Three!

Like a flash I saw the white upturned faces below me, the posture-girls’ gestures of horror, the dark springing figure through the air, that wavered—and fell a shapeless mass on the floor.

There was a moment of deathlike silence, and then a wild outcry —women fainting, men cursing and crying out in that senseless, helpless way they have when there is sudden danger. By the time I had reached the floor they had straightened out his shattered limbs, and two or three doctors were fighting their way through the great crowd that was surging about him.

Well, sir, at that minute what did I hear but George’s voice above all the rest, choked and hollow as it was, like a man calling out of the grave: “The women! Good God! don’t you see the women?” he gasped.

Looking up then, I saw those miserable Slingsbys hanging on to the trapeze for life. What with the scare and shock, they’d lost what little sense they had, and there they hung helpless as limp rags high over our heads.

“Damn the Slingsbys!” said I. God forgive me! But I saw this battered wreck at my feet that had been George. Nobody seemed to have any mind left. Even South stared stupidly up at them and then back at George. The doctors were making ready to lift him, and half of the crowd were gaping in horror, and the rest yelling for ladders or ropes, and scrambling over each other, and there hung the poor flimsy wretches, their eyes starting out of their heads from horror, and their lean fingers losing their hold every minute. But, sir—I couldn’t help it—I turned from them to watch George as the doctors lifted him.

“It’s hardly worth while,” whispered one.

But they raised him and, sir—the body went one way and the legs another.

I thought he was dead. I couldn’t see that he breathed, when he opened his eyes and looked up for the slingsbys. “Put me down,” he said, and the doctors obeyed him. There was that in his voice that they had to obey him, though it wasn’t but a whisper.

“Ladders are of no use,” he said. “Loper!”

“Yes, George.”

“You can swing yourself up. Do it.”

I went. I remember the queer stunned feeling I had: my joints moved like a machine.

When I reached the trapeze, he said, as cool as if he was calling the figures for a Virginia reel, “Support them, you—Loper. Now lower the trapeze, men—carefully!”

It was the only way their lives could be saved, and he was the only man to see it. He watched us until the girls touched the floor more dead than alive, and then his head fell back and the life seemed to go suddenly out of him like the flame out of a candle, leaving only the dead wick.

As they were carrying him out I noticed for the first time that a woman was holding his hand. It was that frail little wisp of a Susy, that used to blush and tremble if you spoke to her suddenly, and here she was quite quiet and steady in the midst of this great crowd.

“His sister, I suppose?” one of the doctors said to her.

“No, sir. If he lives I will be his wife.” The old gentleman was very respectful to her after that I noticed.