“The idiots!” Uncle Billy said. “I’d like to throw ’em all down here head first. Go ahead, Dump. Your father’s round the bend now.”
“You’re an easy mark, Dumplin’!” yelled the boys, as poor Lester slid down the rope into the path of the whirling missiles. “Hi! look out—here comes a big one!”
Lester ducked, and a block of snow bounded right over his head. Bennie had no such luck when he started, though. He dodged a couple, but a third chunk caught him right in the head, smashed wetly around his neck and ears, and he felt the water trickling down inside his shirt as he hurried, half blinded, around the rock to shelter. Spider and the doctor soon joined them, Spider nursing a bump on the leg from a snow chunk with a stone in it.
“Great idea of a joke, those guys have,” said Bennie. “Funny thing, Dumplin’ never got hit at all, and he’s the easiest mark. Where do we go from here?”
The doctor looked around. Straight down below them was a long slope of pumice and gravelly looking stuff, at a very steep angle, with a few trees and lava blocks breaking it up, and patches of snow.
“Here,” he said, and threw out the rope.
Bennie started first. His feet seemed to hold well in this soft ground, and he let his hand just slide along the rope, seeing how fast he could walk down. Suddenly the ground just slipped away under him. He sat down, and began to slide. His hand, held too loosely on the rope, was yanked off. He grasped for the rope again, but it was out of reach. For one sickly, awful moment, he saw the lake and the rocks hundreds of feet below him, and thought he was going to land down there—or what was left of him. Down, down he slid, six feet, eight feet, hit a patch of snow and went faster, while he tried vainly to dig in with hands and heels. Then, as suddenly as the first slip, he realized that in ten feet more he’d hit a tree growing on a tiny flat place by a piece of solid lava. A second, and his feet struck the roots with a thump, and he stopped abruptly.
When the rest got to him, he was still sitting there, trembling a little, and trying to clean off his clothes. His uncle’s face was white, but all he said was:
“I thought you knew how to climb, Bennie. I see you’ve got to be taught to keep a hold on the rope.”
“It—it came so sudden.”