“Come back! Come back!” pleaded Jerry.
“Not until I get that insect!” replied the scientist. “It is very rare. Ah, I see you, my beauty! Keep still a moment longer and I’ll have you!”
He tried to reach up with a short net he took from his pocket, meanwhile supporting himself on the rope by one hand and by twisting his legs in the strands. But he could not quite stretch far enough.
Then he seemed to become aware of the dangerously swaying pole, which was becoming loose in the ground. The professor looked down at the crowd below him.
“He’ll fall in another minute,” predicted a man.
“Get a net!” ordered some one.
“There isn’t any,” was the reply.
“A ladder then! Get a ladder! He’ll be killed!”
The professor looked longingly at the grasshopper, then he gazed down at the crowd below him. To his credit be it said that he was not afraid. Yet he saw the impossibility of keeping on. And, if he slid down, the violent motion of the rope thus occasioned might have disastrous results.
“Come on, Ned and Bob, we’ve got to save him!” cried Jerry.