The Adventures of Harry Revel | Page 6

in air while I
judged my fall into the next. To do this thirty times or so in succession
without mistake was past hoping for: there were at least thirty crockets
to be manoeuvred, and a single miscalculation would send me spinning
backwards to my fate. Above all, I had not the strength for it.
So I sat considering for a while; not terrified, but with a brain
exceedingly blank and hopeless. It never occurred to me that, if I sat
still and held on, steeplejacks would be summoned and ladders brought
to me; and I am glad that it did not, for this would have taken hours,
and I know now that I could not have held out for half an hour inactive.
But another thought came. I saw the slates at the foot of the
weathercock, that they were thinly edged and of light scantling. I knew
that they must be nailed upon a wooden framework not unlike a ladder.
And at the Genevan Hospital, as I have recorded, we wore stout plates
on our shoes.
I am told that it was a bad few moments for the lookers-on when they
saw me lower myself sideways from my crocket and begin to hammer
on the slates with my toes: for at first they did not comprehend, and
then they reasoned that the slates were new, and if I failed to kick
through them, to pull myself back to the crocket again would be a
desperate job.

But they did not know our shoe-leather. Mr. Scougall, whatever his
faults, usually contrived to get value for his money, and at the tenth
kick or so my toes went clean through the slate and rested on the laths
within. Next came the most delicate moment of all, for with a less
certain grip on the crocket I had to kick a second hole lower down, and
transfer my hand-hold from the stone to the wooden lath laid bare by
my first kicks.
This, too, with a long poise and then a flying clutch, I accomplished;
and with the rest of my descent I will not weary the reader. It was
interminably slow, and it was laborious; but, to speak comparatively, it
was safe. My boots lasted me to within twenty feet of the parapet, and
then, just as I had kicked my toes bare, a steeplejack appeared at the
little doorway with a ladder. Planting it in a jiffy, he scrambled up, took
me under his arm, bore me down and laid me against the parapet, where
at first I began to cry and then emptied my small body with throe after
throe of sickness.
I recovered to find Mr. Scougall and another clergyman (the vicar)
standing by the little door and gazing up at my line of holes on the face
of the spire. Mr. Scougall was offering to pay.
"But no," said the vicar, "we will set the damage down against the lad's
preservation; that is, if I don't recover from the contractor, who has
undoubtedly swindled us over these slates."
CHAPTER III.
I AM BOUND APPRENTICE.
Although holidays were a thing unknown at the Genevan Hospital, yet
discipline grew sensibly lighter during Mr. Scougall's honeymoon,
being left to Miss Plinlimmon on the understanding that in emergency
she might call in the strong and secular arm of Mr. George. But we all
loved Miss Plinlimmon, and never drove her beyond appealing to what
she called our better instincts.
Her dearest aspiration (believe it if you can) was to make gentlemen of

us--of us, doomed to start in life as parish apprentices! And to this her
curriculum recurred whether it had been divagating into history,
geography, astronomy, English composition, or religious knowledge.
"The author of the book before me, a B.A.--otherwise a Bachelor of
Arts, but not on that account necessarily unmarried-- observes that to
believe the sun goes round the earth is a vulgar error. For my part I
should hardly go so far: but it warns us how severely those may be
judged who obtrusively urge in society opinions which the wise in their
closets have condemned." "The refulgent orb--another way, my dears,
of saying the sun--is in the vicinity of Persia an object of religious
adoration. The Christian nations, better instructed, content themselves
with esteeming it warmly, and as they follow its course in the heavens,
draw from it the useful lesson to look always on the bright side of
things." Humble beneficent soul! I never met another who had learned
that lesson so thoroughly. Once she pointed out to me at the end of her
dictation-book a publisher's colophon of a sundial with the word Finis
above it, and, underneath, the words "Every Hour Shortens Life." "Now,
I prefer to think that every hour lengthens it," said she,