Careers of Danger and Daring

Sure enough, although the blood was in my head, I could see over there Tom Potter's red shirt and the boy's blue one as they poised for the swing. Then Tom's body dropped back, and he swept the lad at full arm's length, through a half circle, and let him go head first, cutting the air, straight at me.

"Now," cried Harry, and I reached out as best I could, only to see the boy, a second later, floundering in the net below me. And they all were laughing. In trying to reach one way I had actually reached the other, and withdrawn my arms instead of extending them, which made me understand better than an hour of words that a man hanging head down at a height finds his muscles as hard to control as a penman writing with his left hand for the first time. He cannot even see straight until his eyes learn to gage distances and the relation of things presented upside down.

With some pains and an awkward clutching at the braces I got myself back into a sitting position, while Roy climbed again good-naturedly to his starting-cradle. A trapeze performer must have infinite patience.

Again we tried the trick, and this time, as I hung expectant, I felt my wrists clutched tight, and there was the agile leaper swinging back, pendulum fashion, from my arms, then forward, then back, while the bar strained under my knees.

"Now, throw him!" called Harry. "Stiffen out and chuck him back to Tom. Now!"

Alas! I made a bungle of it. I could not give him send enough, and the boy, falling short of Tom's arms, dangled from the "mechanic" lines half-way down to the net. It was quite plain that more than good intentions are needed to chuck young gentlemen through flights of eighteen feet. I was feeling decidedly queer by this time – a sort of half-way-over-the-Channel faintness, and could imagine what it must be to work up here, right at the peak of a "big-top" tent, under the scorch of an August sun, with the stifle of a great audience coming up from below. I expressed a readiness to descend.

"Try a drop into the net," suggested Tom Potter. "See, hang by your hands, like this. Keep your legs together and lift 'em out stiff. Then – "

Down he went, and landed easily on his shoulders.

"Better put the 'mechanic' on him," said Harry, and presently young Roy was beside me on the cradle, securing me to the drop-lines with a double hitch.

"You want to be sure to lift yer legs," he remarked. "I knew a feller that struck the net straight on his feet and broke his knees."

"Don't you worry," said Harry; "if you don't fall right, I'll hold you with the 'mechanic.'"

Of course, when a man has started at this sort of thing he must see it through, so I hung obediently by my hands, lifted my legs, and —

"Now," cried Harry, and instantly, before I had time to think or note sensations, I was on my back in the net. And I understood what a terrible problem it is for a gymnast, falling with such swiftness, to turn two or three somersaults in the air and land with the body at just the angle of safety, for a shade too much one way may mean a broken leg, and a shade too much the other way an injured spine.

For some time after my aërial experience I sat around rather limp and white, giving but indifferent attention to the breaking in of young Clarence Potter, baby of the family, now in his first fortnight's practising. He certainly showed a game spirit, this little fellow. When his father said, "Jump," he jumped, and when the call came for a forward somersault across and a half turn he went at it like a veteran, though his wrists must have burned with red chafes where they caught him. Of course he had the 'mechanic' on all the time.

"We have to handle him very careful," said his father, "he's so limber. It wouldn't take much to break his back. But he'll harden up soon. People have an idea that gymnasts are supple-jointed. That's all nonsense. A gymnast won't bend as much as an ordinary business man. There are too many bunches of muscles all over him that keep him stiff. See, feel along here." He prodded my hand into his back and sides. "Not big muscles, mind, but lots of small ones. Say, it's a fine thing to have your body trained. I don't believe there's a healthier – Hey, there! Keep those legs together. Easy now. Good boy!" The little fellow had made a pretty turn and drop to the net, and was striding along its meshes, beaming at the praise.

"He'll make a gymnast," said Potter, "because he's got a head on him, and can fix his mind on what he's doing. Oh, it takes more than body to make a great acrobat. It takes brains, for one thing, and heart. I believe I'll be able to train that boy so he can do a triple. I mean do it, not get through it in a Lord-help-me way. Most people say a triple can't be done for a regular act because it's too uncertain and too dangerous. But they used to say that of a double. It's all a matter of taking time enough in the practice. That's the thing, practice. Why, look at us. We don't open for months yet, but we're up here every morning all through the winter getting our act down so fine, and the time so perfect, that when summer comes we can't fail."

"How do you mean, getting the time perfect?"

"Why, in trapeze work everything depends on judging time. Just now when you were hanging from the cradle you couldn't see much, could you? Well, we can't, either. We have to know when to do things by feeling the time they take. Say it's a long double swing, where the men cross and change bars. Each man grabs or lets go at the second or part of a second when the watch inside him says it's time to grab or let go. That's the only watch he has, and it's the only one he needs."

"And he dives by the sense of time?"

"That's right."

"And does triple somersaults by the sense of time?"

"Certainly he does. He can't see. What could you see, falling and whirling? A gymnast has no different eyes from any other man. He's got to feel how long he must keep on turning. And it's good-by gymnast if his feeling is a quarter of a second out of the way."

"Do you mean that literally?"

Mr. Potter smiled. "I'll give you a case, and you can judge for yourself. There was a fellow named Johnnie Howard in the Barnum show. He was doing trapeze work with the famous Dunham family, and was very ambitious to equal Dunham in all his feats, which was a large contract, for Dunham is about the finest gymnast in the world. What a pretty triple he can do, clean down from the top of the tent, and land right every time!

"Well, Howard he kept trying triples, and sometimes he got 'em about right and sometimes he didn't. Dunham told him he'd better stick to doubles until he'd had more practice, but Howard wouldn't have it, and he kept right on. Prob'ly he thought Dunham was jealous of him. Anyhow, he tried a triple one night at Chicago, in the Coliseum, and that was the last triple he ever did try. He misjudged his time by a quarter of a turn – that is, he turned three somersaults and a quarter instead of just three – and struck the net so that he twisted his spinal column, and he died a few weeks later. That last quarter of a turn killed him, and it probably didn't take over a tenth of a second."

Here was something to think about. Precision of movement to tenths of a second, with no guidance but a man's own intuition of time, and a life depending on it!

"Can a man regulate the speed of his turning while he is in the air?"

"Certainly he can. That's the first thing you learn. If you want to turn faster you tuck up your knees and bend your head so the chin almost touches your breast. If you want to turn slower you stretch out your legs and straighten up your head. The main thing is your head. Whichever way you point that your body will follow. In our act we do a long drop from the top of the tent, where you shoot straight down, head first, for fifty or sixty feet and never move a muscle until you are two feet over the net. Then you duck your head everlastingly quick and land on your shoulders."

I asked Mr. Potter how long a drop would be possible for a gymnast. He thought a hundred feet might be done by a man of unusual nerve, but he pointed out that the peril increases enormously with every twenty feet you add, say to a drop of forty feet. When you have dropped sixty feet you are falling thirty-five miles an hour; when you have dropped eighty feet you are falling nearly sixty miles an hour. And so on. It seemed incredible that a man shooting down, head first, at such velocity would wait before turning until only two feet separated him from the net.

"It can't be," said I, "that in one of these straight drops a gymnast is guided only by his sense of time?"

Potter hesitated a moment. "You mean that he uses his eyes to know when to turn? I guess he does a little, although it is mostly sense of time."

"You wouldn't get a man to do it blindfolded?" I suggested.

"Not a straight drop, no; but a drop with somersaults, yes."

"What, two somersaults down to the net, blindfolded?"

"Yes, sir, that would be easy. I tell you a man's eyes don't help him when he's turning in the air. Why, Tom and I would throw that boy of mine (Royetta) across from one to the other, he turning doubles, just the same whether he was blindfolded or not. It wouldn't make any difference.

"I'll tell you another thing," he continued, "that may surprise you. It's possible for a fine gymnast to swing from a bar, say sixty feet above the net, turn a back somersault – what we call a cast somersault – then shoot straight down head first for thirty feet and then tuck up and turn a forward somersault, landing on his shoulders. I couldn't do it myself ever since I got hurt down in Mexico, but Tom Hanlon could. I mention this to show what control a man can get over his body in the air. He can make it turn one way, then go straight, and then turn the other way."

After proper expression of wonder at this statement, I asked Mr. Potter if something might not go wrong with this wonderful automatic time machine that a gymnast carries within himself. Of course there might, he said, and that is why there is such need of practice. Let a man neglect his trapeze for a couple of months, and he would be almost like a beginner. And even the best gymnasts, he admitted, men in the pink of training, are liable to sudden and unaccountable disturbances of mind or heart that make them for the moment unequal to their most familiar feats.

"I'll tell you what accounts for the death of most gymnasts," he went on. "It's changing their minds while they're in the air. That's what we call it, but it's only a name. Nobody knows just what happens when a gymnast changes his mind – I mean what happens inside him. What happens outside is that he's usually killed.

"Now there was Billy Batcheller. He was a fine leaper, and could do his two somersaults over four elephants or eight horses with the prettiest lift you ever saw. He could do it easy. But one day – we were showing out west with the Reynolds circus – as he came down the leaping-run he struck the board wrong, somehow, and in the turn he changed his mind; instead of doing a double he did one and a half and shot over the last horse straight for the ground, head first. One second more and he was a dead man; he would have broken his neck sure, but I saw him coming and caught him so with my right arm, took all the skin off under his chin, and left the print of my hand on his breast for weeks. But it saved him. And the queer thing was he never could explain it – none of them ever can; he just changed his mind. So did Ladell, who used to do doubles from high bars down to a pedestal. He made his leap one night, just as usual – it was at Toronto, in 1896, I think – and as he turned he changed his mind, and I forget how he landed, but it killed him all right."

"Did you ever have an experience of this kind yourself?" I asked.

"Not exactly," he answered, "and I'm thankful I haven't, but I came near it once in Chicago. It was the night after Howard got hurt, and I guess fear – just plain, every-day fear – was at the bottom of my feeling. My wife and I were doing an act sixty feet above the ground, and without a net. I would hang by my hands from a couple of loops at the top of the Coliseum, and she would hang, head down, from my feet, her ankles locked across mine, just a natural locking of the feet, with no fastenings and only ordinary performing shoes.

"When I had her that way, a man below would pull a drag-rope and get us swinging higher and higher, until finally we would come right up to a horizontal. I tell you it was a hair-raising thing to see, but until this night I had never thought much about the danger. I thought of it now, though, as I remembered Howard's fall, and I got so nervous for my wife that I felt sure something terrible was going to happen. I was just about in the state where a man starts his act and can't go through with it, where he changes his mind. And you'll be surprised to hear what gave me heart to go on."

"What was it?"

"It was the music, sir; and ever since that night I've understood why some generals send their soldiers into battle with bands playing. As we stood by the dressing-room entrance waiting to go on, it seemed as if I couldn't do it, but when I heard the crash of that circus band calling us, and came out into the glare of light and heard the applause, just roars of it, why, I forgot everything except the pride of my business, and up we went, net or no net, and we never did our toe swing better than that night. Just the same, I'd had my warning, and I soon got another act instead of that one; and – " He hesitated. "Well, sir, to-day I wouldn't take my wife up and do that toe swing the way we used to, not for a million dollars. And yet she's crazy to do it."

IV

SOME REMARKABLE FALLS AND NARROW ESCAPES OF FAMOUS ATHLETES

AS we finished our talk, Mr. Potter asked me to call some evening at their rooms, on Tenth Street, and see a family of trapeze performers in private life. I was glad to accept this invitation, and looked in upon them a day or two later. Like the other figures in these studies of thrilling lives, they presented a modest, simple picture in their home circle. There is nothing in the externals of lion-tamers, steeple-climbers, divers, balloonists, or gymnasts to betray their unusual calling. Nor is there any heroic sign in eye or voice or bearing. They are plain, unpretentious folk, for the most part, who do these things and say little about them.

In one room were Tom and Royetta playing checkers, while Clarence, the "kid," weary, no doubt, from the morning's practice, lay on a bed storing up resistance against the next day's shoots and twisters. In a room adjoining were Mr. Potter himself and Mrs. Potter enjoying the call of a lady acrobat, one of the famed Livingstons, trick bicyclists.

As soon as was fitting, I put the old question to Mr. Potter, the question that always interests me, how it happened that he became a gymnast, and he went back to his Western boyhood and the early longings that possessed him to be a performer in the air. Plainly he was born with the gymnast instinct, and he ran away from home to follow his heart's desire. Then he told us how at seventeen he was traveling with a ten-cent show, doing a single trapeze act in the ring and an out-of-door free exhibition of tight-rope walking from canvas top to ground. Once he went at a difficult feat so eagerly – he was always his own teacher – that he fell clean off a trapeze sixty feet above ground, and by some kind providence that watches over boys escaped serious injury.

"It's queer about falls," said Mr. Potter. "It's often the little ones that kill. Now, there I fell sixty feet, and you might say it didn't hurt me at all. Another time, showing in Yucatan, I fell only forty feet, and smashed two ribs. And the worst fall I ever had was fifteen feet at the Olympia, in London. I was driving four horses in a tandem race, and was thrown straight on my head. That time I nearly broke my neck."

"Twenty-five feet is my best fall," put in Mrs. Potter, smiling. "I was doing an act on the flying rings, and one of 'em broke. Remember that, Harry?"

His face showed how well he remembered it. "Perhaps you won't believe this," he said, "but when I saw her falling I couldn't move. I was 'tending her in the ring, and wasn't ten feet from where she struck. I could have caught her and saved her if my legs would only have moved. But there they were frozen, sir, and I just had to stand still and see my wife come down smash on her head. Pretty tough, wasn't it? She lay unconscious for two days – that was at Monette, Missouri. Oh, yes, I remember it!"

I asked Mrs. Potter if she had ever been afraid, and she shook her head. Never once, not even at Chicago, in the perilous toe swing, when even the other gymnasts told her she would certainly be killed. She knew her husband would hold her safe, and she really enjoyed that toe swing more than any act they ever did.

"I'll tell you this, though," she admitted, "I would be afraid to do these things with any one except my husband."

"Yes, and I'd be afraid to have her," added Potter. "Why, down in Mexico, when I broke my ribs, there was a man – a fine gymnast, too – who offered to take my place so we wouldn't lose our salary, but every time I saw him practice with my wife it made me so nervous I called it off and let the salary go."

In spite of these manifest hazards, Potter insists that there is no healthier life than a gymnast leads. "We never are ill," he said, "we never take cold, we travel through all sorts of fever-stricken countries and never catch anything, and we always feel good. Look at that boy of mine! He's seventeen years old, and he's got a chest on him like a man. Thirty-eight inches is what it measures. Why, I can't find a coat that'll fit him."

He went on to point out some plain advantages, in addition to health, that ordinary citizens might derive from a moderate knowledge of trapeze work. In a fire, for instance, a man so trained would have little difficulty in saving himself and others by climbing and swinging. And firemen themselves would double their efficiency by regular practice on high bars.

Again, in case of a runaway, a man familiar with the trapeze knows how and when to spring for the bridle of a plunging horse. Or should he find himself almost under the wheels of a trolley-car, he could leap for the platform rail and swing up to safety.

"I'll give you a case," said Potter, "where the training we get helped a good deal. It was a season when I was working with the Barnum outfit; we were showing in the East, and during the hippodrome races a little girl got away from her people somehow, and the first thing anybody knew, there she was out on the track, with three four-horse chariots not a hundred feet off, and coming on a dead run. As the crowd saw the child they gave a great 'Uff' in fear, and lots of women screamed. It wasn't in human power to stop those horses, and it seemed as if the little tot must be killed.

"She was about half-way across the track when I started for her. Lots of men would have started just as I did, but very few would have gone at just the right angle to save her. Most men would have tried to run straight across, but I was sure the horses would trample me and the child, too, if I tried that. So I took her on a slant, running across and away from the horses, and I caught her little body as a gymnast knows how, didn't waste any time at it, and then – hoo! – we were over, with the breath of those horses on our necks. If it hadn't been for the practice I've had judging time and distance, we'd both have been killed that trip."

I come now to another occasion when I spent two profitable hours with the St. Belmos, husband and wife, who for years past and in many parts of the world have appeared in a trapeze act that calls for the greatest nerve and precision of movement. As a climax to this act, St. Belmo makes a leap and swing of forty feet over his audience, springing head first through a circle of knives and fire that barely lets his body pass, then catching a suspended trapeze that breaks away at his touch and carries him on in a long sweep, then leaping again, feet first, from this flying bar through a paper balloon, where he holds by his arms and drops swiftly thirty-five feet to the ground.

I was surprised to find the hero of this perilous feat rather the reverse of athletic in appearance. St. Belmo struck me as a pale, thin, almost sickly man. Yet I judge it would fare ill with any one who tried to impose upon him as an invalid. Over that spare form are hard, tireless muscles, and for years to come St. Belmo feels equal to leaping this obstacle of blades and flame.

Most people, I suppose, in watching this act would imagine the knives to be of wood and tinsel, but I saw that they were of steel, and sharp, heavy double-edged knives a foot long, murderous weapons made by St. Belmo himself out of old saws. And fifteen of these, with points turned inward, form the heart through which this gaunt yet rather genial gymnast shoots his way.

I asked St. Belmo about the accidents that he had suffered. Had he ever struck the knives when leaping through? Yes, again and again. He had torn his clothes to tatters on them, and lined his body with scars. But that was years ago, when he was learning. Now he never touched the knives. He could leap through them, eyes shut, as surely as a man puts a spoon in his mouth without striking his teeth.

How about falls in the air? Well, he remembered two in particular, one at Syracuse, where he missed the trapeze because some one was careless in fastening a snap-hook that held it, and when he came through the blades and flames head first, and reached for the bar, the bar had swung away, and he plunged on smash down to the ground, and broke both legs.

"Didn't you look for the bar before you made the leap?" I questioned.

He shook his head. "I never see the bar for the dazzle of fire. I know where it must be, and leap for that place. If it isn't there, why – " He pointed down to his legs, and smiled ruefully.

He had another fall at Seattle, where he came down thirty-five feet and put both his knees out of joint, all because he was thinking of something else as he shot toward the balloon, and forgot to throw out his arms and catch in the hoop. It was exactly the case of a man who might walk over the edge of a housetop through absent-mindedness.

"Ever have a feeling of fear?" I asked.

"I don't know as you'd call it fear exactly," he began.

"Yes, it was fear, too," put in his wife, teasing. "I've seen your knees shake so up on the pedestal that you almost tumbled off."

"No wonder my knees shook," protested St. Belmo; "they've been out of joint times enough. Naturally, after an accident you feel a little queer for a while; but I'll own up there was once I felt afraid, and it wasn't long ago, either."

"I know," said his wife; "up at the Twenty-second Regiment Armory."

"That's right; it was in December. Remember when that bicycle-diver was killed? His name was Stark? Poor chap! He was a friend of ours, and we were there when it happened. You know, he got too much speed on the incline, and struck the far edge of the tank instead of the water. That was in the afternoon, and the same night we had to go on and do our act. I looked at that tank, and then I said, 'Boys, I'm leary about this, but I'm going to do my act. I'll come down somehow, boys; you watch me.' Honest, I thought I was going to be killed, but I got through all right."

Then he explained that the greatest danger in his act is neither at the knives nor at the balloon, but in the swift drop after the balloon with the hoop under his arms. This hoop, as it goes down, winds up a spring overhead that acts as a break on the fall, though a very slight one. Just before St. Belmo reaches the floor he lifts his arms above the hoop and drops through it to the ground, but he must do that at precisely the right moment, or he will suffer accident. If he drops through too soon he will strike too hard, and may break his legs. If he does not drop through soon enough, the hoop may jerk his arms out of the sockets. And in spite of this formidable alternative St. Belmo assured me that for more than a dozen years now he has made this drop continually, and never failed once.

Think of a calling that requires a man to steer perpetually, by the closest fraction of a shave, between a pair of broken legs and a pair of dislocated arms! Fancy such an alternative as part of the regular after-dinner routine! And then consider what marvelous precision must be in these bodies and minds of ours when a man can face such a hazard for years and never come to grief.