"We could ne'er find the right passage again," he said. "There must be several of them branching oot of that cavern. Mon, it's tough luck that we took the wrong ane, but we must aye try to find a way oot of our deefeculties."
"It's too wide to jump it," said Jack despairingly, "and unless we do that I don't see how we can get across."
"Nor do I—yet," said Sandy, looking about him with sharp, intent eyes.
But all at once he gave a joyous cry.
"We could get across if we had a bit bridge," he said.
"Why don't you wish for an airship while you are at it?" retorted Jack. "It would be just as easy to get one as to find a bridge."
"I'm nae so sure aboot that noo," said Sandy, with a grin. "See yon dead tree on the hillside above?"
Jack looked up and saw that, just above the tunnel mouth, the ground sloped steeply upward, and that rooted in the loose soil was the dead trunk of a lightning-blasted pine.
"If we could get that doon," said Sandy, "and make it fall so as it reached across yon hole in the ground, we'd have a bridge."
"Cracky! So we would. But how are we to get it down? We've no axe, and it would take a week to cut it down with our knives."