“Well, I haven’t even a piece of a match. I meant to bring a pocketful, but I forgot it.”
With caution, the two cadets moved around the now semi-dark belfry. At every step the glass crunched under their feet.
“With the ring gone we can’t get any hold on the trap door,” sighed Pepper. “Jack, it looks as if we were booked to stay here for some time.”
“That’s so. But don’t you think the others will come to our aid, if we don’t get back to the Hall soon?”
“Maybe—but they may wait longer than we want them to.”
“Wonder if we can’t climb down from the outside? We could use the bell rope.”
The boys approached the window into which the moonlight was streaming and peered out. All they could see was the church roof and the roadway some distance from the building, for the edge of the roof cut off a sight of the ground directly below.
“I think I’ll try the rope,” said Jack.
“If we only had Andy along he’d go down the rope like a monkey,” returned Pepper, remembering Andy Snow’s acrobatic cleverness.
The bell rope ran from the bell down through a hole in the floor to the lower vestibule of the church. The boys pulled on it and it came up a length of probably sixty feet. Then it stuck fast.