“Quite true! I know all that as well as you,” would have been Karl’s reply to your objections.
“What, then, Master Karl? Do you design to make a ladder that will be taller than all we have ever seen—tall enough to reach to the top of a precipice three hundred feet high? We know you have both energy and perseverance; and, after witnessing the way that you worked at the building of your bridge, and the skill with which you built it, we are ready to believe that you can accomplish a very great feat in the joiner’s line; but that you can make a ladder three hundred feet in length, we are not prepared to believe—not if you had a whole chest of tools and the best timber in the world. We know you might put a ladder together ever so long, but would it hold together? or even if it did, how could you set it up against the cliff? Never. Three of the strongest men could not do it,—nor six neither,—nor a dozen, without machinery to assist them; therefore scaling the cliff by means of a wooden ladder is plainly impracticable; and if that be your idea, you may as well abandon it.”
“Quite true, I know all this as well as you,” would have been Karl’s reply; “but I had no idea of being able to scale the cliff by means of a ladder. It was not of a ladder, but of ladders, I was thinking.”
“Ha! there may be something in that.”
Karl knew well enough that no single ladder could be made of sufficient length and strength to have reached from the bottom to the top of that great wall; or if such could be constructed, he knew equally well that it would be impossible to set it up.
But the idea that had been forming in his mind was, that several ladders might effect the purpose—one placed above another, and each one resting upon a ledge of the cliff, to which the one next below should enable them to ascend.
In this idea there was really some shadow of practicability, though, as I have said, it was but a very forlorn hope. The amount of its practicableness depended upon the existence of the ledges; and it was to ascertain this that Karl had set forth.
If such ledges could be found, the hope would no longer have been forlorn. Karl believed that with time and energy the ladders might be constructed, notwithstanding the poor stock of carpenter’s tools at their service; though he had scarce yet thought of how the holes were to be made to receive the rounds, or how the ladders themselves might be set upon the ledges, or any other detail of the plan. He was too eager to be satisfied about the first and most important point—whether there were ledges that would answer the purpose?
With his eyes, therefore, keenly scanning the face of the cliff, he kept on along its base, walking slowly, and in silence.