“Look out!” he cried. “There he goes! Don’t let him get away! Oh, there he goes on top of the tent!”
In an instant the professor had pushed his way through the crowd, and seeing a rope hanging from the top of the front pole of the hangar he began to climb up it, the frail structure swaying with his weight.
“Come back! Come back!” yelled Jerry. “That won’t hold you!” But the scientist kept on up the rope.
[CHAPTER XV]
A BREAKDOWN
The crowd, which at first had been inclined to be amused at the spectacle of the odd little man shinning up a rope, was somewhat aghast at Jerry’s cry. And indeed it was a perilous climb that Professor Snodgrass had essayed.
For the hangars were rather frail, and were only designed as shelters from the sun and rain, being merely poles set in the earth, with a light frame built on them, and muslin, or thin canvas, stretched over.
“Come down!” pleaded Jerry. “Don’t trust your weight to that tent, professor!”
“I must! I must get that insect!” he replied. “It is a very rare kind of flying grasshopper, and I can see it perched up on the ridge pole!”