"Huh! Consarn it! I knew you kids was playin' me fer a fool," roared the circus manager when he looked into the cut. "How'er you're goin' to hitch anything around that animal, I'd like to know?"
"We don't intend to hitch anything around him. We're going to make a sling of that big blasting mat and raise him out that way."
"Yes!" roared the furious manager, "but how in tarnation are you going to get it under his belly? Think some one is going down there and dive between his legs with your blooming old sling, do yuh? That animal is nearly all under water, remember."
To tell the truth, that question had been bothering Bruce from the first. He had hoped that the water was only two or three feet deep. But there was at least ten feet of drainage in the quarry hole! He stood beside Old Nanc and bit his lips in his embarrassment. Luck seemed against him. Was everything going to fall through at the last moment?
He did not answer the irate manager, but began to turn one of the headlights slowly so its rays illuminated the west wall of the hole. Then suddenly the light paused, and a smile crept over the boy's face. The white beams had revealed to him a shelf of marble two feet above the water-line and at least ten feet across, skirting the lower edge of the west wall. He saw defeat turned into victory!
"Will that elephant mind his trainer?" Bruce demanded of the manager.
"Huh! Will he? Well, you'd better guess he will!" stormed the man.
"Then everything is simple. You lower the trainer in a bo'son's chair over the west wall there and down to that ledge of marble. He can coax the animal out of the water and up on the rocks, and after that we can send a couple more men down with the sling and they can do the rest. See the plan?"
"Well, I'll be hanged! You win, young feller," said the manager, smiling for the first time since the accident.
At this point the lads of the Owl Patrol reached the quarry hole trundling several empty wheelbarrows. Jiminy Gordon was carrying the remains of the last roll of wire.