On this occasion, however, the collapse came when I was barely a third of the way through, and with scarcely any warning. I leapt aside, but the descending stack grazed my scalp as I slipped from under. I was able to realize then something of the feelings of Marmion when he galloped out of Tantallon Castle across the rising drawbridge, and felt the falling portcullis bars "raze his plume." There were probably not far short of a thousand people present, and in the silence that followed the fall of the stack they sent up, as with one voice, a loud cry of horror. I was completely hidden from view by the clouds of dust that always arise on these occasions, and they were quite sure I had been killed. All I lost, however, were my tools and cap and jacket, which were buried under the mass of masonry. They are there now. It transpired afterwards that the chimney had been built too close to the banks of the Wandle River, so that its foundations had become undermined--hence its premature collapse. One reads not infrequently of fights with madmen in mid-air. I used to regard these as fiction pure and simple, until such an adventure actually befell myself. It happened at Deptford, about two years ago. I had been engaged to repair the outside of the top of the shaft at the waterworks there. The fires were not drawn, and the heated fumes and smoke that were continually being belched from the mouth of the chimney made the job a far from pleasant one, especially as the day happened to be exceptionally warm, with scarcely a breath of air stirring. Still, a "jack" takes but little notice of these things, and I and my two assistants worked steadily on for some hours. I was just thinking of giving the word to knock off for dinner, when the man nearest me suddenly stopped of his own accord, threw down his tools, straightened himself up on the coping, facing inwards, and clasped his hands above his head, like a man about to take a dive--which was, in point of fact, precisely what he was going to do. Only, it was not into water that he intended plunging, but straight down the reeking chimney, to be presently incinerated by the flaming furnaces far below! I think the two of us that were left divined his intention at the same moment. "Quick! Grab him!" I cried, and we both dashed at him. Only just in time, for his head and shoulders were disappearing within the mouth of the shaft as we clutched him by the legs. It was a wonder that he did not drag us down with him, for he struggled fiercely. But it was two to one, and eventually we overpowered him and hauled him out on the coping. There he lay, limp and gasping, half choked with the fumes, while we bound him hand and foot with a ladder-rope. Then, with assistance, we managed to lower him to the ground. The doctors said that the heat of the sun had temporarily affected his brain.