Climbing to his feet, he stood upright on the bough, clinging with one arm to the trunk. It was this movement which proved our undoing. Standing thus, his head was clear of the dwindling foliage near the spire-like summit of the larch, and from his lofty perch his eye commanded the tree-tops in the neighbourhood. A moment later his gaze fell upon us, five small scared balls of red fur, and his roar of triumph struck terror to our quaking hearts.
Without paying the slightest attention to the shouted questions of his friends below, he swung himself down hand over hand, and in a very short time had dropped to the ground, and was running across towards our fir-tree, with the others yelping at his heels like a pack of harriers after a hare.
Mother and father exchanged a few hurried words, but what they said I in my excitement had not the faintest idea. Next moment father had me by the scruff of the neck, and darted away up into the thick and almost impenetrable top of the giant fir. Mother, with Hazel between her teeth, came after him like a flash.
The fir-trunk forked near the summit; it was to this point that father carried me, and dropped me in the niche between the two boughs. Instantly he was off again to fetch Rusty. Before our enemies had noticed what was happening, and while they were still arguing as to which of them should do the climbing, all we three youngsters had been deposited together in our lofty refuge.
A scuffling noise and the sound of heavy breathing came from below. One of the gang had begun the ascent of the tree. Mother looked at father in a sort of dumb agony. She was palpitating with fright, and her dark eyes were large and brilliant with terror.
‘Can we reach another tree, Redskin?’ she asked tremblingly.
But father knew better, and signified, ‘No.’ They two might have done it themselves, but carrying us the jump would be too long to risk.
From far below the bumping, scuffling noise slowly grew louder and nearer. It was a long way up to the first bough of the fir-tree, and the climber—it was the same one again—was obliged to swarm the scaly red trunk. We could not, of course, see anything of him, for the matted tangle of crooked branches below, with their foliage of thick, dark green needles, formed an impenetrable screen.
I cannot even now remember that long wait in the sunny tree-top, while ever from below the unseen danger crept upon us, without an unpleasant thrill, and I know that both my brother and my sister shared my feelings. The worst part of it all was the sight of the terror of our father, who had always been to us a pattern of bravery. The fact was that he realized the position, which we younger ones did not do fully. He was only too well aware that we were trapped. He and mother might have easily escaped by descending to the longer branches below, and thence jumping into a spruce which grew close by; but they would not desert us, and both remained clinging tightly to the main trunk just beside us.