"Yes," agreed Nat, "he——"
The boy stopped suddenly short. From the summit of the lofty tree there had come a sharp, piercing cry of terror.
"Help! help! Quvick or I fall down!"
CHAPTER XI.
TREED!—TWO HUNDRED FEET UP.
Mingling with the alarming yells of the German came a strange spitting, snarling sound.
Filled with apprehensions, the boys and Cal rushed for the foot of the immense tree and gazed upward into the lofty gloom of its leafy summit. They uttered a cry of alarm as they did so. In fact the spectacle their eyes encountered was calculated to cause the heart of the most hardened woodsman to beat faster.
Astride of a branch, with his shoe soles dangling two hundred feet above the ground, was Herr Muller, while between him and the trunk of the tree was crouched a snarling, spitting wild cat of unusual size. It seemed about to spring at the human enemy who had unwittingly surprised it in its aerial retreat.
The boys were stricken speechless with alarm as they gazed, but Cal shouted encouragingly upward.