Careers of Danger and Daring Part 22

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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 pa.s.s, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THROUGH A PAPER BALLOON AT THE END OF A GREAT FEAT.]

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 a.s.sured 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.

THE WILD-BEAST TAMER

I

WE VISIT A QUEER RESORT FOR CIRCUS PEOPLE AND TALK WITH A TRAINER OF ELEPHANTS

WELL down on Fourth Avenue, below the bird-fanciers, the rat-catchers, the antique-shops, and the dingy hotels where lion-tamers put up, is "Billy's" place, the great rendezvous of the country for circus folk, and here any afternoon or evening, especially in the dull winter-time, you may find heroes of the flying trapeze, bereft of show-ring trappings, playing monotonous euchre with keepers of the cages, or sitting in convivial and reminiscent groups that include everything from the high-salaried star down to some humble tooter in the band at present looking for a job. All kinds of acrobats come to "Billy's," all kinds of animal men, everybody who has to do with a show, barring the owners. If a Norwegian wrestler wants to get track of an Egyptian giant he goes to "Billy's." If an elephant-trainer needs a new helper he goes to "Billy's." It is at once a club, a haven, a post-office, and a general intelligence bureau for members of this wandering and fascinating profession.

It was my fortune recently to spend an evening at "Billy's," and I had as companion a veteran circus man, able to explain things. After taking in the externals, which were commonplace enough save for "big-top"

celebrities ranged along the walls in tiers of photographs, we sat us down where a man in a blue s.h.i.+rt was telling how a lioness and three cubs got out of a cage somewhere one afternoon just after the performance. It seems one of the cubs had been playing with a loose bolt, and the first thing anybody knew, there they were, all four of them, skipping about free in the menagerie tent. The story detailed various efforts to get the lioness back into her cage--prodding, la.s.soing, shouting--and the total failure of these because she would neither leave her cubs nor let them be taken from her.

Finally, the situation grew serious, for the evening performance was coming on, and it was quite sure there would be no audience with an uncaged lioness on the premises. So it became a matter of business in this wise--a lioness worth a few hundred dollars against an audience worth a couple of thousand. Word was sent to the head of the show, and back came the order, "Kill her." In vain the keeper pleaded for one more trial; he would risk a hand-to-hand struggle with hot irons. The head of the show said, "No"; the lioness was desperate, and he wouldn't have his men expose their lives. It was a case of "Shoot her, and do it quick."

Of course, that settled it; they did shoot her, and as the blue-s.h.i.+rted man described the execution I was impressed by his tenderness in speaking of that poor, defiant mother, and then of the three little cubs that "howled for her a whole month, sir, and looked so sad it made us boys feel like murderers, blamed if it didn't!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE.]

Another man, with steely gray eyes and a stubble of beard, ventured the opinion that they must have had a pretty poor quality of gumption in that outfit, or somebody would have got the lioness into her cage. He was mighty sure George Conklin would have done it. George was over in Europe now handling big cats for the Barnum show. There wasn't anything George didn't know about lions.

"Why, I'll give you a case," said he. "We were showing out in Kansas, and one night a cage fell off the circus train, became unlashed or something as she swung round a curve, and when we stuck our heads out of the sleeper there were a pair of greenish, burning eyes coming down the side of the track, and we could hear a ruh-ruh-r-r-r-ruh--something between a bark and a roar--that didn't cheer us up any, you'd better believe. Then George Conklin yelled, 'By the Lord, it's Mary! Come on, boys; we must get her!' and out we went. Mary was a full-grown lioness, and she was loose there in the darkness, out on a bare prairie, without a house or a fence anywhere for miles."

"Hold on," said I; "how did your circus train happen to stop when the cage fell off?"

With indulgent smile, he explained that a circus train running at night always has guards on the watch, who wave quick lanterns to the engineer in any emergency.

"Well," continued the man, "George Conklin had that cage fixed up and the lioness safe inside within forty minutes by the clock. Do? Why, it was easy enough. We unrolled about a hundred yards of side-wall wall tenting, and carried it toward the lioness. It was a line of men, holding up a length of canvas so that it formed a long, moving fence.

And every man carried a flaming kerosene torch. There was a picture to remember, that line of heads over the canvas wall, and the flaring lights gradually circling around the lioness, who backed, growling and switching her tail--backed away from the fire, until presently, as we closed in, we had her in the mouth of a funnel of canvas, with torches everywhere, except just at her back, where the open cage was. Then Conklin spoke sharp to her, just as if they were in the ring, and snapped his whip, and the next thing Miss Mary was safe behind the bars.