“Is he looking?” asked Percy.
“Yes,” said I.
“Tell me when he looks away, and I’ll cut a hole in the hide.”
Bates presently turned his head.
“Now!” said I; and Percy instantly “jabbed” the knife through the hide and withdrew it again. He then inserted a small bit of bark into the hole to keep it open, and as the hairy side of the hide was outward, and the hole therefore invisible, we could keep watch on Bates’s movements without his being aware of the fact.
“We must make him move somehow,” said Percy, after I had once more descended to the ground. “It won’t do to try to rush him from here; he might be surprised into shooting us, even if he didn’t intend to.”
After proposing and dismissing a variety of more or less impracticable plans, we hit upon a device which, as it seemed to us to promise well, we agreed to attempt.
The chimney of our cabin projected only about six inches above the roof, and, the cabin being built upon the slope of the hill, its roof was so much above the level of the ground at the camp-fire that anyone standing down there could not see the chimney-top. Percy had noted the fact that very morning, and it was upon that fact that we based the plan for our deliverance.
While I kept watch upon Bates, Percy climbed up the inside of the chimney, and with great care removed the stones which formed its front wall, laying them one by one upon the roof. In ten minutes this was accomplished, and he then came softly down again.
“Did he move?” he asked.