"I don't know," said Clive.
"Can you stop up the opening?"
"No."
"Can you keep your heads oat of the windows?"
"We'll try. But I wish you'd only thought of bringing a ladder, so as to get us out first, before smoking him."
"Yes, I wish we had," said Frank, thoughtfully. "But never mind," he added, cheerily, "there's no use going back for one, because, you see, we'll have you out of that long before a ladder could be brought here."
It was only by yelling at the top of their voices that they were able to make themselves heard by one another, for the crowd behind the house still kept up their yells, and knockings, and thumpings, and waited to hear that the wild boar had fled. As the time passed without any such news, they were only stimulated to fresh efforts, and howled more fearfully and yelled more deafeningly.
"There's an awful waste of energy and power about here, somehow," said Frank. "There ought to be some way of getting at that wretched beast, without all this nonsense. Here we are,—I don't know how many of us, but the whole population of a town, at any rate, against one,—and what's worse, we don't seem to make any impression."
Meanwhile the guide had gone off among the crowd, and while Frank was grumbling, he was busying himself among them, and was engaged in carrying out a very brilliant idea that had just suggested itself to him. In a short time he returned with an armful of something, the nature of which Frank could not quite make out.
"What have you got there?" he asked. "What are you going to do?"