“Why,” groaned Heathcote, as they came up, “it’s got no step!”
For once, Dick was gravelled. The idea that the coach was not like all the other coaches had never once crossed his mind; and he felt beaten. The two unhappy pursuers, however, kept up the chase, pawing the forbidding coach door, very much as kittens paw the outside of a gold-fish bowl.
Alas! there was nothing to lay hold of; not even a handle or a nail!
“Shall we yell?” gasped Heathcote, nearly at the end of his wind.
“Wait a bit. Is there anything underneath we could lay hold of?”
They groped, but, as it seemed, fruitlessly. Dick, however, stooped again, and next moment turned round radiant.
“There’s a bit of string,” said he. “Keep it up, old man, and we’ll get hold of it.”
With much diving he succeeded in picking up the end of a casual piece of string that had somehow got its other end fastened to a nut underneath the coach. As quick as thought he whipped out his handkerchief and looped it on to the string. Then Heathcote whipped out his handkerchief and looped it on to Dick’s, and between them the two held on grimly, and tried to fancy their troubles were at an end.
The support of a piece of stray string at the tail of a coach, supplemented by two pocket-handkerchiefs, may be grateful, but for practical purposes it is at best a flimsy stay, and had it not been for occasional hills at which to breathe, our heroes might have found it out at once.
As it was, they were carried three or four miles on their way by the purely moral support of their holdfast until the last of the hills was climbed, and the long steady slope which led down to Templeton opened before the travellers and reminded the horses of corn and stable. Then a trot began, which put the actual support of the extemporised cable to the test.