Lou Mayer, Professor Crowell and Jerry scrambled aboard the car while Dr. Steele gave instructions to Tagish Charley. “You work on the hook-eye and pulley, Charley. I’ll knock out the safety lock. The rest of you just pray.”
One solid blow tripped the safety lock, and the car moved forward about a foot until the taut cable stopped it. The cable itself was more of a problem. Sandy had the uncomfortable sensation that his leaping heart was trying to squirm out of his throat and escape from his body.
The tension was unbearable as Charley pounded away at the pulley with strong rhythmic strokes of the ax. At first it seemed impervious to the dull blade. Then, with relief, Sandy saw one strand snap with a musical twang. Charley swung harder, encouraged by this success, and another strand broke. Each strand that let go put additional stress on the remaining strands, making Charley’s task a little easier. The last two snapped together with a loud report.
The car shuddered and began to roll forward slowly. There was the nerve-shattering screech of metal against metal as the overhead rollers and the main cable protested violently at being used so rudely after twenty-one years of inactivity. Snow, rust and metal shavings cascaded down on the car’s occupants as it picked up momentum.
The boys let go with a tremendous cheer and Professor Crowell and Dr. Steele shook hands solemnly. Sandy glanced behind them at the rapidly diminishing tunnel entrance, but as yet there was no sign of Kruger and the other two enemy agents.
Fortunately the pitting of the cable and the rust and stiffness of the rollers reduced their acceleration sufficiently so that they crashed into the bumpers at the foot of the incline with only a moderate jolt. The cable car split the rotting wood on the bumper’s face, but the springs behind it cushioned the jolt.
Sandy extricated himself from the mass of scrambled limbs gingerly. “Everybody okay? No broken bones?”
There was a chorus of relieved okays.
Dr. Steele climbed out into the snow. “All right. Into the shed and on with those snowshoes.” Apprehensively, he looked up the mountain, but the enemy agents still had not appeared.
As Sandy strapped on the great clumsy snowshoes, he made a suggestion. “Let’s take the other four pairs with us. That will slow them up even more if they try to follow us.”