"Come as quick as you can—nearly all in, and feel like I'm going to—faint, you know. Think of me, Lanky Wallace, actin' like that! But—it's awful—being turned upside-down this way! Hurry along!"
Lanky's words greatly mystified Frank, for as yet he had failed to get the first glimpse of his chum in trouble. Not for long, however, did this ignorance last.
"Well, Lanky Wallace sure has pulled a stunt I never saw equaled!" burst from the lips of the amazed and startled Frank, when, bursting through a barrier of thorny brushwood, he saw a swinging figure hanging head downward over the edge of a sheer drop that would measure a full twelve feet.
It was Lanky all right, though few of his friends would be able to recognize him if discovered in that awkward and ridiculous posture. One of his feet seemed to be entangled in a vine that grew from a fissure close to the top of the diminutive cliff, which, of course, assumed the size of a precipice to the unfortunate human pendulum.
But it was no laughing matter to Lanky. If left too long, he would come to a dangerous pass, since all the blood would go to his head, and so encompass his death.
He must have twisted and writhed with might and main in the endeavor to reach up a groping hand and obtain some sort of grip upon the vine that was the cause of his stumbling over the edge of that cliff.
Now he had stopped all that useless work and was swinging back and forth, for all the world like the weight in a great grandfather clock in the Allen home at Columbia.
Losing not a second in inaction, Frank hastened to make his way up one side of the rocky wall, which he was able to do by searching for toe-holds.
These did not always prove as substantial as he would have wished, for once he slipped and slid backward several feet, amidst a vast falling of shale and earth.
Poor despairing Lanky gave vent to an agonized howl on hearing the racket thus made. He naturally fancied, not being able to see a thing on account of the coat dangling over his head, that his rescuer had gotten himself into some serious predicament, which would "settle his—Lanky's—goose," since further delay must drive him frantic.