trength was ebbing. There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can
just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about _budge_
it with one hand. Tom had tried this at Temple Camp with a visiting
scout's baggage chest. With both hands he had been barely able to lift
it by its strap. With one hand he had been able to _budge_ it for the
fraction of a second. But there had been no overmastering incentive--and
no reserves called up out of the depths of his soul.

He could feel his breast palpitating against the limb, drawn tight
against it by the dead weight. Yet he could not put his desperate
purpose to the test.

And so a second--two, three, seconds--were wasted.

"I won't let go," he muttered through his teeth. "I wish I could wipe
the sweat off my hand." Then, as if his dogged resolution were not
enough, he added, almost appealingly, "Don't _you_ drop and--and go back
on me."

_Uncle Sam_ only swung a little in the breeze and wriggled like an eel
in the watery mirror.

Slowly Tom loosened his perspiring left hand, not daring to withdraw it.
The act seemed to communicate an extra strain to every part of his body.
Of all the fateful moments of his life, this seemed to be the most
tense. Then, in an impulse of desperation, he drew his left hand away.

"I won't--let--go," he muttered.

The muscles on his taut right arm stood out like cords. His forearm
throbbed with an indescribable, pulling pain. There was a feeling of
dull soreness in his shoulder blade. His perspiring hand closed tighter
around the wheel's rim and he could feel his pulse pounding. His fingers
tingled as if they had been asleep. Then his hand slipped a little.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH"

Whether merely from the change of an eighth of an inch or so in its hold
upon the rim, or because his palm fitted better around the slight
alteration of curve, Tom was conscious of the slightest measure of
relief.

As quickly as he dared (for he knew that any sudden move would be
fatal), he reached behind him with his left arm and, groping for the
stub of limb, tore away from it the twigs which he knew would form an
obstacle to placing the wheel rim with its network of spokes over this
short projection.

The dead soreness of his straining shoulder blade ran down his arm,
which throbbed painfully. His twitching, struggling fingers, straining
against the weight which was forcing them open, clutched the rim. They
wer