"Good work!" called the keeper. "Jefferson, toss up the line."
Eric caught it.
"Have you a spike or anything?" he called, "I'll haul it up!"
The keeper yanked out one of the spikes of the frame on which the line was faked and the boy carefully hauled it up, then drove it into the ice as hard as he could, using his heavy boot for a hammer. He next took the line, and wound it around the spike to help him in holding it.
"Now," he yelled through the storm, "some one can come up the rope."
"Muldoon," said the keeper to the Irishman, "you're about the lightest, you go up first."
"'Tis meself will do it," was the reply, "an' it's blitherin' idjits we were not to think o' the way the kid did it."
Then he shinned up the rope like a monkey on a stick.
With both Muldoon and Eric hanging to the rope, it was not long until five men got to the top. The keeper, seeing how successful Eric's plan had proved, ordered every man to cut for himself a good foothold in the ice, and then, tailing on to the rope, they got the apparatus-cart up the slope, two men behind trying to guide it from below. It was a difficult haul, but at last they got the cart to the summit, and, in order to keep it from sliding down, straddled the wheels atop.