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Between these peaks the cloth sags down, and is made fast along the edges by intricate and confusing guy-ropes. The tent is shallow, not more than six feet deep, and from twelve to thirty feet long, according to the wealth of the owner and the size of his family, two things which usually correspond. The sides and the partitions are sometimes made of woven reeds, like coarse matting.
It was to be held down by two guy-ropes, each between four and five hundred yards in length, by which, when at the full length of its tether, the balloon was to be hauled about in any direction, pulled down, or allowed to rise in obedience to the wishes of the aeronaut, who was to communicate his orders by means of a system of signals.
But finally the lots are reached, and there are the tents, with all kinds of flags snapping from the centerpoles and the guy-ropes. And there are the sideshows. Alas! You never thought of the sideshows when you asked if you could go. And now it's too late. It must be fine in the side-shows. I never got to go to one. I didn't have the money.
Then he slipped to the next corner, where the process was repeated. "Hurrah!" burst from Danny Grin, as the fourth corner stake was driven, and now the tent began to take shape. "You fellows holding the poles may let go of them now," called Tom. "Come and help with the other stakes and guy-ropes."
Also he acquired the knack of sleeping at odd times, whenever opportunity offered and under any conditions. When he had grown thus wise, and when he had ceased to stumble over guy-ropes and tent-stakes, Calico received promotion. He was put in as outside horse of the leading pair in the grand entry.
At half-past eight o'clock a derrick, or mast of thirty feet in height, was erected and properly supported with guy-ropes, for suspending the block for raising the first principal beam of the beacon; and a winch machine was also bolted down to the rock for working the purchase-tackle.
A few minutes later she heard a stumble, a crash, and a loud exclamation in Arabic. The man had fallen over one of the heavy stones to which the guy-ropes were fastened. She looked up smilingly, and wondered whether he would understand her if she said in French that she hoped he had not injured himself. The glass was broken, but the bottle was intact, for the native had caught it as he fell.
Slowly they approached the vacant lots beyond the business section of the town, known year in and year out to the youth of S as "the show grounds." Now they began to encounter straggling, envious atoms of the populace, wanderers who could not produce the admission fee and who were not permitted by the rough canvasmen to venture inside the charmed circle laid down by the "guy-ropes."
Each was sitting in the middle of his own wheel, and all the wheels were joined to one another; and the whole pendent fabric hung by fine ropes from the wire above, and was in some cases steadied by guy-ropes, thrown thirty feet off to little trees alongside. I watched them until nightfall, and evidently, to them, after their day's rest, their day's work had just begun.
Two have thus been thrown recently within eighteen months in the fields opposite Tolworth Farm. The elm drags up its own roots, which are often only a fringe round its butt, and leaves a hollow in the earth, as if it had been simply stood on end and held by these guy-ropes.
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