But a second later, Houdini bursts his cabinet and stands smiling and listening to the applause of a bewildered house. The orchestra with "Asleep in the Deep" helps to awaken the awful possibility of failure. An axe is kept at the ready, to break the glass in case of danger. The metal grill has been placed in the tank and pulleys haul the artist in mid-air, where he remains suspended by his feet ready for his plunge into the water below.
Ī few seconds later he drops, head first, into the tank the stocks are instantly fixed in place of a lid, the steel frets quickly cover the sides and top, leaving space in their design to give view of the performer's submerged head locks are bustled on, and a cabinet of draperies veil the rest. The steel frame is next passed over the body until at the base of the stocks, where it is clamped securely. Returning in swimming costume, Houdini would lie on his back in the center of the stage as members of the committee adjust his feet within the stocks and snap the locks. Inviting a representative committee of the audience, Houdini would retire for a moment or two to change while his assistants rapidly filled the tank from a high-pressure hose and with buckets of heated water from ornamental cauldrons at either side of the setting. To begin the trick, Houdini would devote five minutes to a detailed description of the tank, stocks, grill and steel tackle comprising the apparatus. With all its seeming danger, and the definite difficulties it presented, Houdini never failed in the escape.
 During his lifetime and for many years after, he was the only man to perform the escape from the Water Torture Cell., or anything quite like it. It was, in a sense, a "double challenge" —first, to the audience to solve and second to his imitators to try to design something even half as wonderful. His feet are manacled and when the tank is covered it is difficult to imagine how he can possibly escape. This is filled with water while Houdini is placed head down, in full view of the audience. The greatest and most sensational of all Houdini's escapes was without doubt his "Chinese Water Torture Cell." In this trick, Houdini was to escape an extraordinary contraption resembling a fish tank.
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