Watching Dick, Darrin began to feel wholly responsible for the whole awful predicament of his chum.
"I urged him on to it," thought Dave, with a rush of horror that his own peril could not have brought to him. "Oh, I hope the splendid old fellow does make this stunt safely!"
It seemed as though thousands were packed in the street below, every face upturned. The breath of the multitude came short and sharp. Two women and a girl fainted from the strain.
In a window in the building across the street a photographer poised his camera. Behind the shutter was a long-angled lens, fitted for taking pictures at a distance.
Just as Dick Prescott's arms were within two feet of the weather vane the photographer exposed his plate.
Dick, in the meantime, was moving in a sort of dumb way now. The keenness of his senses had left him. He moved mechanically; he knew what he was after, and he kept on. Yet he seemed largely to have lost the power to realize the danger of his position.
A-a-ah! He was up there now, holding to the weathervane! His legs curled doggedly around the flagstaff. He had need now to use all the strength in his legs, for he must use one hand to disentangle the black scarf, which lay twisted about the vane just over his head. But it was the right scarf. The glint and dazzle of the diamonds was in his eyes.
How the extreme end of that flag pole quivered. It seemed to the boy as though the pole must bend and snap, what with the pressure of the heavy wind and the weight of his body!
Slowly, laboriously, mechanically, like one in a trance, Dick employed his left hand in patiently disentangling the black web from the trap in which it had been caught.
At last the scarf was free. Most cautiously Dick lowered his left hand, tucking the jeweled fabric carefully into the inner pocket of his coat.