Hot-foot after me came the cat. She could jump as well or better than I, but, as I said before, the narrowness of the beams bothered her. When she reached the narrowest, the second from the window, she had all she could do to keep her balance. The result was that her next jump was a trifle short. Her fore-paws clutched the beam, but her hind-feet failed to reach it, and struggling desperately to pull herself up, she drove her hind-claws deep into the pear-shaped object which hung exactly below her.
Instantly there arose a deep-toned buzzing, and the air was thick with a cloud of furious wasps. There followed a perfect squeal of pain and terror, and my enemy, covered with a swarm of the fierce little stinging insects, dropped with a resounding thump on to the boards below, and fled like a mad thing, pursued by scores of angry wasps.
The wasps rose to the very roof; they were all round me. I made one frantic scramble up the rusty netting, found a hole, squeezed through anyhow, and just as the first wasp landed on my back and drove a vicious sting through my thick fur, took a wild jump in the direction of the nearest shrub.
The distance was too much for me. My fore-paws just touched the leaves, and I went sailing downwards into the deep shadows beneath. Down, down into absolute blackness, to land at last with a shock that for the moment completely deprived me of my few remaining senses. Fortunately for us squirrel folk and all other animals except man, we never remain insensible for long. I was all awake again in a very few moments, and found myself lying on a thick bed of damp, decaying leaves. It was almost pitch dark, but a little light which leaked down from somewhere high above showed me that I was at the bottom of a deep hole, with perpendicular sides of mouldering brickwork.
But this was not what set my heart beating again almost as thickly as a moment previously. It was a peculiar, musty, unpleasant odour, which made me instinctively spring up against the side of the hole and struggle hard to climb back to daylight. But rough as the walls of my prison were, my claws could get no grip, and I fell back panting and helpless to the bottom. Again and again I tried. The brickwork was very old, covered with close green moss and riddled with holes, and more than once I succeeded in climbing a good distance up the sides. But I always came at last to some place where I could find no foothold, and went sliding helplessly down to the bottom again.
Soon I was quite exhausted. I had eaten hardly anything since Jack left, and the escape from the cat and the shock of my long fall had taken it out of me badly. At last I was forced to give it up and lay at full length breathing hard upon the sodden leaves.
Presently came a soft rustling sound, then a slight squeak. By this time my eyes were well accustomed to the gloom, and looking upwards, there at the mouth of one of the holes a sharp black nose appeared and a pair of beady, black eyes which stared at me fixedly. A moment later another nose showed from another hole, then a third, and a fourth. More and more came out, until the whole of the slimy old wall seemed alive with them, and all with their keen unwinking eyes fixed upon me as I crouched helpless in the bottom of the old dry well.
THE WHOLE OF THE SLIMY OLD WALL SEEMED ALIVE WITH THEM.