Then they went to the edge of the crevasse. Jack was sitting up with one of the blankets from the sled drawn about him for warmth. He looked up as they shouted down to him.
“Jack,” hailed Tom, “do you feel all right now?”
“Sound as a bell, but I wish you could get me out of here.”
“We are going to try to. Can you fasten this rope around you?”
As he spoke, Tom held up the bark rope.
“Easily. Lower it away. If it wasn’t for this ankle of mine I might have tried climbing out, but I have had to cross that sort of exercise off my list.”
The rope was sent snaking down to Jack, and was found to be amply long, for the steep bank was not more than forty feet high instead of the fifty they had estimated.
As its end came within his grasp, Jack seized the improvised rope and made a loop in it which he knotted under his arm-pits.
“All ready?” hailed Tom.
“All ready.”