All of a sudden I heard Warde call, “Wait till I get down and then come down after me. Don’t be scared. There isn’t anything in the bell, it’s some one in the woods. The bell throws the voice down when it’s pulled up sideways. It’s a reflex echo, if you know what that is. Come ahead down one at a time. You should worry about spooks.”
We didn’t hear the voice every time one of us swung off on the rope. Maybe the voice away off didn’t call just at the right time or maybe not all of us were heavy enough. But once or twice we heard it again. It sounded good and clear. Bert came down. He was the last one and he was the heaviest.
Now that’s just the way it was—the way I told you. That’s the nearest I ever came to a ghost in my life. When the bell swung up sideways it swung toward the west. Warde explained just how it was. So if you don’t believe me you can ask him. There was a voice somewhere that we could hardly hear. But when the bell swung up it caught the voice inside it and when it swung down it threw the voice down; it kind of brought the voice down and dropped it out. And because the bell was hollow and made of metal it made the voice louder and stronger.
That’s the only way I can tell you, but it’s true and echoes like that are called reflex echoes, only I guess nobody heard of a reflex echo exactly like that before. In echoes like that you hear the echo when you can’t really hear the voice. When that bell was hanging the sound waves (that’s what you call them) struck the outside slanting part of the bell and were reflected up. But when the bell swung it caught the sound inside it and just sort of tumbled it out on us.
So if you ever go to Old Corners you’ll see a sign on that old church that we put there and it says ECHO CHIMES. Then it tells you just exactly where to go in the woods in order to make an echo like the one that scared us so. Maybe you wonder how we found out just where to go in the woods. So that’s what I’m going to tell you in the next chapter. Because it was a real voice away off somewhere in the woods that was calling for help. The funny part of it was that we heard the reflex echo but we didn’t hear the voice. I bet you’ll say I’m smart when you read all this but, gee whiz, I guess you’d call it reflex smartness because I got it all from Warde Hollister.
CHAPTER XXIV
WE DROP DEAD-ALMOST
We crossed the road and hit into the woods going straight west. We knew which way to go because it was when the bell swung up that we got the echo, and because it swung toward the setting sun.
Every little while one of us had to climb a tree to see where the sun was. Lucky for us Temple Camp was in that direction, and beside the sun we had the smoke from the cooking shack to guide us. We took turns climbing the trees.
We didn’t play Follow Your Leader because our minds were on rescuing that person who was calling for help.
“I’m glad Temple Camp is in the same direction,” Warde said, “because I’m good and hungry.”