“I’ll try it,” he said, “but first I’ll take off my coat. That’ll make me thinner.”
He shed his stout hunting jacket and took the axe out of his belt. Then, aided by Mountain Jim, he clambered up and looked outside. The storm was rolling away to the southeast, and before long, as he could see, the sun would be shining once more. If only they could get out they could resume their journey without delay.
As Jim had foretold, it was not a hard matter for the lithe, slim boy to wriggle through the crack, narrow as it had appeared to be from below. Ralph stuck his head through and then drew the rest of his body up. In a minute he was on the outside of the cave and free.
“Oh, Jim,” he called back, “can’t you make it, too?”
“Not me. My two hundred pounds would never get through that mouse hole,” responded Jim with perfect good humor. “I guess I’ll have to stay here till I get thin enough to follow you.”
Ralph slid down the rough face of the rock and then fell to examining its base eagerly. It rested on a small terrace just in front of the cave, but it didn’t take him long to see that no ordinary means would dislodge it.
“How about you?” shouted Jim from within his rocky prison.
“I’m afraid there’s no hope, Jim,” was the disheartening reply. “It’s planted as solidly as Gibraltar, outside here. A giant couldn’t move it.”
“Well, as there’s no giants likely to happen along, that don’t much matter,” said Jim in his dry way, from within the cave.