by Ruskin Bond
He pointed to an ugly, ominous crack running from the top of the shaft to about half-way down.
That crack,' he said, 'began in quite a small way. Then particles of dust and mortar fell down into it, hardened and formed a wedge. Every time the chimney shook, the crack opened a little, and the wedge slipped down a little more. You can see the result. All that is necessary now is a really good frost, with ice settling inside that crack. The chimney would break apart and come down like a pack of cards. Shall we go up now?'
With mixed feelings I made for the slender ladder set against the base of the shaft.
You go first,' the steeplejack said. 'I'll follow.'
I drew a long breath and began to climb. At first I went fairly quickly, but then I settled down to a steady pace, and climbed with even steps until I was level with the house-tops. I glanced up, but the top seemed as far away as ever, and I was beginning to feel a slight swaying about the ladder.
'Larkins is shaking the thing a lot,' I thought, and looked down. There was no sign of Larkins. The ladder stretched below me like a long tube, but I was the only one upon it.
I scarcely liked the idea of going up alone. What should I do when I got up there, anyway? Besides, it was bitterly cold, and I had taken off my overcoat.
Why hadn't I thought of keeping rny gloves on ? I had a splinter in my finger, and I could scarcely feel the palms of my hands. Perhaps I ought to turn back, just until Larkins was ready.
Suppose he should laugh at me! No, I had better go on. Ah, this is better—a little more confident now. I must be two-thirds of the way up—that would be about seventy or eighty feet. I'd better not look down, though.
My back is aching abominably. My legs and arms ache too. My eyes are watering. For a second my head swims. Then I take a new grip and plod wearily upwards again.
The scaffold is nearer now. I can see that it is just a nine-inch board set across side timbers. Why, how can I get on to it—it's clean across the ladder!
Nearer, now. Ten, eight, six, four more rungs. And here's this confounded board across the brickwork—and the ladder goes underneath it. Perhaps, if I stretched my arm I might lean outwards and grip the ladder again above the board. Ah, that's how it's done. A heave, a roll sideways, and I'm half sitting on the board—though I scarcely like the way it bends beneath my weight.
What's this? Why, here is Larkins right behind me. Of course, he must have known that I should take twice as long as a steeplejack to reach the top....
'Well,' said Mr Larkins pleasantly, 'here we are. Do you like the view?'
I observed the view. The Thames and its dingy environs was spread out beneath us, until the whole scene faded into the mist. In the streets below the buses and people looked absurdly small, and it was difficult to believe that the squat little boxes down there were the tall buildings lining the streets.
Curiously enough I felt no dizziness. But there was some queer sensation assailing me which was altogether unpleasant, and which I did not at first recognise.... Then I understood. I remembered the faint rolling of a liner, and this sensation was rather similar. Ever so slightly that chimney was rocking on its base. I swear I could hear an occasional cracking sound, but fortunately for my peace of mind the noise did not seem to worry Mr Larkins.
The cold was intense. The wind moaned around the shaft, whirling brick-dust into our eyes. Larkins was nonchalantly leaning back, blowing his nose!
He took two paces to the end of the plank and looked over. My end of the plank rose and fell violently at each step, and I gripped the top of the ladder grimly.
Then, for some time, I made a pretence of assisting with the work of loosening bricks. Larkins affected not to notice my pallor. Actually the conviction was steadily growing within me that if I once looked down I should fall.
It is difficult to describe the negotiation of that ladder again. For a few awful seconds I hung over the edge of the board, my feet feeling wildly for the rungs of the ladder. Had my hand-hold failed me I should have had no chance at all.
Then I was surprised to find myself on the ladder and descending step by step. Once or twice I paused to rest, but each time I seemed a long, long way from the ground.
Once, my feet slipped entirely from the rungs, and again I had to cling desperately by the hands. After that, numbed with cold and fear combined, I went down almost mechanically, and the journey seemed to take so long that I reached the ground with a little shock.
The next unnerving experience to befall me was of a very different kind. A great deal of attention was focused at the time upon salvage operations upon the sunken Egypt, and I was detailed to describe the sensations of a deep-sea diver.
In due course, therefore, I was fitted into & diving suit and—with only brief instructions and no former experience dropped into a deep tank beside the murky Thames. At least I was able to ease the first part of the descent by following a submerged ladder down the side of the tank.
As my helmet first sank beneath the water, and the light was blotted out, a slight whining noise began beneath my right ear—the sound made by the escaping air. This mingled with the deep coughing noise, the 'chump-chump' of the air being pumped down, and there was a sickening taste of rubber.
I had been going down, rung by rung, but suddenly there was no support for my feet. The air in my suit made me partially buoyant, and I did not immediately sink, but hung on with my hands. Then I began to lose my grip, and after a moment let go.
My senses reeled as, fighting for breath, I plunged downward. I do not know how long the descent took, but suddenly I was on the bottom, in a kneeling position, and only half conscious.
I tried to get a grip of myself, but I knew that I was losing my head. 'Steady, you fool,' I screamed aloud, and almost fainted completely when a voice answered fiercely, 'Oo's a fool?'
Then I grinned in spite of my discomfort. Of course there was a telephone inside my helmet connected to another diver working farther along the dockside.
'Say, are you all right?' came his voice, above the noise of incoming and escaping air.
'Yes, I'm all right,' I answered weakly, and he gave a half- satisfied grunt.
I tried to take stock of my surroundings. I had no doubt that I was about fifty feet below the surface of the river. I could see absolutely nothing, but there was an intolerable pain in my chest and head, and I felt very weak. Almost without thinking, I had closed the safety-value at the side of my helmet as I sank, and now I wondered dully whether I had closed it too much.
I gave it a turn, and next moment found myself flat on my back and quite unable to move. Somehow I had taken a knock on the head, and as I began to think again, I realised that I had let too much air escape. The entire diving apparatus was a dead weight upon me, and the weight of water held me down.
For minutes that seemed like hours, I struggled, inch by inch, to raise an arm, until I felt the milled wheel of the valve in my hand. One turn, two, three, and the air began to fill out my suit again. Now I breathed easier, and as the suit became lighter, I was able to kneel up.
Then I felt a queer sensation. Everything was losing weight and substance. I was on my feet without effort, the suit began ballooning out, and I was floating upwards!
I went down for a moment, put out a foot, and shot up again. This must be the result of too much air, and I thought suddenly of burst blood-vessels and all the other perils....
In looking back on that experience I am convinced that nothing but good luck saved me from injury. It was just another escape. Certainly I spent most of the time under water in a state of extraordinary mental confusion, and anything might have happened before I could summon the state of mind to prevent it.
Something similar occurred when I flew over a crowded football ground in one of the earliest types of autogiro, when the sight of the odd-looking 'plane was sufficient to cause a sensation among the mass of people below.
Whether my fellow-pilot was unduly interested in the match, or whether he suffered
from some kind of mental lapse which led him to an error of judgment, I never discovered; but to the horror of eighty thousand people our machine skimmed the roof of the grand-stand, with only inches to spare, and dropped still farther on the other side. Fortunately the engine was running perfectly and we were able to clear some adjoining buildings safely.
That unpleasant scare was merely a prelude to a flight with one of the world's greatest stunt pilots. Indeed, the man concerned—Captain Hubert Broad, the de Havilland test pilot—was a war-time ace, and more recently winner of the International Aerobatic Contest. It was his job to take up, and put through the most extraordinary evolutions, machines which had never before left the ground. Just once I shared the risk with him, and this is how I wrote of it at the time:
I settled down comfortably in my seat, closed the little flap of the cockpit, and eyed all the white needles on the dials of the facia. At the moment they were standing at ease and looking very innocent....
The engine crackled and roared into life. The cockpit began to vibrate and then gyrate gendy as our machine turned to taxi slowly over the soft ground. I glanced down furtively at the massive straps that crossed my shoulders and encircled my waist, and then up at the white clouds racing across the sky.
The next moment my head went back with a jerk, and when I recovered sufficiently to look over the side we were up about a thousand feet.
For the next few moments I enjoyed that queer and rather delightful sensation as though there is a mighty hand beneath your seat lifting you bodily several hundred feet at a time, with little pauses in between.
The needle of the altimeter was wandering casually round from two thousand to three thousand and then on to four, while the air-speed indicator showed only 65 or 70 mph.
I looked down at the Welsh Harp, gleaming dully in the winter sunshine like a dirty puddle. And when I looked back those two needles went mad.
At the same moment some tremendous force jammed me into my seat, an icy coldness descended upon me, and I found myself with a perfectly clear view ahead straight into the middle of the aerodrome.
The noise of the engine was deafening, and as I lowered my head I saw that we had swooped down to less than a thousand feet in a matter of seconds, at 300 mph.
And then the aerodrome disappeared, and in its place, for a brief moment, was a beautiful expanse of clear sky. But still I was pressed horribly, painfully, into my place and the sky went right over, and the horizon appeared from the wrong direction.
And now, to my horror, I found that the straps that had been tight on the ground were loose—so loose that I could move my shoulders in them. That was because I slipped down a little in my seat on that loop—but the thought flashed into my mind that I was in danger of falling from the cockpit when we went over again.
I hoped fearfully that the straps would not get any looser, for I had no means of informing the pilot of my plight. Meanwhile I wedged myself very erect and tight once more, bracing my legs beneath the seat.
We were climbing again, now, in quite tremendous leaps, and soon we were up to four thousand feet, where wisps of cotton-wool went sailing by. And then that aeroplane turned over on to the tip of one wing and started to fly round it, while all the ground below went sailing around in rapidly growing circles.
Straightening from the spin we flew on for as much as a minute without anything happening. And then the wing that had been down before came over until it changed places with the other one, while the entire arrangement of earth and sky performed the same remarkable evolution.
Above me was the earth, and at my feet were the clouds, while for a second or two my entire weight depended upon the straps over my shoulders. Still, everything straightened itself out and I found myself quite astonishingly in the same position as I started.
Now, though, my head was swimming a little, and there was a certain vagueness about the horizon.
Jove, it was cold! And every time I saw over the front of the cockpit it felt colder still.
We went up a little higher, then. As I had lost faith in the altimeter I can only guess at about five thousand feet. Then the plane lay down on its side and slithered back towards the ground in one glorious, ghastly sideslip.
The slipstream, deflected into the cockpit by our sideways progress, came searing its way through my clothing, leaving me frozen to the bone. And the roar of the engine was multiplied, and seemed to take pleasure in tormenting me.
I do not remember all the details of that extremely interesting flight. There were times when my vision was reduced to a hopeless confusion of clouds and instruments and wings and fields, until I half believed that I had long since fallen out of the plane altogether. And then the machine would suddenly settle on to an even keel, with one very rigid wing to starboard and another to port. And back would come my sense of reality and, more important, my sense of direction. Very reassuring.
The next time we began a long climb to a considerable height I recognised the overture to a new horror, and, with great cunning, prepared for the worst.
Up and up, and then, quite suddenly, over. The horizon dropped away below, and the order of things, as before, was reversed. My weight went slumping down on to my shoulders, and I braced my knees against the side of the cockpit.
The straps felt horribly loose, so that I swayed a little in them, and I was assailed by a sickening dread. But worse was to come, for this time we did not go over—we stayed upside- down, while half the suburbs of London passed away beneath my horrified gaze.
The pressure on the straps keeping me in was terrific. My knees lost their grip, my helmet tried to come off, too, and its strap nearly choked me.
I must have been a revolting sight, suspended in mid-air like a trussed chicken.
Red spots appeared before my eyes and danced about crazily. My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and I imagined my eyes were falling out. I do not know how long that lasted. Probably only a minute. Though it seemed so long that every fraction of a second provided enough material for a book.
I can remember seeing a train crawling across that green and brown ceiling, and thinking how fortunate for the passengers that they were not upside-down, too. And there was a lake, with a white arrow upon it. Ah, I know,' I said to myself, 'a motor-boat.'
Then to my astonishment the motor-boat leap out of the lake and hung on behind the train, which immediately turned round and plunged into the lake. Yet when next I looked over the side, there was no ground to be seen, only cloud. Let alone lakes and boats and trains.
Really it is very difficult in this moment to extricate fact from fantasy, to distinguish between observation and imagination.
I had never before plunged down two or three thousand feet in a matter of seconds, so I am not surprised that the picture I have in my mind of crashing into the ground is as vivid as that other one of swooping upwards again into the sky.
Every time the machine righted itself, every time my sense of balance was restored, I became conscious of a curious exultation, as though by great good fortune I had survived a brush with death.
In reciting a series of experiences of this kind it would be simple to fall into the mistake of giving a false impression of myself Perhaps I may explain at this juncture that, generally, I was thoroughly scared. The only time I was not afraid was when I was not conscious of the actual danger.
I mean, I hated being crushed into a diving-suit and dropped into forty or fifty feet of water, but I was not afraid in the old, familiar way. The whole thing was interesting, exciting, and I knew that if anything serious happened I had a reasonable chance of being hauled to the surface safely.
Even when I made a mistake with the air-valve, and nearly drowned myself, I was reassured by a voice on the telephone.
Mind you, I had a splitting headache—did I mention that before—there was a pain like a bayonet through my chest and I had to fight for breath. But that voice made all the difference.
It was all quite, quite different the first
time I climbed out on to the wing of an aeroplane, knowing that within a minute or two my life would depend upon a dozen slender threads and a few yards of silk. My first parachute drop—and very nearly my last.
I shall never forget the horror and foreboding with which I contemplated that brief experience. I had taken off from Reading aerodrome, closely pursued by two other machines containing photographers. My pilot believed that he knew the precise spot for me to drop off, so that I should land in the flying field. He climbed in a wide circle while I, sitting in the forward cockpit, passed my hands again and again over the parachute harness.
At two thousand feet we swung back in our course, followed by the other machines, one a little above and the other below us. A few moments brought the aerodrome into view through the light clouds, and I looked round expectantly at the pilot. He returned my glance for perhaps five seconds, and then nodded slowly.
The effect of that nod upon me was remarkable. My blood-pressure seemed to increase about a hundred per cent, and a faint dryness came into my throat. For a brief moment I sat in my seat and, I confess it, shuddered.
Then, stiffly, I stood up, and received a violent blow in the face from the tremendous force of the wind.
I was flying without goggles and, the breath beaten from my body, half blinded and quite bruised about the face, I fumbled for the catches which held the little door of the cockpit and drew them back.
The door slipped down, and I climbed with difficulty— consider the weight of the parachute and the immense wind resistance it offered—out on to the wing.
The next stage of the operations was one of the most difficult. While I stood immediately opposite my own cockpit I could hold on to two struts, one with each hand. In order, however, to reach the rear of the wing, I had to change hands and cross over a lower wing cross-member.
