The pipe broke beneath Joe’s weight. The lad felt it going and grabbed frantically at the upper part that was still fastened to the roof. He caught it and held on, his legs dangling in the air directly over the pile of rocks more than twenty feet below. To fall on those rocks meant broken limbs or death!
[CHAPTER II—JUST IN TIME]
At just the place in the pipe that Joe had grabbed there was a band running around it, perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. It was smooth and slippery, but yet gave more support to his clutching hands than would have been afforded by the pipe itself. To this precarious support poor Joe clung with desperation that was rapidly becoming despair as he felt his arms tiring and his hands slipping. A glance below had told him what awaited him if he fell on that pile of rocks.
Simultaneously with the breaking of the pipe Bob had flung himself at full length on the roof, with his arm extended over the edge. His feet felt around frantically and found a cleat in the roof in which he gripped his toes. Reaching as far as he could over the edge with one hand and holding on with the other, he found that he could just reach Joe’s hands with his own.
If the roof had been flat, he might have been able by sheer strength to pull his friend up. But it was sloping, and, as he lay, his feet were considerably higher than his head. So he had no purchase, no way to brace himself and pull upward. As it was, he had to dig his toes tightly against the cleat just to sustain the weight of his own body.
There was imminent danger that if he even grasped Joe’s hand the added weight would pull him over the edge of the roof. But this did not deter him for a second. He reached down and caught Joe around one of his wrists.
“I can’t pull you up, Joe,” he panted; “but I can hold on to you until help comes.”
He lifted up his voice to shout for help, when just at that instant Herb Fennington and Jimmy Plummer turned the corner of the barn. They were talking and laughing gaily together, but stopped short with a cry of alarm as they saw the terrible plight of their friends.
“Quick! Quick!” cried Bob. “Get the ladder and put it up. Quick!”
There was no need of his frantic adjuration, for Jimmy and Herb understood instantly the tragedy that impended. They ran for the ladder, and with some difficulty, for it was long and heavy, put it up alongside the barn and close to Joe’s swaying figure.