand hogs, hay ing come up the shaft on the river bank, explained the accident As the tunnel is pushed forward through the muck be- heath the river. a sufficiently high air pressure is maintained in the advance chamber to hold up the muck roof while workmen move section of the steel tun- nel tube into place. The air pressure is
 so severe that men can work in the ad
 vance chamber only few minutes at time. The pressure is controlled through valves behind which there is a tremen- dous reserve force The workman in charge of the valves had, in this instance, | by mistake loosed the entire force of | the compressed air, though his intention
 had been to turn it off.
 | The pressure was so intense that 1t sim ply blew the workmen in the chamber up
 through 20 feet of muck into the river 1 bed whence they rose through 100 feet of water, to the beated astonishment of the shipping world above.