“But how are we to get up so high?” inquired Miss Leslie.
“I can swarm this drop root, and I’ve a creeper ready for you two,” explained Blake.
Suiting action to words, he climbed up the small trunk of the air root, and swung over into the hollow where he had piled the reeds. Across the broad limb dangled a rope-like creeper, one end of which he had fastened to a branch higher up. He flung down the free end to Winthrope.
“Look lively, Pat,” he called. “The sun’s most gone, and the twilight don’t last all night in these parts. Get the line around Miss Leslie, and do what you can on a boost.”
“I see; but, you know, the vine is too stiff to tie.”
Blake stifled an oath, and jerked the end of the creeper up into his hand. When he threw it down again, it was looped around and fastened in a bowline knot.
“Now, Miss Leslie, get aboard, and we’ll have you up in a jiffy,” he said.
“Are you sure you can lift me?” asked the girl, as Winthrope slipped the loop over her shoulders.
Blake laughed down at them. “Well, I guess yes! Once hoisted a fellow out of a fifty-foot prospect hole–big fat Dutchman at that. You don’t weigh over a hundred and twenty.”
He had stretched out across the broadest part of the branch. As Miss Leslie seated herself in the loop, he reached down and began to haul up on the creeper, hand over hand. Though frightened by the novel manner of ascent, the girl clung tightly to the line above her head, and Blake had no difficulty in raising her until she swung directly beneath him. Here, however, he found himself in a quandary. The girl seemed as helpless as a child, and he was lying flat. How could he lift her above the level of the branch?