The cutting down of the trees did not occupy them a very long time.
They chose only those of slender girth--the more slender the better, so
long as they answered the requirements as to length. Trees of about
fifty feet in total height were the best: as these, when the weaker part
of the tops was cut off, yielded lengths of thirty or more feet. Where
they were only a few inches in diameter, there was very little trouble
in reducing them to the proper size for the sides of the ladders--only
to strip off the bark and split them in twain.
Making the rounds was also an easy operation--except that it required
considerable time, as there were so many of them.
The most difficult part of the work--and this they had foreseen--would
be the drilling of the holes to receive the rounds; and it was the task
which proved the most dilatory--taking up more time in its
accomplishment than both the cutting of the timber, and reducing it to
its proper shapes and dimensions.
Had they owned an auger or a mortising chisel, or even a good gimlet,
the thing would have been easy enough. Easier still had they possessed
a "breast bit." But of course not any of these tools could be obtained;
nor any other by which a hole might be bored big enough to have admitted
the points of their little fingers. Hundreds of holes would be needed;
and how were they to be made? With the blades of their small knives it
would have been possible to scoop out a cavity--that is, with much
trouble and waste of time; but vast time and trouble would it take to
scoop out four hundred; and at least that number would be needed. It
would be a tedious task and almost interminable, even supposing that it
could be accomplished; but this was doubtful enough. The blades of the
knives might be worn or broken, long before the necessary number of
holes could be made.
Of course, had they been possessed of a sufficient number of nails, they
might have done without holes. The steps of the ladders could have been
nailed upon the sides, instead of being mortised into them. But nails
were a commodity quite as scarce with them as tools. With the exception
of those in the soles of their shoes, or the stocks of their guns, there
was not a nail in the valley.
It is not to be denied that they were in a dilemma. But Karl had
foreseen this difficulty, and provided against it before a stick of
timber had been cut. Indeed, close following on the first conception of
the scaling ladders, this matter had passed through his mind, and had
been settled to his satisfaction. Only theoretically, it is true; but
his theory was afterwards reduced to practice; and, unlike many other
theories, the practice proved in correspondence with it.
Karl's theory was to make the holes by fire--in other words, to bore
them with a red-hot iron.
Where was this iron to be obtained? That appeared to offer a
difficulty, as great as the absence of an auger or a mortise-chisel.
But by Karl's ingenuity it was also got over. He chanced to have a
small pocket pistol: it was single-barrelled, the barrel being about six
inches in length, without any thimbles, beading, or ramrod attached to
it. What Karl intended to do, then, was to heat this barrel red-hot,
and make a boring-iron of it. And this was exactly what he _did_ do;
and after heating it some hundreds of times, and applying it as often to
the sides of the different ladders, he at last succeeded in burning out
as many holes as there were rounds to go into them, multiplied exactly
by two.
It is needless to say that this wonderful boring operation was not
accomplished at a single "spell," nor yet in a single day. On the
contrary, it took Karl many an hour and many a day, and cost him many a
wet skin--by perspiration, I mean--before he had completed the boring of
those four hundred holes. Numerous were the tears drawn from the eyes
of the plant-hunter--not by grief, but by the smoke of the seething
cedar wood.
When Karl had finished the peculiar task he had thus assigned to
himself, but little more remained to be done--only to set each pair of
sides together, stick in the rounds, bind fast at each end, and there
was a ladder finished and ready to be scaled.
One by one they were thus turned off; and one by one earned to the foot
of the cliff, up which the ascent was to be _attempted_.
Sad are we to say that it was still only an attempt; and sadder yet that
that attempt proved a failure.
One by one were the ladders raised to their respective ledges--until
three-fourths of the cliff had been successfully scaled. Here, alas!
was their climbing brought to a conclusion, by a circumstance up to this
time unforeseen. On reaching one of the ledges--the fourth from the top
of the cliff--they found, to their chagrin, that the rock above it,
instead of receding a little, as with all the others, _hung over_--
projecting several inches beyond the outer line of the ledge. Against
that rock no ladder could have been set; none would have rested there--
since it could not be placed even perpendicularly. There was no attempt
made to take one up. Though the projection could not be discerned from
below, Karl, standing on the topmost round of the last ladder that had
been planted, saw at once, with the eye of an engineer, that the
difficulty was insurmountable. It would be as easy for them to fly, is
to stand a ladder upon that ill-starred ledge; and with this conviction
fully impressed upon his mind, the young plant-hunter returned slowly
and sorrowfully to the ground to communicate the disagreeable
intelligence to his companions.
It was no use for either Caspar or Ossaroo to go up again. They had
been on the ledge already; and had arrived at the same conviction.
Karl's report was final and conclusive.
All their ingenuity defeated--all their toil gone for nothing--their
time wasted--their hopes blighted--the bright sky of their future once
more obscured with darkest clouds--all through that unforeseen
circumstance.
Just as when they returned out of the cavern--after that patient but
fruitless search--just as then, sate they down upon the rocks--each
staggering to that which was nearest him--sad, dispirited, forlorn.
There sate they, with eyes now fixed upon the ground, now turning
towards the cliff and gazing mechanically upon that serried line, like
the stairway of some gigantic spider--those long ladders, planted with
so much pains, climbed only once, and never to be climbed again!