"Hold on there, Dutchy. We'll help you out."
"I know. Dot iss all right," came back the reply in a tremulous tone, "but I dink me dis branch is rodden und ef der tom cat drives me much furder out I down come."
"Don't dare think of such a thing," called up Cal, "just you grip tight and don't move."
"All right, I try," quavered the photographer, about whose neck still dangled the tool of his craft.
Cal's long legs covered the space between the tree and the auto in about two leaps, or so it seemed to the boys. In a flash he was back with his well worn rifle and was aiming it upward into the tree.
But as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and his finger pressed the trigger the formidable creature crouching along the limb, sprang full at the luckless Herr Muller. With a yell that stopped the breath of every one of the alarmed party below, the German was seen to lose his hold and drop, crashing through the foliage like a rock. As he fell a shower of small branches and twigs were snapped off and floated downward into space.
But Herr Muller was not doomed, as the boys feared was inevitable, to be dashed to pieces on the ground. Instead, just as it appeared impossible that he could save himself from a terrible death, the German succeeded in seizing a projecting limb and hanging on. The branch bent ominously, but it held, and there he hung suspended helplessly with nothing under him but barren space. Truly his position now did not appear to be materially bettered from its critical condition of a few minutes before.
But the boys did not know, nor Cal either, that the Germans are great fellows for athletics and gymnastics, and almost every German student has at one time or another belonged to a Turn Verein. This was the case with Herr Muller and his training stood him in good stead now. With a desperate summoning of his strength, he slowly drew himself up upon the bending limb, and began tortuously to make his way in toward the trunk.
As he did so, the wild cat perceiving that it was once more at close quarters with its enemy, advanced down the trunk, but it was not destined this time to reach the German. Cal took careful aim and fired.
Before the echo of the sharp report had died away a tawny body came clawing and yowling downward, out of the tree, tumbling over and over as it shot downward. The boys could not repress a shudder as they thought how close Herr Muller had come to sharing the same fate.