Cleveland Moffett - Careers of Danger and Daring

"'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."

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 throw him into all but panic. So the veteran climber, swinging at the steeple-top opposite his partner, is careful to say in a low tone, "I'm going to lower my saddle," before he does lower it; or, "I'm going to strike a match," before he strikes it.

Sometimes a new helper at the hauling-line down on the bell-deck will shift his place from weariness or thoughtlessness, and let the line move up an inch or two, which drops the saddle an inch or two far aloft – drops it suddenly with a jerk. It's a little thing, yet the climber's heart would not pound harder were the whole steeple falling. Merrill told me that one of his greatest frights came from the simple brushing against his legs of a rope pulled without a word by a careless partner. To Merrill's nerves, all a-quiver, this was not a rope, but some nameless catastrophe to overwhelm him. He knew only that something had moved where nothing had any business to move, that something had touched him where nothing was. A steeple-climber is like a child in the dark – in terror of the unknown. In all the world, perhaps, there is no one so utterly alone as he, swinging hour after hour on his steeple-top. The aëronaut has with him a living, surging creature – his balloon; the diver feels always the teeming life of the waters; but this man, lifted into still air, poised on a point where nothing comes or goes, where nothing moves, where nothing makes a sound – he, in very truth, is alone.

"It's always the little things that frighten you," reflected Merrill, "not the big things. I'll give you an instance. When I went up inside St. Paul's steeple the first time (I wanted to inspect the beams, and see how the dowel was anchored) I got into a tight place that might well frighten a man. I got squeezed fast between timbers that fill nearly all the slender top space, and couldn't get up or down, but just hung there, breathing air full of dust and calling for help. I called three quarters of an hour before any one came, and then it was only by accident. But I wasn't frightened. On the other hand, a day or two later, when I was making fast a rope outside (I was just under the ball that holds the weather-vane) I got a bad start from nothing at all. I had my arms around the spindle of the steeple, making a hitch, and my head pressed against the copper sheathing, when I heard a most unearthly screech. I guess the shock of that thing did me five hundred dollars' worth of harm – shortened my life days enough to earn five hundred dollars in. And what do you think it was? The weather-vane had turned a little in the wind and creaked on its bearings, that's all. It doesn't seem as if that ought to scare a man, does it?"