ith three years' cruising in Uncle Sam's navy on the school-ships
_Minnesota_ and _Yantic_ (he shipped at the age of twelve) and two years
at whale-fishing in the North Sea. Quite ideal training, this, for a
steeple-climber; he learned to handle ropes and make them fast so they
would stay fast; he learned to climb and keep his head at the top of a
swaying masthead; he learned to bear exposure as lads must who are
washed on deck every morning with a hose, and stand for inspection,
winter and summer, bare to the waist. And he gained strength of arm and
back swinging at the oar while whale-lines strained on the sunk harpoon;
and patience in long stern-chases; and nerve when some stricken monster
lashed the waters in agony and the boat danced on a reddened sea.

Merrill laughed about the climb up old Trinity's spire, the first climb
when he carried up the hauling-rope and worked his way clear to the
cross, with nothing to help him but the hands and feet he was born
with, and did it coolly, while men on the street below turned away
sickened with fear for him.

"I'm telling you the truth," said Steeple Bob, "when I say it was an
easy climb; any fairly active man could do it if he'd forget the height.
I'm not talking about all steeples--some are hard and dangerous; but the
one on Trinity, in spite of its three hundred-odd feet, has knobs of
stone for ornament all the way up (they call them corbels), and all you
have to do is to step from one to another."

"How much of a step?"

"Oh, when I stood on one the next one came to my breast, and then I
could just touch the one above that."

[Illustration: "I HAD TO CRAWL AROUND AND OVER IT."]

He called this easy climbing!

"The only ticklish bit was just at the top, where two great stones,
weighing about a ton apiece, swell out like an apple on a stick, and I
had to crawl around and over that apple, which was four feet or so
across. If it hadn't been for grooves and scrollwork in the stone I
couldn't have done it, and even as it was I had two or three minutes of
hard wriggling after I kicked off with my feet and began pulling myself
up."

"You mean you hung by your hands from this big ball of stone?"

"I hung mostly by my fingers; the scrolls weren't deep enough for my
hands to go in."

"And you drew yourself slowly up and around and over that ball?"

"Certainly; that was the only way."

"And it was at the very top?"

"Yes, just under the cross. It wasn't much, though