“No good, you fellows! The rope’s worked into a crevice of the rock and is jammed there. I’ll have to climb it myself. Make your end fast around something and stand by to give me a hand—if I make it!”
Bob silently questioned Ned, and the latter nodded again. “Let him try,” he said huskily. “If he can’t—”
“Oh, wait, wait!” cried Polly. “We’re—we’re perfect idiots! He doesn’t have to do that, Ned! He can walk along that ledge, and we can hold the rope—”
“But it isn’t long enough,” Bob expostulated.
“Not down,” said Polly impatiently; “up!”
“Up? By Jove, that’s so! See what she means, Ned? Here, let’s get this tied to the tree!” A moment later Bob was at the edge, his eager gaze following the narrow ledge as it ascended at Laurie’s right. Scarcely twenty feet beyond, it ended at a perpendicular fissure hardly four feet below the top. Gleefully he made known the discovery to Laurie, and the latter, stretched like a trussed fowl against the rock, his toes still just touching the shelf, grunted.
“Never thought of that,” he said disgustedly. He stretched his head back until he could see the shelf. Then, “It’s a cinch,” he affirmed. “You’ll have to get the rope free first, though, and ease up on it until I can get my feet back on the ledge. Can you do it?”
“Have to,” answered the other cheerfully. Cautiously he and Ned untied the rope from about the tree, gave it some three inches of slack, retied it, and set to work at the edge of the cliff. Or, rather, Bob worked, for Ned’s hands trembled so that he couldn’t. The rope was fast in a jagged-edged notch of the rock, and Bob’s only implement, his pocket-knife, was somewhat inadequate. But he made it do. Using the handle like a tiny hammer, he chipped and chipped until finally the rope began to slip downward and Laurie’s weight rested again on the ledge. The end about the tree was unfastened; the rope was lifted from the channel it had dug through the overlying soil and carried a yard to the left. Then, with Ned and Bob and Polly holding it, their heels dug firmly into the sod, Laurie began his journey.
It was slow work at first, for his nerves and muscles responded ill to the demands of his brain, and delays came when those above cautiously moved their position, taking new holds on the slowly shortening rope. Had Laurie been fresh for the task he would have swarmed up there in no time at all. As it was, it took a good ten minutes to reach the end of his journey; and, even so, he did not proceed to the limit of his narrow foot-path but, once his hands could reach the edge, squirmed his way over, Bob and Ned pulling and tugging.