y of the crockets: but
to descend by them with a lot of useless senses about me would be a
very different matter. No giddiness attacked me as yet; indeed I
knew rather than felt my position to be serious. For a moment I
thought of leaving my perch and letting myself slip down the face of
the slates, to be pulled up short by the parapet; but the length of
the slide daunted me, and the parapet appeared dangerously shallow.
I should shoot over it to a certainty and go whirling into air.
On the other hand, to drop from my present saddle into the one below
was no easy feat. For this I must back myself over the edge of it,
and cling with body and legs 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
accompli