a police officer was after me, ordering me down. I went right ahead, pretending not to hear, and when I got to the bell-deck he was puffing along ten yards below me. I swung into my 'bosun's saddle' and began pulling myself up outside the steeple, and I guess the whole five thousand people around the church bent back their heads to watch me.
"As soon as I began to rise in the saddle I knew I was all right, for I coiled up the hauling-line on my arm so the officer couldn't follow me. All he could do was stand on the bell-deck and gape after me like the rest and growl.
"When I reached the block I bored a six-inch hole into her at a downward slant, and in this I put some crumbs of dynamite,—not much, only about half a teaspoonful,—and then I stuck in the fuse and tamped her solid with sand. Then I lit the other end, dropped it down inside the steeple, and slid down the rope as fast as I could, yelling to the officer that I'd touched her off. You ought to have seen him get out of that steeple! He never waited to arrest me or anything; he had pressing business on the ground!
"By the time I got down you could see a little trail of bluish smoke drifting away from the hole, and there was a hush over the crowd, except for the police trying to make them stand back behind the ropes. I don't know as I ever saw a bigger crowd; the street was jammed for blocks either way. Well, sir, that was a queer acting fuse. It smoked and smoked for about ten minutes, and then the smoke stopped. The people began to laugh—they said it had gone out; and the contractor was nearly crazy: he was sure I had made another failure. I didn't know what to think; I just waited. We waited ten minutes, twelve minutes; it seemed like an hour, but nobody dared go up to see what the matter was. Then suddenly the explosion came—no louder than a pistol-crack, for dynamite isn't noisy, but it stirred me more than a cannon.
"'Start your engine!' I shouted, and the little dummy had just time to wind up half a turn of the hitch-line when the old steeple-top swayed and broke clean in two, right where the block was, and the whole upper length fell like one piece, fell to the east just as we had planned it, and landed in the trench, every stone of it; there wasn't a piece as big as your fingernail, sir, outside that trench. And while she was falling I don't know how many kodaks were snapped in the hope of getting a picture; men and women with cameras had been waiting for hours on the roofs of high buildings, and two or three of them actually caught a picture of the steeple-top as it hung in the air for a fraction of a second at right angles to the base."
PICTURE OF THE FALLING STEEPLE, PHOTOGRAPHED JUST AFTER THE DYNAMITE EXPLODED. THE FALLING SECTION WAS 35 FEET IN LENGTH AND WEIGHED 35 TONS.
III.
The Greatest Danger to a Steeple-Climber Lies in Being Startled
It appears that professional steeple-climbers are quiet-mannered men, with a certain gentleness of voice (like deaf people) that impresses one far more than any strident boasting. This habit of silence they form from being silent so much aloft. And when they do speak it is in a low tone, because that is the least startling to a man as he swings over some reeling gulf. Next to an actual disaster (which usually kills outright and painlessly) what a steeple-climber most dreads is being startled. This was explained to me in one of our many talks by "Steeple Bob," famous over the land for daring feats, but never reckless ones. How plainly I call up his pale, serious face and the massive shoulders, somewhat bent, and the forearm with muscles to impress a prize-fighter! Pleasant to note that Merrill uses excellent English.
"Did you ever have an impulse to jump off a steeple?" I questioned, recalling the sensations of many people in looking down even from a housetop.
"I've kept pretty free from that," said he; "but there's no doubt climbing steeples does tell on a man's nerves. Now, there was Dan O'Brien; he had an impulse to jump off a steeple one day, and a strong impulse, too. He went mad on one of the tallest spires in Cincinnati; right at the top of it."
"Went mad?"
"Yes, sir, raving mad, and I was by him when it happened. I forget whether the church was Baptist or Presbyterian, but I know it stood on Sixth Street, near Vine, and there was a big hand on top of the steeple, with the forefinger pointing to heaven. We were putting fresh gilding on this hand. I was working on the thumb side and O'Brien on the little-finger side, both of us standing on tiny stagings about the size of a chair-seat, and both of us made fast to the steeple by life-lines under our arms. That's an absolute rule in climbing steeples—never to do the smallest thing unless you're secured by a life-line. It was coming on dark, and I was hurrying to get the gold leaf on, because we'd given the hand a fresh coat of sizing that would be dry before morning. We hadn't spoken for some time, when suddenly I heard a laugh from O'Brien's side that sent a shiver down my spine. Did you ever hear a crazy man laugh? Well, if ever you do, you'll remember it. I looked at him and saw by his face that something was wrong.
"'What are you doing?' said I.
"He answered very polite and steady like, but his tone was queer: 'I'm trying to figure out how long it would take a man to get down if he went the fastest way.'
"I thought I had better keep him in a good humor, so I said: 'I'll tell you what, Dan, you brace up and get this gold on, and then we'll race to the ground in our saddles.'
"'That's a fair idea,' said he in a shrill voice, 'but I've got a better one. We'll race down without any saddles; yes, sir, without any lines, without a blamed thing.'
"'Don't be a fool, Dan. What you want to do is to get that gold on—quick.' I tried to speak sharp.
"'No, sir; I'm going to jump, and so are you.'
"I caught his eye just then and saw it wasn't any time to bother about gold leaf. I reached up and eased the hitch of my line around the hand so I could swing toward him. I knew if I once got my grip on him he wouldn't make any more trouble. But I'd never had a crazy man to deal with, and I didn't realize how tricky and quick they are. While I was working around to his side and thinking he didn't notice it, he was laying for me out of the corner of his eye, and the first thing I knew he had me by the throat and everything was turning black. I let go of the line and dropped back on my saddle-board helpless, and if it hadn't been for blind luck I guess the people down below would have got their money's worth in about a minute. But my hand struck on the tool-box as he pressed me back, and I had just strength enough left to shut my fingers on the first tool I touched and strike at him with it. The tool happened to be a monkey-wrench, and when a man gets a clip on the head with a thing like that he's pretty apt to keep still for a while. And that's what O'Brien did. He keeled over and lay there, and I did, too, until my head got steady. Even then I guess we'd both have fallen if it hadn't been for the life-lines.
"The rest was simple enough after I got my senses back. Dan was unconscious, and all I had to do was fasten a rope to him and lower away. They took care of him down below until the ambulance came, and he spent that night in a hospital. And he's spent most of his years since then in an asylum, his mind all gone except for short periods, when he comes to himself again, and then he always starts out to put an end to me. That last impulse to destroy me has never left him."
It was after this that I learned about that other danger to steeple-climbers, of being startled. Merrill says that men of his craft, whether they realize it or not, work under constant nervous strain. However calm a steeple-climber may think himself, his body is always afraid, his muscles are always tense, his clutch on ropes and stones is always harder, two or three times harder, than the need is; his knees hug what comes between them so tightly that it hurts, even when they might safely be relaxed. That is the trouble, a steeple-climber cannot relax his body or control its instinctive shrinking. It is not looking down into the gulf around him that he minds (the climber who cannot do that with indifference is unfit for the business); what he sees he can cope with; it is what he cannot see that does the mischief—what he fears vaguely. And a sudden noise, an unexpected movement may