"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
IT came to my knowledge, one bracing day in October, that "Steeple Bob" had agreed to "do" that famous Brooklyn Church of the Pilgrims, with its queer, crooked spire and big brass ball, a landmark from the river on Columbia Heights.
"It's one of those easy jobs that are the hardest," said Merrill. "If you want to see us use the stirrups come over."
That was exactly what I did want to see, this puzzling stirrup process which allows a man to lift himself by his boot-straps, as it were, up the last and narrowest and most dangerous length of a steeple; so I agreed to be there.
"If you like, you can go up on the swing yourself!" said Merrill, with the air of conferring a favor. I expressed my thanks as I would to a lion-tamer offering me the hospitality of his cages, then asked how he meant that easy jobs are the hardest.
"Why, easy jobs make a man careless, and that gets him into trouble. Another thing, little old churches look easy, but they're apt to be treacherous. Now, this steeple on the Church of the Pilgrims is built of wood, with loose shingles on it, and a tumble-down iron lightning-rod, and rickety beams, and shaky ladders, and – well, you feel all the time as if you were walking on eggs. It's just the kind of a steeple that killed young Romaine about a month ago."
Of course I asked for the story of young Romaine, and was told of certain climbers who advertise their skill by using a steeple-top for acrobatic feats that have nothing to do with repairing. Upon such Merrill frowned severely.
"Romaine was a fine athlete," said he, "and a fearless man, but he went too far. He would stretch out on his stomach across the top of a steeple, and balance there without touching hands or knees, and he'd do all sorts of circus tricks on lightning-rods and weather-vanes and flagpoles – anything for notoriety. I told him he'd get killed sure some day, but he laughed at me. Well, it wasn't a week after I warned him when he was killed. He climbed an old lightning-rod without testing it (it was on a little church up at Cold Spring, New York), and just as he was reaching the steeple-top, with a whole town watching him, the end of the rod pulled out, and he swung off with it, ripping out every dowel, like the buttons off a coat, right down to the ground – smash. Poor fellow, when I read the news I left my job at Trinity and took the first train up to bury him."
This sad story lingered in my mind that night, and was there still the next afternoon as I drew near the Church of the Pilgrims to witness the first day's climbing. Already, at a distance, I knew that the men were at work from the upbent heads of people on the street who stared and pointed. And presently I made out two white figures on the steeple, one swinging about fifteen feet below the ball, the other standing against the shingled side without any support that I could see. Up the old tower (inside) I made my way, and two ladders beyond the "bell-deck" came upon Walter Tyghe, "Steeple Bob's" assistant, astride of a stone saddle on one of the four peaks where the tower ends and the steeple begins. There was a clear drop of a hundred feet all around him. He was "tending" the two men aloft, as witnessed a couple of ropes dangling by him. It was two jerks to come down and one to go up. Were he to lose his balance and let go the hauling-rope, the men on the swing would instantly be killed, as they had no "lock-blocks" on.
"Come out here," said Walter, "there's plenty of room," and, thus encouraged, I straddled the peak, and we sat face to face, as two men might sit on a child's rocking-horse, while the tower pigeons circled beneath us, alarmed at this intrusion. Far down on the sidewalk were little faces of distorted people; far up at the steeple-top were legs kicking at ropes. And off over red housetops was the river, and the great towers of New York spread with silver plumes by the steam jets.
"Now you can see the stirrups working," said Walter, and, looking up, I saw a figure swing back from the steeple, an arm shoot out, and a length of rope go wriggling around the shaft, cast like a lasso. Then the rope was drawn into a noose, and the noose hauled tight. The legs kicked, the figure hitched itself up about a foot, and again the rope was cast (another rope), and a second noose still higher made secure. That is all there is to it. The steeple-climber stands in a stirrup held by one noose while he lassoes the shaft above him with another noose, supporting another stirrup on which he presently stands. And so, foot by foot, the climber rises, shifting noose and stirrup at each change, resting now on one, now on the other, and finally reaching the cross, or ball, or weather-vane at the very top.
"That's Joe Lawlor chuckin' the rope," explained Walter; "Merrill, he's on the swing. Say, Lawlor's a wonder at rigging. He can do anything with ropes. He's the feller that climbs up the front of a house with suckers on his feet."
Of this fact I took note, and then inquired if I couldn't get up further inside the steeple, so as to be nearer the men. Walter said I could climb ladders up to where they had punched a hole through for the rope to hold the block and falls, and I tried it. Alas! when I got there, after breathing dust and squeezing between beams, I found that I could see nothing. I was almost at the steeple-top, and could hear Merrill, through the wooden shell, humming a tune as he worked, but I was further away than before.
"Hello in there!" came a voice. "Don't monkey with that line." And it came to me that this rope, reaching down by me from yonder little hole (the one knocked through), held the block which held the swing which held the man. And an accident to this rope would mean instant death. I touched it, and drew my hand away, as one might touch some animal through the cage bars, and I felt like saying, "Good little rope!"
It was coming on to dark now, and we all went home together, over the bridge and up the avenues, talking of steeples the while. And Lawlor explained the action of his suckers in climbing walls, which is precisely that of a boy's sucker in lifting a brick. The big climbing-leathers, well soaked in oil, are pressed alternately against the stones, the right leg resting on one while the left leg presses the other against the wall a step higher. And so you walk right up the building or church or flagpole, and the smoother the surface the easier you go up. In fact, if the surface is rough you cannot use the suckers at all, as the air gets under and prevents their holding.
Then the men spoke of various jobs aloft that called up memories. Merrill told of cleaning the fifteen-foot Diana statue on the Madison Square Garden tower. "It's hard getting over her," he said, "because she's so blamed smooth. I guess I took three quarts of rust out of her ball-bearings. You know she's a weather-vane, and turns with the wind." I wondered how many New-Yorkers who see the Diana every day of their lives have ever dwelt on the fact that she turns.
Talking of weather-vanes reminded my friends of a ticklish job they did on St. Paul's steeple, in New York, when Merrill, standing under the ball, held Lawlor on his giant shoulders so that Joe could lift off the weather-vane on top and ease the shaft where it had jammed. With Lawlor's weight and the weather-vane's weight, "Steeple Bob" held four hundred pounds on his shoulders during those important minutes, and, it might almost be said, stood on the dizzy edge of nothing while he did it.
Finally, Lawlor expressed the opinion that there isn't any meaner job in the business than a chimney.
"A chimney?" said I.
"That's what. I mean one o' them big ones you see on factories. We have to scrape 'em and paint 'em just like steeples, and that means climbing up the whole length inside. The climbing's easy enough on bolts and braces, but it's something fierce the air you breathe. Why, I've gone up a two-hundred-and-forty-foot chimney with a five-foot opening at the bottom, and found the soot so thick about half-way up – so thick, sir, that I've been almost stuck in it. Yes, sir, just had to shove my head into an eight-inch hole and bore through black stuff, beds of it. And mind, not a hole for air as