“Suppose we can dig toe holds in the side?”
“I’m afraid it’s too soft but we can try it.”
Bob’s surmise was correct. They had no difficulty in digging niches in the sides of the wall with their knives but the earth was so soft that it crumbled away as soon as they tried to step in them.
“Failure number two,” Bob tried to make his voice as cheerful as he could but feared that he was not very successful.
“How about the third?”
“The third is going to be slow but I believe it will be sure. You said that you could just touch the top didn’t you?”
“Yep, just brushed it.”
“All right then. Now all we’ve got to do is to take our kit spoons and dig into the wall till we get a mound a foot or more high, then I guess you can make it.”
“Brains do come in handy once in a while for a fact,” Jack declared much more cheerfully.
They lost no time but went about the task at once. To their great satisfaction they found that the work went much faster than they had thought it would. The wall was of soft dirt, and with the strong spoons they could scrape it down with little difficulty. Every few minutes they would stop and heap the dirt up in a mound against the side of the pit and pat it down with their feet. It was just damp enough to pack well and in a little less than two hours Bob declared that he believed they had a pile high enough.