“Doing the necessary preliminary work?” echoed Butler. “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”
“Then permit me to explain,” said Harry suavely. “I have ascertained that, by placing the theodolite over that peg yonder,”—pointing to a newly driven peg some four hundred feet away to the left—“I shall be able to get an uninterrupted view of the quebrada from top to bottom, and, by taking a series of vertical and horizontal angles from the top edge, can measure the contour of the two sides, at the point crossed by the survey line, with the nicest accuracy.”
“How do you mean?” demanded Butler.
Harry proceeded to elaborate his explanation, patiently describing each step of the intended operation, and making it perfectly clear that the elaborate series of unnecessary measurements demanded could be secured with the most beautiful precision.
“But,” objected Butler, “when you have taken all those angles you will have done only part of the work; you will still have to calculate the length of the vertical and horizontal lines subtended by them—”
“A matter of about half an hour’s work!” interjected Harry.
“Possibly,” agreed Butler. “But,” he continued, “I do not like your plan at all; I do not approve of it; it is amateurish and theoretical, and I won’t have it. A much simpler and more practical way will be for you to go down the quebrada at the end of a rope, measuring as you go.”
“That is one way certainly,” assented Harry; “but, with all submission, Mr Butler, I venture to think that it will not be nearly so accurate as mine. Besides, consider the danger. If the rope should happen to be cut in its passage over the sharp edge of that rock—”
“Look here,” interrupted Butler, “if you are afraid, you had better say so, and I will do the work myself. But I should like you to understand that timid people are of no use to me.”
The taunt was unjust, for Harry was not afraid; but he was convinced that his own plan was far and away the more expeditious and the more accurate, also it involved absolutely no danger at all; while it was patent to even the dullest comprehension that there was a distinct element of danger attaching to the other, inasmuch as that if anything should happen to the rope, the person suspended by it must inevitably be precipitated to the bottom, where a mountain stream roared as it leaped and boiled and foamed over a bed of enormous boulders.