ranches."

"Pull on the one next you," cried Spite, who had himself laid hold of
one of the sound cables, and was pushing down upon it with all his
might. "Mine holds. It is fast to the second pier in yonder bush, I am
sure. How with yours?"

"It is all right," answered Hide, "I am willing to venture on it."

Nearly fifteen hundred millimetres distant was another and taller bush
in which pier No. 1 of the bridge was built. The Pixies could not see
this since the darkness of the night and the shadow of the leaves hid
the white outlines of the web-wall. But they knew that it must be there,
and therefore crept upon the silken ropes each upon one, and began their
journey.[AA]

Three thousand millimetres above the ground, for the whole distance from
bush to bush over that single coil of rope those two creatures crawled.
The cables shook, swayed and bent down, but neither parted, and the
adventurous Pixies landed safely on top of the pier.

The next pier was in a clump of bushes thirty-five hundred millimetres
away, not in a direct course, but angling slightly across the field. The
architects of the Old Bridge had taken advantage of the brushwood
between the hill and lake. But as the shrubs grew at irregular distances
from each other, and in various lines of direction, the course of the
bridge was somewhat broken from the right line. Only one cable remained
of those that had united pier No. 1 and pier No. 2. The scouts must
therefore cross singly. To add to the danger a Brownie sentinel was
stationed underneath the cable, about midway between the piers.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--A Cobweb Bridge Across a Path.]

"What say you, Hide?" asked the chief, "shall we go on?"

"What have you to gain by it, Cap'n? That's the question with me. Tell
me what you intend by exploring this old suspension bridge, and I'll
say whether it seems worth the risk."

"Certainly," said Spite. "My plan is to repair these cables by bracing
the old ones, and putting up new ones, so that we can abandon the fort
secretly, if we are pressed too hard. We could pass the whole force
across the bridge by night, embark in our vessels, and cross the lake to
the other shore, or to the island. The point I want to settle is,
whether the cables are so far good that we can make a good roadway in
the time at our command. We must do night work, repairing as well as
crossing; and if we are hard pushed by the Brownies, we shall have to do
some rapid engineering