The Rupa Book Of Thrills And Spills Read online

  I reached out hesitantly and tickled his whiskers as you do a cat's. He bared his teeth slowly, lifted open his enormous mouth and grunted 'Ooh-ah.' It sounded like a very deep-voiced parson clearing his throat. Somehow, I had a feeling he'd suddenly said something, and I do believe it was an expression of pleasure.

  Suddenly there was a disturbance. The small, tawny lioness, Sevilla, had sprung from her heavy stool in a cloud of sawdust and seemed to be in mid-air, streaking towards me with claws outstretched. It was at that moment I realised that one must have eyes all over the place.

  'Watch the others!' shouted Court.

  Now I saw what a good teacher I had, for he placed himself with arms outstretched between me and the attacking lioness, and with a sharp clap of his hands—which is a trick known only to trainers—brought her to an abrupt stop. A sharp noise can often stop an animal bent on destruction much better than a hit. Otherwise, it probably would have been my last breathing moment. A reason no stranger is safe inside a cage of wild animals is the intense curiosity which often leads to these quick attacks.

  Sevilla glared for a few seconds with malevolent jewel eyes at Mr Court, then gave me a long, silent glance and walked, with tail swishing, to her stool.

  I had expected to be frightened. To my amazement, I discovered that instead of fear all I felt was anger. I marched straight over to the lioness and said passionately:

  'You naughty girl! How dare you!'

  I think she sensed my anger, and I suddenly had a feeling that these animals were like any others, only a little more dangerous. Show them you are afraid, and they will surely see it and take advantage. I stood right in front of her, looking into her eyes and thinking: 'Yes, just you dare try that again, lady!'

  And slowly her ears drooped and her big face became hangdog and she blew down her nose in what was obviously embarrassment. Later, she was to become one of my best show-lions. I did not dare show it, but she looked a darling after her defeat.

  I looked round the cage then and saw all the other four pairs of amber eyes watching me and the faces held up, as if startled. They all looked positively shocked. I thought the big paws of Sevilla were actually trembling.

  I did not know then that a lion will sometimes quiver when he is contemplating villainy; also that he never roars when he is angry, only when he is hungry or bored; that in a few months I was to see Granada kill another lioness before my eyes, have my leg ripped in Spain, and be forced to stand staring, locked in a battle of wills with another lion named Nero, commanding him to be still, while his claw was actually hooked in my finger.

  'Don't forget to pay your respects to Guieto and Granada,' said Mr Court.

  As I slowly approached Guieto he bared, I should imagine, every tooth in his mouth, but turned his head from side to side as I stroked his whiskers with the butt end of my whip. Granada sat quite still. She looked a queer character: frightfully clean coat—rather, I thought, like the matron of a hospital—only the little cap was missing from her head.

  After I had, under Mr Court's instructions, fed each lion with little bits of meat from a pointed stick and talked to them as I was doing so—trying to win their confidence a little—we backed towards the door. Erik opened it just enough for me to squeeze through.

  Mr Court sent my little party of five friends back to their living quarters. Away they scuttled up the runway, glad to be rid of us, also knowing it was nearing lunch time.

  'So far, so good,' said Mr Court. 'Now comes the rather messier side. Come round the side of the last wagon. Martin,' he called to another beast-man, 'bring the meat, and lend the lady an overall and the knife.'

  Martin did as he was told.

  I looked on in horror as a huge piece of horse-meat was placed by hooks on the wooden table at the side of the end wagon.

  'Put the coat on, take up the knife and let me see if you can cut up five nice big steaks,' I was told. 'Also, dissect all small bone-splinters.'

  'How big a steak?' I asked.

  'Oh, like this,' said Mr Court, stretching his hands to show the size. 'Actually they eat about fifteen pounds a day each, but we don't weigh, we go with our eye measurement and judgment. The first is for Zulton; she likes all meat. Belmonte likes meat and a bone, so you'll probably need the axe too.'

  I felt the grooms were silent, but laughing a little. Well, I'd show them! I took the sharp knife and started to cut. The meat felt very slippery and I admit I did not like holding it one bit.

  'You see,' said Court, 'a lion trainer has many jobs to perform, and many responsibilities, too. It's not as easy as people imagine, to have the training and care of animals, especially wild ones.'

  I quite believed this when, with a groom's help, I had cut five nice steaks out and they were laid neatly side by side on the scrubbed board. By this time the wagons were swaying with a peculiar rhythm as the hungry family paced back and forth, waiting for lunch to be served.

  'Now,' said my teacher, 'you will take the iron bar and open each little door in front of each wagon in turn. Always see that the safety-chain is in place, so that the door opens only so far and no farther. It's just enough for a groom to get the meat through on a fork. And please keep at a distance, or they might swing out and catch your arm instead of the meat.'

  I took the bar with the little crook at the end and we approached the first cage. The rattling inside grew louder, with excitement and anticipation. However, I managed to insert the tip of the bar, as I was shown, into the first door and, on the word 'lift', I pushed. The door shot up. At the same second the groom inserted the fork with the meat, which was seized with tremendous force and immediately examined.

  It all seemed to go smoothly: I suddenly had a picture in my head of a first-class dining-car on a train where we were the waiters, supplying the diners with their dinner, providing the quickest possible service.

  Then I waited with great apprehension to hear my fate and was told, 'so far, so good,' and that this afternoon I should be tried out to see how long it would take me to learn to use a whip in the correct and safe way. I also learnt that, if everything proceeded to plan, I should give my first performance before the public in three weeks' time.

  I was so happy I could have hugged my five new friends. Instead, I had to be content watching the grooms putting in the dry clean straw for the night.

  Spills galore as the author, a famous parachutist and 'stunt' flier, recounts the following exciting story of his exploits...

  Two Lovely Black Eyes

  JOHN TRANUM

  It was while I was at Long Beach that I struck up a partnership with a man whom we will call Allen. This man had, in his earlier days, been a balloonist, and it was in this capacity that he had picked up his air-knowledge; he had now made a good business-name for himself as a stunt-men's agent for film-work. Unfortunately, like many good business-men, he had a few unpleasant little faults, which finally led to his being suppressed by the American Government.

  His chief fault lay in selling tenth-rate equipment to over-eager youths. Parachutes in those days were difficult to get, and inexperienced stunters jumped at the chance of obtaining them on the comparatively easy terms which Allen offered.

  As a result, the death-rate for parachutists rose alarmingly, and I would certainly have been numbered amongst his victims had I not been more cautious and experienced.

  My first big mishap with this man, I must confess, was mainly due to my own temerity. He had, amongst other curiosities, a huge parachute of some forty-five feet in diameter—a breadth nearly twice the normal. This instrument went by the uncompromising name of'Allen's Hoodoo', owing to its inexplicable perverseness and inconsistency. For some parts of its flight it would behave rationally; then it would suddenly kick up its heels, as it were, and reveal its latent nastiness. Several people had tried to 'break in' this chute, and had invariably met with disaster.

  One day I went up to Allen and said, 'I'll have a shot at old Hoodoo.'

  'Is that so?' he replied.
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  'Sure,' I said. 'I'll jump it any time.'

  He shrugged his shoulders. 'Good enough. You can give it the air on your next stunt.'

  'Sure!' I said, having no doubt on the matter.

  My next stunt happened to be one for a film made at Dycer's Airport, where I was supposed to be the hero making his escape from a machine—I am not sure for what reason. I could easily have used one of his ordinary twenty-four-foot parachutes for this occasion as the job was quite a simple one but I had arranged to jump with 'Hoodoo' at the earliest opportunity, and this happened to be it.

  I started off quietly enough; the chute opened in the appropriate manner, and all seemed to be well. Then I started to swing. Every parachute swings you a little, but this one swung me a lot. The trouble was, of course, that my weight was not close to sufficient to rein in the abnormal bulk of the chute, nor was my strength enough to counteract the swing by pulling at the cords, as is usually done in such an emergency.

  My swinging became more and more pronounced, and subsequently more dangerous, until it reached such a pitch that on some occasions I found myself looking down through the hole in the chute which should have been thirty feet above my head! Even so, I should not have felt much discomfort had I been swung back in the same manner as I had been swung up; but the truth was that centrifugal force deserted me at the zenith, and I fell almost perpendicularly, to be brought up with a terrific jolt at the end of the thirty-foot cords.

  But this was by no means my big concern. The nasty part of the business was still in store for me, and that was the small matter of when I hit earth. The swinging was whirling me around at the end of the cords like a stone in a monstrous sling, and I was quite likely to be dashed on the ground with such terrific force that nothing could be left of my body but pulp.

  It was pure luck that saved me—or most of me. I missed the ground by a few feet on an upward swing, and my contact with earth was made with no other mediator than mere gravity. The final drop was twenty to thirty feet, and I hit the ground in practically a sitting position, breaking the tail-bone of my spine and receiving—two record black eyes!

  How the black eyes came about I cannot tell; it is a question for a physician to answer, but it seemed as if my forehead had been sandbagged.

  When they dug me out of the soil, they found that I still showed some signs of life, so they stuck me in an automobile and drove me round the field —to show the people that I wasn't dead! Throughout this triumphant parade, I was quite conscious of all that was going on, but, when we reached a comfortable spot behind the hangar, I slid into a deep sleep, and did not regain my wits for a week.

  It was while I was in bed and mending that I read an account of the death of a boy to whom Allen had sold one of his bogus parachutes. The parachute concerned in the case was one I knew well, for some time back I had examined it and declared it an enemy to all mankind. The silk had looked promising enough, but the harness, I could see almost at a glance, was rotten.

  This boy had been an Easterner, recently versed in the arts of flying, and had taken it into his head that no airman was worthy of the name without having made a parachute descent. So he bought the kit from Allen, and jumped without even inspecting it.

  The silk opened and caught the air immediately—in fact, too suddenly, and put more than the average strain on the harness. But that harness couldn't have stood the pull of a handkerchief; the strappings snapped and broke away; the next instant the youth's body was hurtling through the air at 120 miles an hour. He fell between two gigantic tanks near the airport, and it took an hour to locate his body, or what remained of it.

  But Allen didn't care. It was only a little while after this disaster that he hired out another malfunctioning parachute. This time the harness was in fairly good condition—Allen seldom made his chutes weak twice in the same place—but the cords were fearful stuff: common twisted fish-line. The boy would have been better off with bits of bootlace.

  When he jumped, the silk opened up just enough to jerk him into an upright position. Then the twist got to work. If you tie a piece of twisted line to a bucket, put a weight in it, and hold it out at arm's length, you will see that the bucket slowly commences to revolve. That is what happened to the boy. As soon as his weight pulled on the cords, they twisted up into themselves and muddled each other; the whole mass of cording was reduced to a cable, and the parachute, which should have been spread like a canopy above him, was drawn into a mere bundle. Thus the chute offered no more resistance to the air than the poor fellow himself, and together they fell, like a comet and its tail, to their destruction.

  It was about this time that I began to sit up and take notice. The deaths, coming so close together, and both so obviously due to shameful faults in Allen's handiwork, gave me food for thought. Yet I did not at once throw up my partnership with him, for, after all, he was quite a good agent, and I didn't help him make his rotten parachutes. One day, however, something happened that finally made me decide to steer clear of him. This matter was not one of life and death, but a far more acute reason—money.

  As my agent, he had secured for me a job with a film company. The stunt was fairly common, and not worth mentioning. When it was over, and the time came for collecting my money, I went to Allen—who had already been paid by the company—and demanded my wages.

  You'll have to wait for it,' was his reply.

  I want it now,' I said, and so I did.

  'Well, you can't have it. I'll pay you all in good time.'

  'Oh, just when you feel like it, eh?'

  'That's it.'

  'Well,' I said, 'that's no good to me.'

  So I quit.

  As he owed me for my stunt, I pinched one of his parachutes.

  But Allen and everything about him was rotten to the core, the parachute was a dud.

  Meanwhile, the circus was now due to take another trip round the counties, but this time in the Eastern States. For this trip I was equipped with a swift Nieuport battle-plane, which was a refreshing change from the older aircrafts I had been used to. Later on, as luck would have it, this same Nieuport nearly killed me.

  When we reached San Antonio, Texas, a fellow introduced me to the Irvin parachute, which differed from the instruments I was used to on one big point: where the old chute had been pulled open by the static line, the Irvin parachute was released by the rip-cord.

  Upon examining this parachute, I found that this rip-cord pulled out with it two long, thin steel pins, which kept the flaps of the pack closed. When the rip-cord was pulled, the pins were jerked out, the flaps flew open and out shot a tiny pilot parachute which instantly opened and pulled the main parachute out after it.

  The amazing part about it was that it all took place in the wink of an eyelid.

  I confess that up until now I had been suspicious of the rip-cord innovation, but, as soon as I tried one of these Irvin parachutes, their enormous superiority over the type I had been using was clear.

  It was just after I had secured one of these new parachutes that we had the only two mishaps of the voyage—but these accidents were altogether apart from the stunt. The first was when we flew into a sandstorm, with only a couple of hours' petrol in our tanks. A sandstorm is not a pretty thing to face, even when you are on the ground, and, when you are travelling at the speed of an express train into it, anything can happen. Apart from that—in an aeroplane, good visibility is essential when flying near the ground.

  We had been following a railway track, for in this district a forced landing might mean days or weeks of waiting before anything or anyone came near us, and the locomotive was our only link with civilisation. As we were bound to land somewhere and somehow, we headed as near to the track as we dared and came down.

  The plane jolted as it met earth, but that did not worry us. After a brief taxying, we came to a sudden but satisfactory standstill, and all that was left now was mutual congratulations on our safe landing.

  Just then I wiped the sand off my face, and m
ade a most extraordinary discovery. The plane had lost both its wings!

  I was rather annoyed.

  A plane, on landing, is not expected to collapse. No doubt very soon we shall have collapsible machines, but ours wasn't one—at least, not in theory. For our plane to renounce its most vital parts just when we had brought it safely to earth was, we thought, a sorry show of ingratitude.

  Feeling more sorrow than anger, I peered over the sides of the fuselage and tried to mark, amidst the swirl of the sand, some sign of the wings in the confusion behind us. And then I saw what had happened.

  When we landed, our wheels had struck a narrow strip of bare earth between two clumps of cacti. Taxing forward, the fierce vegetation had seized our wings in its spiky claws and torn them to smithereens!

  We left the machine to rust and sat on the railway-track for four hours, during which time the storm abated, and we were able to stop the next train. The officials, seeing the plight of our only means of locomotion, were kind enough to give us a lift, and the aeroplane, for all I know, still moulders in the desert.

  The other mishap was of a more personal affair, and the cause of this was once again the ill-natured and misanthropic cactus, which, although some claim it to be good at heart, has a most uncompromising exterior. This time I was landing quite normally with a parachute, but had been blown a little off the beaten track.

  I have never jumped into a bunch of upturned bayonets, but I should imagine I am qualified to describe such an experience. My chute swung me into the biggest clump of cacti in all North America—I am sure it was selected specially for the purpose— and my body was transformed into a writhing human pincushion. The pins, I will add, were about the size of knitting-needles.

  They had some trouble in getting these things out of my flesh, and it wasn't exactly a holiday for me either.

  A famous essayist gives us a blow-by-blow account of a barefisted boxing match in the early days of the sport...