He remembered how he had seen the Steeple Jack nimbly climb the tower and by means of a rope work himself slowly round and round the tiled ornamental steeple.
Here and there in it were small holes bored, the only means of sustaining the weight of his body.
At that dizzy height a misstep or a slip of the hand meant certain death.
Will Bertram summoned all his courage, gained the base of the steeple, and tying the rope he had secured on a floor below around the steeple, rested his back against it and began pulling himself sideways and upwards along the smooth, even surface of the steeple.
The throng below had lost a casual, idle curiosity in the feat of daring now. Interest had succeeded, and then, as they saw that speck of diminishing humanity slowly, laboriously round the point of blackness against the darkening sky, a shuddering apprehension filled the strongest heart.
The clinging form would appear and disappear. It reached the narrowing summit of the steeple, and a hand clasped firmly the lower gilded bar of the spire.
There was a moment of awful suspense, and eyes strained and wearied by piercing the enveloping gloom of dusk, grew dimmer.
For a moment the figure rested at the base of the spire, then it was drawn a foot or two higher.
Darkness in earnest had come down over the earth, but one last glint of the dying sunlight far in the fading west illumined the gilded spire.
It showed the huddled form of the boy, his hand extended towards the vane. That hand clasped the bird, released it, and then swinging clear of the spire, dropped it flutteringly downward.