DOING A MAN'S WORK
For one brief instant Phil Forrest's head was giddy and his breath fairly left his body from the speed with which he was propelled upward on the key rope.
But the lad had not for a second lost his presence of mind.Below him was some eight feet of the rope dangling in the air.
With a sudden movement that could only have been executed by one with unusual strength and agility, Phil let the rope slip through his hands just enough to slacken his speed.Instantly he threw himself around the center pole, twisting the rope around and around it, each twist slackening his upward flight a little.He knew that, were his head to strike the iron ring in the dome at the speed he was traveling, he would undoubtedly be killed.It was as much to prevent this as to save the tent that Phil took the action he did, though his one real thought was to save his employer's property.
Now the rapid upward shoot had dwindled to a slow, gradual slipping of the rope as it moved up the center pole inch by inch.But Phil's peril was even greater than before.The moment that heavy iron ring began pressing down on his head and shoulders with the weight of the canvas behind it, there would be nothing for him to do but to let go.
A forty-foot fall to the hard ground below seemed inevitable.Yet he did not lose his presence of mind for an instant.
"Give him a hand!" yelled the boss canvasman.
"How?How?" shouted the canvasmen."We can't reach him.""Get a net under that boy, you blockheads!" thundered Mr.Sparling, rushing over from his station."Don't you see he's bound to fall, and if he does he'll break his neck?"The boss canvasman ordered three of his men to get the trapeze performers' big net that lay in a heap near the ring nearest the dressing tent, for there were two rings now in the Great Sparling Combined Shows.