“Loose the boat and push off if you can’t get your foot out,” Uncle Jeb
called; “there’s a rock----”
“I can’t reach the rope,” Westy shouted, not knowing his danger.
Artie did not pause to call to his friend. One fearful look at the big
rock informed him that it was going down. It seemed pausing like a beast
crouching, ready to spring. Frantically he ran down the hillside,
stumbling, catching hold of trees, now on foot, now on hands and knees.
He would do what he could do quickest, and that was to release the boat
and get it out of the path of the threatening monster. So as not to lose
a second’s time he carried his opened scout knife between his teeth.
He was about half-way down and going backwards so as not to stumble when
he beheld something which caused him to act like lightning. Evidently
Uncle Jeb had been putting another support under the rock. He saw the
old man jump aside and heard him shout. He saw and heard in a panic of
horror and did not know what Uncle Jeb said.
Artie was not conscious of thinking at all. He saw the bowlder rocking,
then saw it move and roll down a few feet and stop against a big tree.
There it paused, balanced for two or three seconds. Artie saw Uncle Jeb
run toward it, doubtless to try and hold it poised behind the tree. In a
kind of trance he saw the old man hauling a log down to where that tree
had momentarily blocked it in its crashing descent.
But Artie did not wait upon the issue of this almost hopeless project.
Like a panther he was up a sapling, looking hurriedly about as he
ascended, taking note of its position in relation to neighboring trees.
He was so frantic with haste that he had not time to close his scout
knife; he dropped it from his mouth and forgot it. Near the top of the
young tree he began swinging and swaying to make it bend under his
weight, but he had to climb almost to the very end of it before it would
do this. Then it only bent part way over. But it split somewhere below
him and let him down almost to the ground where it lay against the trunk
of a larger tree.
Thus in a few short seconds, fraught with peril, Artie had succeeded in
doing just what he had hoped to do; he had laid a barrier, such as it
was, across the path of the rock. Simultaneously with this lightning
exploit the rock rolled aside the tree where it had caught and came
crashing down against the fence which Artie had placed, as if by magic,
in its path. Fortunately it had not gathered much momentum and the
springy sapling bent to absorb the shock of impact, then held the
bowlder fast.
The human machinery which had wrought this sudden miracle was not to be
seen. Amid the sparse foliage of the prone sapling Artie writhed in
agony, his right leg caught between the sapling and the trunk across
which it lay. The whole weight of the nearby rock which made the sapling
a sort of lever, held that torn and bleeding leg as in a vise. Beads of
perspiration stood on Artie’s brow from the anguish he was suffering,
and his hands were clammy. He saw Uncle Jeb hurrying past him down to
the shore to rescue Westy and he said not a word. Then he saw the leaves
near him change color, the whole world reeled, and oblivion came to
relieve the torments he was suffering.