“Why, there wasn’t any man in the basket after all, don’t you see?” Billy explained, indicating how they had carefully gone over the entire pile of wreckage, even overturning the basket, as though it might have hidden something.
“That’s where you’re mistaken, then, because I saw him as plain as anything,” the newcomer asserted, and Arthur could be pretty stubborn when he wished.
“All right, then, get busy and find him, if you can,” Bud told him. “We throw up the job, don’t we, fellows? Hello! what’s Hugh going to do now?” Their attention being called to the leader by this remark from Bud, the others saw that Hugh had hurried back and up the rise a little.
Presently he stopped, and seemed to be looking earnestly toward the crest of the big tree, about where the basket of the runaway balloon had crashed through when that flaw came in the wind.
The other scouts stared hard, as they began to comprehend what this act on the part of their leader might mean; and presently they were thrilled to hear Hugh call out:
“Boys, there was a man in the basket, and he’s caught fast in the tree near the very top! Yes, and he lies there as if he might be dead, or else had swooned away!”
CHAPTER VI.
ENGINEERING IN A TREETOP.
What the patrol leader had called out, as he hurriedly returned to them, gave the other three scouts a great surprise. They stepped back a few paces and strained their eyes in the effort to locate the object mentioned by Hugh.
It is always much easier to see and do things when some other person has first marked out the way. Columbus had an experience along those lines, you will remember, after he returned from discovering America. The jealous Spanish courtiers and sea commanders sneeringly declared that his task had been very simple, as all he had had to do was just to “keep on steering straight westward”!
So it was that when Hugh had found out the truth and imparted the information to the rest of the boys, Billy and Arthur quickly discovered, also, the unlucky aeronaut.