Plainly, had the upper part of the weapon become detached, the sword swallower's career must infallibly have come to an untimely end.

Again, in New York, when swallowing 14 nine-inch bayonet swords at once, Cliquot had the misfortune to have a too sceptical audience, one of whom, a medical man who ought to have known better, rushed forward and impulsively dragged out the whole bunch, inflicting such injuries upon this peculiar entertainer as to endanger his life, and incapacitate him for months.
In one of his acts Cliquot swallows a real bayonet sword, weighted with a cross-bar, and two 18-lib.

dumb bells.

In order to vary this performance, the sword-swallower allows only a part of the weapon to pass into his body, the remainder being "kicked" down by the recoil of a rifle, which is fixed to a spike in the centre of the bar, and fired by the performer's sister.
The last act in this extraordinary performance is the swallowing of a gold watch.

As a rule, Cliquot borrows one, but as no timepiece was forthcoming at the private exhibition where I saw him, he proceeded to lower his own big chronometer into his aesophagus by a slender gold chain.