“Find out who it is—and if—if he is living,” replied the tall lad slowly. “Then we’ll have to plan some way of getting him up here.”
Ned laid aside the pack he had been carrying, and took off his coat. He wanted to be unhampered.
At the point where the trail ended, the gully’s sides were steep. As a matter of fact, as the boys learned later, the correct trail really swung aside from the gully, at that point, and went down into it at a place farther distant. But whoever had fallen over the precipice had evidently followed a false trail, and so, unexpectedly, had toppled over, perhaps in the darkness.
“Can you get down, Ned?” asked Jerry.
“Oh, I fancy I can manage it,” was the answer.
Ned had quickly located a place where the descent was easier than where the unfortunate man had fallen, and, a little later, the lad was scrambling down the slope toward the bottom.
Now and then, on the way down, he paused to pick out a less dangerous path, and then he kept on. Dirt and stones, dislodged by his progress, rattled toward the bottom. But that silent, huddled-up figure never moved, nor showed signs of life. The boys on the brink felt an ominous chill at their hearts.
Ned reached the bottom of the gully. Pausing only an instant to get his breath, he hurried toward the prostrate figure of the man, for he had come down some distance beyond him.
“Is it the professor?” Jerry hailed his chum from the height.
“Yes,” floated up the answer, faintly.