steep slope. He was hanging to it now, and straining the best he knew
how to fling his legs upward, so as to relieve the situation, and the
terrific pull on his arms.

He looked upward toward the row of faces peeping over the edge above;
and there was a humorous grin on his face. He knew what his comrades
were doubtless thinking about "the pitcher that went once too often to
the well;" and that their natural alarm having passed, they would see
only the humorous side of the affair.

Again did Davy strain. There was something connected with the way he was
hanging there that seemed to prevent him from accomplishing the result
he wanted to attain. For the first time they could remember the boys saw
that the gymnast and acrobat of the troop had certainly met his match.
Left to himself he would surely have had to invent some other method for
drawing himself up on to the slender horizontal trunk of the little
tree; or else let go, and drop.

As it was a matter of some twenty feet or so to the bottom of the gully;
and the chances were that he might receive any number of bad scratches
while making the transit, Davy of course would be averse to trying this
plan.

"Guess you'll have to lend me a hand this time, boys," he called out,
when once more he failed to make connection between his squirming legs
and the body of the tree.

"Who'll go down, and yank him on to that tree?" asked Bumpus; knowing
full well at the same time that no one could have the nerve to ask a
fellow of his heft, when there were so many others better fitted for the
task.

"Don't all speak at once!" advised the hanging Davy.

Somehow all eyes were turned toward Giraffe. As the most agile of the
lot, he might be expected to volunteer; and yet with not a particle of
footing between the top of the bank and that tree, some ten feet down,
the job was hardly one that might appeal to any scout, however nimble.

"Oh! you needn't look at me that way," he complained; "because I'm long,
and active, you just think I c'n stretch that far; but it's a mistake.
But if somebody _has_ to try and make the riffle, I s'pose it'll be me."

He started to take off his knapsack as he said this, when Thad stopped
him.

"Wait, Giraffe," said the patrol leader, quietly; "perhaps, after all,
nobody has to go down after Davy. You seem to forget, all of you, that
we've got a stout rope along with us. What's the need of carrying such a
thing, if it can't help us out in a pinch?