It was quickly reshaped, however, and Seaton went more gently about his task. He soon learned exactly how much pressure his hooks would stand, and also the best method of imbedding the sharp metal points in the rock of the monument. Then, both hooks holding, he drove the toe of one heavy boot into the stone and began climbing.
Soon, however, his right-hand hook refused to bite; the stone had so dulled the point of the implement that it was useless. After a moment's thought Seaton settled both feet firmly and, holding the shaft of the left-hand hook under his left elbow, bent the free end around behind his back. Then, both hands free, he essayed the muscle-tearing task of squeezing that point again into serviceability.
"Watch out, Dick—you'll fall!" Margaret called.
"I'll try not to," he called back cheerfully. "Took too much work and time to get up this far to waste it. Wouldn't hurt me if I did fall—but you might have to come over and pull me out of the ground."
He did not fall. The hook was repointed without accident and he continued up the obelisk—a human fly walking up a vertical column. Four times he had to stop to sharpen his climbers, but at last he stood atop the lofty shaft. From that eminence he could see not only the three peaks, but even the scene of confused activity which he knew marked the mouth of the gigantic well at whose bottom the Skylark lay. Margaret had broken off a small tree, and from the obelisk's top Seaton directed its placing as a transit man directs the setting of his head flag.
"Left—'way left!" His arm waved its hook in great circles. "Easy now!" Left arm poised aloft. "All right for line!" Both arms swept up and down, once. A careful recheck—"Back a hair." Right arm out, insinuatingly. "All right for tack—down she goes!" Both arms up and down, twice, and the feminine flagman drove the marker deep into the sand.
"You might come over here, Peg!" Seaton shouted, as he began his hasty descent. "I'm going to climb down until my hooks get too dull to hold, and then fall the rest of the way—no time to waste sharpening them—and you may have to rally 'round with a helping hand."
Scarcely a third of the way down, one hook refused to function. A few great plunging steps downward and the other also failed—would no longer even scratch the stubborn stone. Already falling, Seaton gathered himself together, twisted bars held horizontally beneath him, and floated gently downward. He came to ground no harder than he would have landed after jumping from a five-foot Earthly fence; but even his three-ply bars of hypermetal did not keep him from plunging several feet into that strangely unsubstantial hyperground.
Margaret was there, however, with her grating and her plate of armor. With her aid Seaton struggled free, and together they waded through the river and hurried to the line post which Margaret had set. Then, along the line established by the obelisk and the post, the man crashed into the thick growth of the jungle, the woman at his heels.