“I’ll try it!” he said and began stealing toward the edge of the wood where the aeroplane was half hidden in the foliage and under the limbs of the trees. He stepped as carefully as an Indian scout, with hands outstretched, feeling his way and ready to climb in a flash another trunk the instant it became necessary. He knew he was advancing so silently that if the brute was within two or three yards he could not hear him.
Harvey took comfort in the thought that whatever might happen, he was through with the refuge that had tried him so sorely. There couldn’t be another precisely like it and that of itself was immeasurable relief.
“I should prefer a big tree even with the risk of his following me—Confound it!”
Just then he caught his foot in a thick root which lay parallel to his course and with the free end projecting toward him. He raised his shoe to step over it, but the obstruction rose also, and despite a fierce effort to save himself he fell forward on his hands and knees with a racket that could have been heard far away in the stillness. Certain that his foe would be upon him the next moment, he made a dash in the dim light, but was brought up standing by an obtruding limb which slipped under his chin and fairly lifted him clear of the ground. For a single second, he fancied his head had been shorn off his shoulders, and he made a wild dash for another sapling. He collided with a trunk and in his panic turned again, and then suddenly halted.
Surely, if the bear was anywhere near, he would rush for the spot, but he heard nothing. He now changed his course so as to reach the open within a few yards of his aeroplane. Most likely the brute had grown tired of waiting and gone off. The youth might have left his sapling some time before and escaped all he had suffered.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROFESSOR LEADS THE WAY.
HARVEY HAMILTON was making his way toward the aeroplane, when his right hand touched a big lump at his hip. Reaching down to learn what it was, he drew forth his six-shooter.
“Well, I’ll be hanged! I’m the champion idiot of the twentieth century!” he exclaimed, with a pang of self-disgust as he looked at the small weapon. “Every chamber is loaded, and I have a lot of cartridges in my pocket, but I forgot all about them until this minute! While I was chafing my legs on that limb I might have filled the bear with lead. His snout wasn’t a dozen feet from me, and though I didn’t see clearly I couldn’t have missed him if I had tried.”