Then he explained how I was to press my toes against the steeple side, so as to keep my knees from barking on the shingles.
"And don't look down at all," he told me. "Just watch your ropes and take it easy. Are you ready?"
At this moment Walter said something in a low tone, and Merrill asked me to lend him my knife. I handed it out, and he stuck it in his pocket. "You don't need this now," said he, and a moment later the pulley ropes tightened and my small swing-board lifted under me. I was rising.
"Shove off there with your toes!" he cried. "Take short steps. Put your legs wider apart. Wider yet. You don't have to pull on the rope. Just slide your hands along. Now you're going!"
I saw nothing but the steeple side in front of me, and the life-line hanging down like a bell-rope between my spread legs, and the pulley block creaking by my head, and the toes of my shoes as I pressed them against the shingles step by step. It struck me as a ridiculous thing to be climbing a steeple in patent-leather shoes. I smiled to think of the odd appearance I must present from below. And then for the first time I let my eyes turn into the depths, and caught a glimpse of men on housetops watching me. I saw Merrill's upturned face down where the ropes ended. And I saw little horses wriggling along on the street.
HOW THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER GOES UP A FLAGPOLE.
There were three places where the steeple narrowed into slenderer lengths, and at each one was a sort of cornice to be scrambled over (and loose nails to be avoided), and then more careful steering with legs and toes to keep on one particular face of the steeple and not swing off and come bumping back, a disconcerting possibility. "Hello!" called Lawlor presently, from above. "You're doing fine. Come right along." And before I knew it the swing had stopped. I was at the top, or as near it as the tackle could take me. The remaining fifteen feet or so must be made with stirrups. And there was Lawlor standing in them up by the ball. There was not a stick of staging to support him (he had scorned the bother of hauling up boards for so simple a job), and he was working with both hands free, each leg standing on its stirrup, and several hitches of life-line holding him to the shaft top by his waist.
This steeple-lassoing exploit was one of the things I certainly would not attempt—would not and could not.