Careers of Danger and Daring

HOW THEY BLEW OFF THE TOP OF A STEEPLE WITH DYNAMITE

KNOWN over all Connecticut was the Congregational Church in Hartford, that stood for years on Pearl Street, and was famous alike for the burning words spoken beneath its roof, and the tall, straight spire that reached above it; two hundred and thirty-eight feet measured the drop from cross to pavement. But churches pass like other things, and near the century-end came the decision by landowners and lease interpreters that this graceful length of brownstone and the pile beneath it must move off the premises, which meant, of course, that the steeple must come down, the time appointed for this demolition being August, 1899.

Now, the taking down of a steeple two hundred and thirty-eight feet high, that rises on a closely built city street, is not so simple a proceeding as might at first appear. If you suggest pulling the steeple over, all the neighbors cry out. They wish to know where it is going to strike. Are you sure it won't smash down on their housetops? Can you make a steeple fall this way or that way, as woodmen make trees fall? How do you know you can? Besides, how are you going to hitch fast the rope that will pull it over? And who will climb with such a rope to the steeple-top? It must be said that there is usually some young man at hand, some dare-devil character of the vicinity, who is ready to try the thing and is positive he can succeed at it. But, luckily, he seldom gets a chance to try.

"It's queer," said Merrill, telling me the story, "how people ever built a steeple like this one without a window in it, or an air-passage, or anything for ventilation. Between the bell-deck and the cross there wasn't a single opening from the inside out, so I had to break my way through up near the top. What a place for a man to work, squeezed in the point of a stifling funnel, with no swing for his hammer, and no air to breathe, and the scorch of an August sun! After fifteen minutes of it, my wrists and temples would be pounding so I'd have to come down and rest.

"Of course the purpose of this hole that I knocked through the steeple-top was to make fast ropes and pulleys, so my partner and I could hoist ourselves along the outside, and not have to climb up the inside cross-beams, which, I can tell you, is a lively bit of athletics. Well, we got our ropes fixed all right, about twenty-five feet below the top, and the 'bosun's saddle' swung below for us to travel up and down in, and then we made fast another set of ropes and pulleys about fifteen feet higher up; this was for hoisting timber and stuff that we needed."

"How did you get up that fifteen feet?" I inquired.

"Worked up on the stirrups – that is, two nooses around the steeple, each ending in a loop, one for the right foot, one for the left. You stand in the right stirrup and work the left loop up, then you stand in the left stirrup and work the right loop up. Sometimes in hard places you have to throw your nooses around the shaft as a cowboy casts a rope. Come down some day and watch us work; you'll see the whole thing."

To this invitation I gave glad acceptance; I certainly wished to see this stirrup-climbing process.

"The next thing," continued Merrill, "was to make another hole in the steeple through a keystone a little below our first hole. In this hole we set a block of Norway pine resting on an iron jack. The block was about a foot square and twenty-two inches high, a big tough piece, you see, and by screwing up the jack we could make that part as solid as the keystone was. We made this hole on the east side of the steeple, which was the side we wanted her to fall on, the only side she could fall on without injuring something; and we had it figured out so close that we dug a trench on that side straight out from the steeple's base, ten feet wide and four feet deep, and told people we intended to have the whole top of that steeple, say a length of thirty-five feet and a weight of thirty-five tons, come off at one time and land right square in that trench and nowhere else. That's what we intended to do.

"Now began the hoisting of materials; first a lot of half-inch wire cable, enough for four turns around the steeple, then eight sixteen-foot timbers, two inches thick and a foot wide, then a lot of maple wedges. We bandaged the steeple with the cable and drew it tight with tackle. Then we lowered the timbers lengthwise inside the cable, which we could do because the steeple was an octagon with ornamented corners, and these left spaces where the wire rope was stretched around. Then we wedged fast the eight timbers so that they formed a sixteen-foot half-collar on the west side of the steeple just opposite our hole where the jack was. In other words, we had the steeple shored in so that when we let her go no loose stones could fall on the west side; everything must fall to the east.

"Last of all, we widened our hole on the east side, stripping away stones until that whole side lay open in a half-circular mouth about four feet high. And in this mouth were two teeth, one might say, that held the stone jaws apart, the iron jack biting into the block of Norway pine. On those two now came the steeple's weight, or, anyhow, one half of it. To knock out one of these teeth would be to leave the east side of the steeple unsupported, with the result that it must topple over in that direction and fall to the ground. Anyway, that was our reasoning, and it seemed sound enough; the only question was how we were going to knock out that block of Norway pine.

"Well the day of the test came, and I guess five thousand people were there to see what would happen. Everybody was discussing it, and farmers had driven in for miles just as they do for a hanging. You understand I was under the orders of the contractor, and he had his own plan about getting the block out. He proposed to hitch a rope to it, drop this rope to a donkey-engine in the yard, and set the engine winding up the rope. He said the block would have to come out then and the steeple fall. I agreed that the block might come out, but was afraid it would tip up through the strain coming at an angle, and throw the steeple over to the west, just the way we didn't want it to go. And if that steeple ever fell to the west, there was no telling how many people it would kill in the crowd, without counting damage to houses.

"However, the contractor was boss, and he stuck to it his way was right, so we hitched the engine to the block and set her going. She puffed and tugged a little, and then snapped the rope. We got another rope, and she broke that too. Then we got a stronger rope, and the engine just kicked herself around the yard and had lots of fun, but the block never budged. All that morning we tried one scheme after another to make that engine pull the block out, but we might as well have hitched a rope to the church; the steeple's weight was too much for us. And all the time the crowd was getting bigger and bigger, until the police could hardly manage it.

"Finally the contractor, being very mad and quite anxious, said he'd be hanged if he could get the block out, and for me to try my scheme, and do it quick, for some men were going about saying the thing was dangerous and ought to be stopped. He didn't have to speak twice before I was on my way up that steeple carrying an inch auger, a fifty-foot fuse, and a stick of dynamite – I'd had them ready for hours. It's queer how people get wind of a thing; the crowd seemed to know in a minute that I was going to use dynamite, and before I was twenty feet up the ladder 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."

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 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?"

There was something quite touching, I thought, in the humble frankness of this big-shouldered man. Yes, he had been afraid, he whose business it was to fear nothing, afraid of some squeaking copper, and his face seemed to say that there are things about steeples not so easily explained, things not even to be talked about. And abruptly, as by an effort, he left this part of the subject and told a funny story of his adventures coming home late one night without a key, and getting in by way of the roof and an iron pipe; a simple enough climb had he not been taken for a "purglaire" by an irate German lodger, who appeared in nightgown and phlegmatic fright, and vowed he would "haf him a revolfer, a skelf-skooter, in the morning."

This effort at diversion turned Merrill into gaiety for a moment, but straightway memory brought back the somber theme.

"I'll give you another case," said he, changing again abruptly, "where I wasn't frightened, but should have been. It was out in Chicago, and two of us were on a staging hung down the front of a clothing factory. We were painting the walls. My partner had made his end of the staging fast, and I had made mine fast. Perhaps if I'd been longer in the business I would have taken more notice how he secured his rope, for it meant safety to me as well as him, and I knew he'd been drinking, but I supposed it was all right. Well, it wasn't all right; his rope held for three or four hours, and then, at just about eleven o'clock, it slipped, and the staging fell from under us. We were six stories up, and right below were the sidewalk flagstones. That's the time I ought to have been frightened, but I only said to myself, 'Hello! this thing's going down,' and caught the window-ledge in front of me. Then I hung there, wondering if I could pull myself up or if any one would come to help me. I called out not very loud, and I wasn't excited. Pretty soon I saw I couldn't pull myself up, for I had a poor hold with my fingers, and the ledge was smooth stone. Then I saw they'd have to hurry if they were going to pull me in. Then I didn't care. I – I – "

"You fell?"

He nodded.

"What, six stories down?"

He nodded again. "The thing that saved me was an awning over the sidewalk. Some man across the way saw me hanging from the window, and he ran over quickly and let the awning down. I'd like to shake that man by the hand, but I never knew who he was. When I came to myself I was at the hospital done up in plaster, and I stayed there nine months."

"Badly hurt?" I asked, shrinking.

Merrill smiled. "It didn't do me any particular good. I'm a big, strong fellow now, but I wasn't much after that fall. Both my legs were broken. Both my arms were broken. My right shoulder and right wrist were dislocated, and – let's see. Oh, yes, I had three ribs torn away from the breast-bone."

"And your – "

"My partner? Poor lad! You wouldn't care to hear how they found him. They laid him away kindly the next day."

He smiled in a sort of appealing way, and then came the worn, wistful look I had noticed, and his forehead lines deepened. I fancy all men who follow steeple-climbing get those strained, anxious eyes.

IV

EXPERIENCE OF AN AMATEUR CLIMBING TO A STEEPLE-TOP