CHAPTER XIII

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOWL

Jack and Frank stood at the edge of the Devil’s Punch Bowl with their hearts beating wildly, listening for the dreaded sound which they knew must come from below. However, no such sound came, and presently they found the courage to cast their eyes down the steep incline.

Far down, at the very bottom of the pit, lying close to the edge of the pool of water which had been observed before, they saw Harry, lying perfectly motionless. He had fallen at least a hundred feet.

“It’s terrible!” Frank faltered. “I wish we had never come into the mountains! I wish we had never seen California.”

“He may not be dead,” suggested Jack.

“Not dead!” repeated Frank. “Not dead after a fall like that?”

“I’m not going to give up hope until I’m sure!” Jack answered stoutly.

The two boys stood for a moment gazing down the tremendous fall, and then cast their eyes over the landscape in every direction.

“What are you looking for?” asked Jack.

“Something that will help us lower into the pit.”

“If we only had a long rope,” Jack wailed.

“Well, we haven’t got any long rope,” Frank replied, “and we’ve just got to get down there. We’ve got to find a way.”

“I have been thinking,” Jack stated after a moment’s thought, “that we might possibly work our way downward by circling about the pit.”

“You mean wind ourselves down like a cork-screw?” asked Frank.

“That’s it exactly!”

“Why, the walls are almost perpendicular!” Frank asserted. “We never can get down there in the world!”

“Then we’ll have to hasten back to camp and get a rope,” said Jack.

“I just can’t go away and leave Harry lying there like that!” exclaimed Frank. “I just can’t do it. We’ve got to get down into that devil’s hole in some way. It may be difficult but we’ve got to do it.”

“If we could only get over to the other side,” Jack said, “we might be able to work our way down a part of the distance. It seems to me that the rock is rougher there, and the side not quite so steep.”

“It does look that way,” Frank answered, “and I think we’d better try to get over there. It will help some, even if we can’t get clear to the bottom. We can at least find out whether Harry is alive.”

“I’ll never leave him lying there, alive or dead!” exclaimed Jack.

The boys at once set out on a difficult journey toward the far side of the Devil’s Punch Bowl. In many places they had only a rim of rock less than six inches in diameter for a foot-hold. On one side, hundreds of feet above them stretched the snow-covered summit, while on the other side lay the precipice dipping into the Devil’s Punch Bowl. At last, after great exertion and very many narrow escapes, the boys reached the desired location and looked about.

“We ought to be able to get down from this side,” Frank said. “You stand here at the top of the rim and let me down arm’s length. You see that shelf there? Oh, it’s not more than two inches wide,” the boy went on, as Jack looked his astonishment, “but I can stand on it all right by leaning against the face of the wall.

“Well, I can reach that with my toes if you’ll let me down steadily. Then you drop down the full length of your arms and I’ll keep you from falling when you strike the ledge. There are other ledges below and so we may be able to get clear to the bottom.”

“I’m afraid!” Jack said. “I’m afraid I’ll push you off the ledge when I drop down.”

“We’ve got to take the chance!” Frank returned. “We’ve just got to take the chance, and that’s all there is to it. We can’t let Harry lie there. We’re going to get him out, alive or dead.”

“All right!” Jack said. “Drop your legs inside the pit and catch hold of my hands and I’ll let you down. We can only try!”

It was indeed a desperate undertaking. The walls of the Devil’s Punch Bowl, as all who have ever visited that section understand, are almost perpendicular three-fourths of the way down. Then they form almost a perfect bowl—at least, the bottom of a perfect bowl. In the center of this bowl lies, or did lie at that time, a pool of clear, pure water.

For an instant Frank groped blindly, his feet swinging out into the awful chasm, and then he found the ledge which he had mentioned. He looked up to see Jack looking with face red from exertion over the rim.

“Now, chum,” he said, “swing yourself in and slide down. The eighty per cent slope will throw your weight away from the pit and I’ll keep you from tumbling backwards when you strike the ledge.”

“That ledge doesn’t look very solid to me,” Jack suggested.

“You couldn’t break it with an axe!” replied Frank. “It is safe enough, and the slope will keep your body on the ledge if you don’t get scared. Now go to it, old boy!”

Frank talked bravely enough, but he held his breath as Jack came sliding down. When the boy’s feet struck the ledge, he certainly would have tumbled backward into the pit if Frank had not thrown one arm against him. The boys looked at each other for a moment without speaking. They fully understood the peril they were in, yet they tried to be cheerful, each seeking to belittle the danger to the other.

“There,” Frank said lightly, “that was easy enough. We’ll never get any medals for doing an easy stunt like that.”

“Of course, it was easy,” Jack answered, “and the next ledge is not so far away and is broader. We’ll have to slide down there together side by side and then if you fall, I can give you a lift, and you can do the same for me. I don’t think we’re going to have so much trouble with this old hole after all. Lots of things look easy after the start.”

“That’s always the way in this gay old world of ours,” Frank answered, “all you got to do is to face a dreaded thing and half its terror is lost.”

The next ledge was easily reached, but was not so safe as the other, the edge having crumbled away to some extent. In fact, the boys slid off a great deal quicker than they would otherwise have done, as the rock under their feet gave indications of dropping.

And so, working their way from ledge to ledge, sometimes at the peril of their lives, sometimes finding the way fairly safe and easy, the boys reached a point not more than twenty feet from the spot where their unconscious chum was lying.

“Now,” Jack said as they stood on the last ledge and looked into the clear pool below, “we’ve got to slide down here like we were going down a chute. The chances are that we won’t have any neat uniforms when we get to the bottom, and the possibility is that we’ll be good and wet by the time we make our way out of that pool.”

“I’m not going into that pool!” Frank declared. “It’s colder than Greenland up here now, and if we get wet we’ll be frozen stiff in half an hour. We can’t do Harry any good by going to him in a condition calling for nurses and hot drinks.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to help tumbling into the pool!” Jack answered. “It lies not more than twenty feet from the bottom of the incline.”

“I’ll show you how!” Frank declared. “All you’ve got to do is to slide down on your little empty tummy and wear your fingers up to the second or third joint digging into the rocks.”

“I ain’t going to wear out any fingers!” Jack insisted. “You remember that great big jack-knife? The one you said ought to cause my arrest for carrying concealed weapons? Well, I’ve got that jack-knife with me right now. I’m going to break the big blade off short and dig into the rock with that all the way down!”

“What do you want to break the blade off for?” asked Frank.

“So I can get my hand close to the point of contact without cutting my fingers off,” replied Jack.

“I wish I had a knife like that,” Frank said, regretfully.

“Well,” Jack proposed in a moment, “we can bunch in together and each one can have a hand on the knife. Say, but won’t that be a jolly proposition? Wearing out a perfectly good Boy Scout uniform on the dirty old rocks of the Devil’s Punch Bowl?”

“Any way to get down to the bottom!” Frank declared.

The plan figured out by Jack worked to perfection, and the boys reached the edge of the pool without tumbling in. Still, however, they were not within reach of the spot where their chum was lying.

During all this time, Harry had shown not the slightest evidence of life. Crumpled up as from a fatal blow, the boy lay exactly in the position into which he had fallen.

“We made the slide on the down-grade, all right. Now I wish we could slide up over the spur that separates us from the side of the pool where Harry is,” Jack said.

“All we’ve got to do is to climb,” Frank answered. “I never saw any ledge of rock, or any body of water, or any trouble of any kind, that you could wish yourself over.”

“And the sooner we get there, the better!” Jack declared.

The boys were very pale now, for the time was near at hand when they were to know the truth concerning the condition of their chum.

They made their way over the spur which shot out of the lower wall and down to the pool with no little difficulty, and at last stood at the edge of the water where Harry lay, his face turned upward to the sky, his arms lying limply at his sides.

The boys hesitated an instant before bending over him.

“I’m afraid!” Jack whispered.

“I’m afraid, too!” Frank replied, covering for an instant his face with his hands. “I’m afraid he’s dead!”

Then Jack bent closer and fixed his eyes keenly on the boy’s face.

“Say!” he said excitedly. “Look here, Frank, Harry is actually breathing! He may not be fatally wounded after all!”

Frank shook his head but hastened to the pool of water and brought back as much as his hat would hold. This he threw into the face of the prostrate boy and then both stood waiting and watching with their hearts beating wildly.

“He’s coming to!” shouted Frank in a moment. “He certainly is coming to! Now what do you think of that after a tumble of a hundred feet!”

“It couldn’t have been a straight drop!” Jack declared. “He would have been smashed all to flinders!”

“Don’t mention it,” Frank cried, “you give me the shivers!”

Directly Harry’s eyes opened and he looked painfully about.

“Hello, old Scout!” shouted Frank.

“Are you getting hungry?” demanded Jack.

A faint smile flickered over the face of the injured lad, and he closed his eyes again.

“I’m going to know something more about this!” Jack insisted. “Can you hear, Harry?” he asked after a short pause.

Harry nodded and Jack took him tenderly by one leg.

“Yell, when I hurt,” he said.

He moved the limb up and down, sideways, too, but only a smile came to the boy’s lips. That leg was evidently all right.

“Now for the other one!” Jack declared hopefully. “If I hurt you just give me a kick with your well hoof!”

That leg was all right, too. In a moment, Harry stirred one arm faintly and then lifted it to his face.

“And one arm’s all right, too!” almost shouted Frank. “Say, kid,” he continued, “how did you ever negotiate that tumble and not get broken into little pieces?”

Harry opened his eyes again and smiled faintly.

“I slid down most of the way,” he said. “My left arm is broken, and I’ve got a bump on my dome big enough to hide a cow in, but I guess that’s about all. How’s that for luck?”

“Luck?” repeated Jack. “If you’d fall into the Polar sea, you’d find a pot of boiling water!”

“I won’t believe you’re all right except one broken arm,” Frank insisted, “until I see you sitting up and taking notice.”

Harry sat up weakly and looked around.

“Well,” he said in a feeble voice, “you boys got down here all right. Now, how are you ever going to get out?”