"Pull on the one next you," cried Spite, who had himself laid hold of one of the sound cables, and was pushing down upon it with all his might. "Mine holds. It is fast to the second pier in yonder bush, I am sure. How with yours?"
"It is all right," answered Hide, "I am willing to venture on it."
Nearly fifteen hundred millimetres distant was another and taller bush in which pier No. 1 of the bridge was built. The Pixies could not see this since the darkness of the night and the shadow of the leaves hid the white outlines of the web-wall. But they knew that it must be there, and therefore crept upon the silken ropes each upon one, and began their journey.[AA]
Three thousand millimetres above the ground, for the whole distance from bush to bush over that single coil of rope those two creatures crawled. The cables shook, swayed and bent down, but neither parted, and the adventurous Pixies landed safely on top of the pier.
Fig. 44.—A Cobweb Bridge Across a Path.
The next pier was in a clump of bushes thirty-five hundred millimetres away, not in a direct course, but angling slightly across the field. The architects of the Old Bridge had taken advantage of the brushwood between the hill and lake. But as the shrubs grew at irregular distances from each other, and in various lines of direction, the course of the bridge was somewhat broken from the right line. Only one cable remained of those that had united pier No. 1 and pier No. 2. The scouts must therefore cross singly. To add to the danger a Brownie sentinel was stationed underneath the cable, about midway between the piers.
"What say you, Hide?" asked the chief, "shall we go on?"