“It beats me,” said Joe, taking off his hat and tousling his hair according to custom. “I can see no possible way of doing it. We shall have to leave it to your father. Perhaps he may be able to think of a plan. Do you suppose he’ll venture to go down the rope, Phil?”
“No, I don’t,” I replied. “It is all very well for you and me, with our one hundred and seventy pounds, or thereabouts, but as my father weighs forty pounds more than either of us, and has not been in the habit of climbing ropes for amusement as long as I can remember, I think the chances are that he won’t try it.”
“I suppose not. It’s a pity, though, for I’m sure he would be tremendously interested to see the stream down there in the crevice. Couldn’t we——Look here, Phil: couldn’t we set up a ladder to reach from the bottom up to the bulge?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “It would take a ladder twenty feet long, and the bulge in the wall would prevent its going down.”
“That’s true. Well, then, I’ll tell you what we can do. We’ll make two ladders of ten feet each—a ten-foot pole will go down easily enough—set one on the floor of the crevice and the other on that wide ledge about half way up to the bulge. What do you think of that?”
“Yes, I think we could do that,” I replied. “We’ll try it anyhow. But we must go in and get some dinner now: it’s close to noon.”
We did not take long over our dinner—we were too anxious to get to work again—and as soon as we had finished we selected from our supply of fire-wood four straight poles, each about ten feet long, and with these, a number of short pieces of six-inch plank, a hammer, a saw and a bag of nails, we drove back to the scene of action.
Even a ten-foot pole, we found, was an awkward thing to get down to the bottom of the fissure, but after a good deal of coaxing we succeeded in lowering them all, when we at once set to work building our ladders.