A Slippery Elm. Page 266.
Frank escaped without hurt, but he gave Dan a bloody nose with the heels of his shoes, while Horace, who was undermost, barked both shins on a rock that just broke the surface of the water.
Learning wisdom from experience, they stripped the bark at the next trial farther from the limb, ascending one at a time, and met with no difficulty. The branch on which the nest hung bent over the river. Frank, grasping the branch, put his feet on the one directly beneath it, and thus gradually worked his way till he came very near the nest, and the parent birds began to fly around his head.
But the branch now bent so much that Dan, who had been the most anxious to obtain the nest and its contents, begged him to desist and give it up; so did Horace; but Frank's blood was up and his pride roused, for there was a crowd of boys looking at him.
"If I fall," he said, "I shall fall into the water, and I can swim ashore."
At length he could touch the outside of the nest with the tips of his fingers.
"O, if my arm was only two inches longer!"
"Don't, Frank," said Dan, "go any farther. It frightens me to see the limb bend so."
Scarcely were the words uttered, when the limb upon which he stood broke as he was holding to the branch above by only one hand. Reaching after the nest with the other, he fell feet foremost into the river, catching by the limbs as he went. There were boys still in the water, who, instantly swam to him, while Dan and Horace, hurrying down the tree, plunged in. Frank kept himself on top of the water, after rising, but when the boys reached him, said,—