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Careers of Danger and Daring

<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>III</h2> <h3>IN WHICH THE AUTHOR TRIES HIS HAND WITH PROFESSIONAL TRAPEZE PERFORMERS</h3> <div class='cap'>ON this particular morning—it was a damp day in February—I had been watching the Potter family, familiar on circus posters in tights and spangles, at their practice of aërial leaps, when Henry Potter, who is husband, father, and brother of the others, and chief of the act, suggested that if I wanted a vivid idea of what it was to work on the flying trapeze I might come up and take his place on the cradle and let Tom chuck the "kid" across to me and see if I could catch him.</div> The "kid" was Roy Potter (sometimes Royetta, when presented in feminine trappings), a slender lad of seventeen, who had just been doing doubles and twisters and half turns, leaping with shoot and graceful curve from brother to brother up there in mid-air under the rafters of this moldering old skating-rink. "Go ahead," he urged; "it's easy enough. All you've got to do is hang by your knees, and it can't hurt the boy, for he'll drop in the net if you miss him. Besides, we'll put the 'mechanic' on him." The "mechanic" is an arrangement of waist straps and trailing pulley-ropes that guard a gymnast while he is learning some new feat. Doubtless, I should have declined this amiable offer had I taken time to consider, for there was no particular appropriateness in a man who knew nothing about the trapeze, except such rudiments as boys of twelve get in their own back yards, taking part offhand in a leaping performance thirty feet above ground with "the phenomenal and fearless Potters"—I quote the circus signs—"greatest of all great acrobatic aërials." Yet he put it so plausibly—I certainly would get a better idea of the thing—and he made it out so simple—anybody can hang by his knees—that I said all right; I would go up on the cradle and catch the "kid." This cradle is composed of two steel bars, about a foot apart, that are held rigid by tackle and wire braces. You climb to it (after emptying your pockets) by a swinging ladder, none too secure, and, seated here, look down as from the dome of a circus tent. On a line with you are other cradles, where your partners are coolly preparing to do things. You glance across at them anxiously, then down at the net, which seems a long way beneath. "Better put some rosin on your hands," sings out Potter from the ground, where he is arranging the "mechanic" lines. "It's in that little bag on the wire," calls the boy from his perch. "Rub it along your wrists, too; we'll ketch better." H'm! We will, eh? I do as I am told, and realize that even the trifling movement to get this rosin-bag involves a certain peril. "Now lean back," comes the word; "catch one bar in the crotch of your knees and brace your feet under the other. That's right. Hang 'way down. Stretch your arms out, and when I say, 'Now,' pull up and reach for the 'kid'—you'll see him coming." 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. <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus63.jpg" width-obs="390" height-obs="500" alt="CIRCUS PROFESSIONALS PRACTISING A FEAT OF BALANCING." title="" /> CIRCUS PROFESSIONALS PRACTISING A FEAT OF BALANCING.</div> "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." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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