“Now hold on there for a minute, George,” called Andrews. He produced from one of his pockets a ball of very thick twine, or cord, to one end of which he tied a small stick of kindling-wood, brought from the tender. Next he leaned out from the cab and threw the stick into the air. It flew over the telegraph wire, and then to the ground, so that the cord, the other end of which he held in his left hand, passed up across the wire, and so down again. To the end which he held Andrews tied a good-sized axe.
“Do you see what I want?” he asked the boy, who was resting himself on the cross-bar supporting the wire.
George needed no prompting. The cord was eight or nine feet away from him; to reach it he must move out on the telegraph wire, hand over hand, with his feet dangling in the air. Slowly he swung himself from the cross-bar to the wire, and began to finger his way towards the cord. But this was an experience new to the expert tree-climber; ere he had proceeded more than three feet his hands slipped and he fell to the ground. The distance was thirty-five feet or more, and the lookers-on cried out in alarm. The boy would surely break his legs—perhaps his neck!
But while Master George might not be an adept in handling a wire he had learned a few things about falling from trees. As he came tumbling down he gracefully turned a somersault and landed, quite unhurt, upon his feet.
“I’ll do it yet,” he maintained pluckily, running back to the telegraph pole.
“Wait, George,” shouted Andrews. He leaped from the cab, and taking a new piece of the cord, tied it around the lad’s waist. “If I had the sense I was born with I might have done that first,” he muttered.
George began his second ascent of the pole, and this time reached the top without hindrance or mishap. Andrews now fastened the axe to the cord, of which George had one end; in a few seconds the axe had been drawn up by the boy. Then, with his left hand holding on to the cross-bar, and his legs firmly wound around the pole, he took the axe in his right hand and hit the wire. Three times did he thus strike; at the third blow the wire snapped asunder, and the longer of the two pieces fell to the ground. He let the tool fall, and slid down the pole as the men cheered him lustily. Andrews now took the axe, cut the dangling wire in another place, and threw the piece thus secured into the tender.
“They can’t connect that line in a hurry,” he said, as he turned to George with the remark: “Well, my son, you’re earning your salt!” George, blushing like a peony, felt a thrill of pride.
“And now, fellows,” added Andrews, addressing the men in the baggage car, “it will be best to take up a rail, so that if we are pursued, by any chance, the enemy will have some trouble in getting on any further.”
The occupants of the car, headed by Watson, sprang to the ground. Andrews handed him a smooth iron bar, about four feet in length. “We have no track-raising instruments,” explained the leader, “but I guess this will answer.” Watson managed to loosen some of the spikes on the track, in the rear of the train, by means of this bar; later several of his companions succeeded in placing a log under the rail and prying it up so that at last the piece of iron had been entirely separated from the track.