hole. The rays of the headlights dispelled the
darkness below immediately and there was His Highness the Elephant,
almost submerged, looking up at them with his ridiculously small eyes.

"Huh! Consarn it! I _knew_ you kids was playin' me fer a fool," roared
the circus manager when he looked into the cut. "How'er you're goin' to
hitch anything around _that_ animal, I'd like to know?"

"We don't intend to hitch anything around him. We're going to make a
sling of that big blasting mat and raise him out that way."

"Yes!" roared the furious manager, "but how in tarnation are you going to
get it _under_ his belly? Think some one is going down there and dive
between his legs with your blooming old sling, do yuh? That animal is
nearly all under water, remember."

To tell the truth, that question _had_ been bothering Bruce from the
first. He had hoped that the water was only two or three feet deep. But
there was at least ten feet of drainage in the quarry hole! He stood
beside Old Nanc and bit his lips in his embarrassment. Luck seemed
against him. Was everything going to fall through at the last moment?

He did not answer the irate manager, but began to turn one of the
headlights slowly so its rays illuminated the west wall of the hole.
Then suddenly the light paused, and a smile crept over the boy's face.
The white beams had revealed to him a shelf of marble two feet above the
water-line and at least ten feet across, skirting the lower edge of the
west wall. He saw defeat turned into victory!

"Will that elephant mind his trainer?" Bruce demanded of the manager.

"Huh! Will he? Well, you'd better guess he will!" stormed the man.

"Then everything is simple. You lower the trainer in a bo'son's chair
over the west wall there and down to that ledge of marble. He can coax
the animal out of the water and up on the rocks, and after that we can
send a couple more men down with the sling and they can do the rest. See
the plan?"

"Well, I'll be hanged! You win, young feller," said the manager, smiling
for the first time since the accident.

At this point the lads of the Owl Patrol reached the quarry hole
trundling several empty wheelbarrows. Jiminy Gordon was carrying the
remains of the last roll of wire.

"Here we are, Bruce, ready to connect up, but you'd better believe
building a line at night is no easy job, by Jiminy."

"Guess it isn't," said Bruce in a businesslike tone. "Is Mr. Ford at
headqu