The chimney once gained, Dancing figured that the last thirty feet
should be easy work, and he had made but one miscalculation--when he
had descended it to pull up his lineman, it was summer. Without
extraordinary difficulty, Glover gained the ledge where the chimney
opened and waited for his companions to ascend. When all were up, they
rested a few moments on their dizzy perch, and, while Bill Dancing
investigated the chimney, Glover took the chance to renew once more
Morris Blood's bandages, which, strained by the climbing, caused
continual anxiety.
Bucks, with the party in his glass, could see every move. He saw
Dancing disappear into the rock while his comrades rested, and made him
out, after some delay, reappearing from the cleft. What he could not
make out was the word that Dancing brought back; the chimney was a
solid mass of ice.
Standing with the two men, Gertrude used her glass constantly.
Frequently she asked questions, but frequently she divined ahead of her
companions the directions and the movements. The hesitation that
followed Dancing's return did not escape her. Up and down the narrow
step on which they stood, the three men walked, scanning anxiously the
wall that stretched above them.
So, hounds at fault on a trail double on their steps and move uneasily
to and fro, nosing the missing scent. As lions flatten behind their
cagebars, the climbers laid themselves against the rock and pushed to
the right and the left seeking an avenue of escape. They had every
right to expect that help would already have reached them, but on the
hill, through haste and confusion of orders, the new rotary had
stripped a gear, and an hour had been lost in getting in the second
plough. For safety, the climbers had in their predicament nothing to
fear. The impelling necessity for action was the superintendent's
condition; his companions knew he could not last long without a surgeon.
When suspense had become unbearable, Dancing re-entered the chimney.
He was gone a long time. He reappeared, crawling slowly out on an
unseen footing, a mere flaw in the smooth stretch of granite half way
up to the track. By cutting his rope and throwing himself a dozen
times at death, old Bill Dancing had gained a foothold, made fast a
line, and divided the last thirty feet to be covered. One by one, his
companions disappeared from sight--not into the chimney, but to the
side of it where Dancing had blazed a few dizzy steps and now had a
rope dangling to make the ascent practicable.
One by one, Gertrude saw the climbers, reappearing above, crawl like
flies out on the face of the rock and, with craning necks and cautious
steps, seek new advantage above. They discovered at length the remains
of a scrub pine jutting out below the railroad track. The tree had
been sawed off almost at the root, when the roadbed was levelled, and a
few feet of the trunk was left hugging upward against the granite wall.