Standing with the two men, Gertrude used her glass constantly. Frequently she asked questions, but frequently she divined ahead of her companions the directions and the movements. The hesitation that followed Dancing's return did not escape her. Up and down the narrow step on which they stood, the three men walked, scanning anxiously the wall that stretched above them. So, hounds at fault on a trail double on their steps and move uneasily to and fro, nosing the missing scent. As lions flatten behind their cagebars, the climbers laid themselves against the rock and pushed to the right and the left seeking an avenue of escape. They had every right to expect that help would already have reached them, but on the hill, through haste and confusion of orders, the new rotary had stripped a gear, and an hour had been lost in getting in the second plough. For safety, the climbers had in their predicament nothing to fear. The impelling necessity for action was the superintendent's condition; his companions knew he could not last long without a surgeon. When suspense had become unbearable, Dancing re-entered the chimney. He was gone a long time. He reappeared, crawling slowly out on an unseen footing, a mere flaw in the smooth stretch of granite half way up to the track. By cutting his rope and throwing himself a dozen times at death, old Bill Dancing had gained a foothold, made fast a line, and divided the last thirty feet to be covered. One by one, his companions disappeared from sight--not into the chimney, but to the side of it where Dancing had blazed a few dizzy steps and now had a rope dangling to make the ascent practicable. One by one, Gertrude saw the climbers, reappearing above, crawl like flies out on the face of the rock and, with craning necks and cautious steps, seek new advantage above. They discovered at length the remains of a scrub pine jutting out below the railroad track. The tree had been sawed off almost at the root, when the roadbed was levelled, and a few feet of the trunk was left hugging upward against the granite wall. Glover, Young, and Dancing consulted a moment. The thing was not impossible; the superintendent was bleeding to death. Spectators across the gap saw movements they could not quite comprehend. Safety lines were overhauled for the last time, the picks put in the keeping of Morris Blood, who lay flat on the ledge. Glover and Bill Dancing, facing outward, planted themselves side by side against the rocky wall. Smith Young, facing inward, flattened himself in Glover's arms, passed across him and, pushing his safety-girdle well up under his arms, stood a moment between the two big men. Glover and Dancing, getting their hands through the belt from either side, gripped him, and Young uncoiled from his right hand a rope noosed like a lariat. Steadied by his companions and swinging his arms in a cautious segment on the wall, he tried to hitch the noose over the trunk of the pine.