“No use,” muttered Frank in a stage whisper. “I’ll get down for a little while and then we’ll try again.”
After ten minutes they re-formed the scaling position, with Frank again at the top. Success did not smile any more pleasantly on them the second time than the first.
“I can’t move either of those logs a single inch,” said Frank as he climbed down to the floor of twigs and leaves. “They’ve got them laid on tightly. In the first place, I don’t see how those two fellows got the logs in and dropped them over the hole so neatly. They must be awfully heavy.”
In the darkness of the hole the four boys stood close together, each breathing hard as a result of the exertions, each trying to think of a plan by which they might thwart the schemes of these crooks.
“When it comes right down to the last,” said Buster, “we can promise to pay for the dog when they come back this evening, and we can then get out.”
“We’ll be out of here somehow this very day, and we don’t pay that crook anything for anything! But if I get out of here in time to run him down, I’ll make him pay for the dirty trick he has played on us!” Frank was determined, and he was thoroughly angry over the affair.
“We surely missed our——”
Just as Lanky started to say something there came a shrill whistle outside the cabin, and all the boys listened intently. Again came the whistled signal, this time one that all the boys recognized.
It was the peculiar whistle of their former high school chum, Jack Eastwick—it could be no other! No one else had ever whistled like that!
Instantly Lanky’s fingers went to his mouth and he sent out a blast from his lips calculated to awaken the dead.