All of them stared down into the aperture, but even the light from the hand torch failed to show them what lay below. They could catch glimpses of a rough, rocky wall, projecting roots of trees, and some sort of growing bushes, but if the child were down there they failed to discover anything of him.
“Well, who’s going down?” demanded Tubby, as though it were a foregone conclusion in his mind that such a course must follow. “I’d offer in a minute, only I’m sure Rob wouldn’t let me try it, while there are so many others present better fitted for the job than I am. But somebody must go down, and how can it be done when we haven’t got a sign of a rope with us?”
“Do you think I could risk dropping down by holding to the face of the wall, Rob?” asked Sim, quickly. If the other had answered in the affirmative, there was no question but that he stood ready to make the attempt without delay.
“Wait a bit and we’ll see,” the scout leader told him. “No need of doing anything in such a hurry. If Caleb’s down there, a few minutes more or less won’t hurt much; and it may mean a broken leg for you, Sim, if you slipped. I’ve got an idea that may pan out, and make up for the lack of a rope. Just back there I noticed a wild grapevine hanging from a tree. If we could cut that free, we might have a pretty good substitute for a rope, something like twenty feet long.”
“Fine for you, Rob!” cried Ralph, overcome with admiration. “How lucky you asked me for my little camp hatchet before we started out. Perhaps now you even anticipated having just such a need for the same! I’m beginning to believe you can see further ahead than any fellow I ever met.”
Rob made no response, although naturally enough this sort of genuine praise must have been pleasant to him; especially when coming from a fellow like the Adirondack boy, whom he was aching to convert to a new belief regarding the value scouts may have in a community.
Rob was already hacking away with a vim at the wild grapevine mentioned, having given the hand torch into the charge of Sim. It did not require many blows to sever the vine near its base, for Ralph apparently believed in keeping a fine cutting edge on his pet tool.
Once it was free, they seized hold and commenced to heave, but, of course, this was an effort without any response; the vine was too safely anchored to the branches of the tree to be dragged loose as easily as all that.
“Let me shin up, and cut it free, Rob,” suggested Sim, who was a great climber in his way, and never so happy as when sporting amidst the foliage of some great oak or beechnut tree.
“All right, if you say so, Sim,” the scout leader told him. “Be sure and get all the length you can, because we may need it. There’s no telling just how deep that hole will turn out to be.”