But nobody did. They shouted again and again, as time passed, and listened in vain for an answer. Meanwhile Ted tried every means of escape he could think of. He first proposed to cut steps into the side of the pit, but the hatchet could not be found. Hubert had either lost his grip on it as they were sledding down the hill or it was now somewhere under the deep snow in the bottom of the pit.
Ted next proposed to throw the rope around a sapling that hung over the very brink some fifteen feet above their heads. He therefore unstrapped the Christmas tree from the sled, coiled half the rope, and attempted to throw it over the sapling. Several times he succeeded in throwing the coil as high as the top of the pit, but always failed to throw it around the little tree.
"Oh, it's no use," groaned Hubert at last. "We'll never get out."
"Now, Hu, you mustn't give up," urged Ted. "Boy Scouts don't give up. We'll get out somehow. Think of the good times coming when we visit Camp Hancock and go hunting with Uncle Walter in the Okefinokee."
"But we'll have to stay here till tomorrow and we'll freeze to death. I'm nearly frozen now."
"Now, Hu, you quit that," rebuked Ted, although profoundly discouraged himself. "Jump up and down and swing your arms if you're cold, but don't do the baby act. Think of the soldiers in the trenches and what they have to stand. Our own American boys are in the trenches now, and do you think one of them would whimper because it was cold or wet, or even if a bomb dropped in on them?"
"But they can get out and we can't," tearfully argued Hubert.
"Yes!—they can go 'over the top' and charge the enemy and meet cannon balls and liquid fire and poison gas and—— Oh, Hu, this is nothing! Can't we be soldiers enough to stand just a hole in the ground with snow in it?"
Hubert had his doubts, but he was silenced. He exercised his numb limbs, as advised, and watched Ted as he prepared to make experiment of still another plan. With his pocket-knife Ted picked stones out of the side of the pit until he found one he thought might serve his purpose—an oblong, jagged bit of rock around which the rope could be securely tied. Again and again Ted threw this stone—the rope trailing after it—without succeeding in sending it around the sapling.
The sun had set and Hubert's teeth chattered as he wept, when, almost ready to give up, it occurred to Ted to toss the stone up with both hands and all his strength, aiming half a foot to the right of the leaning sapling. This carried the stone higher than it had gone before and, at the second trial, it struck the incline above the tree, rolled and came down on the other side, carrying the rope around the trunk and bringing it within reach of Ted's hand, who drew it down and quickly tied the two ends together.