“Hark!” Tom said, stopping short.

Hervey paused, spellbound.

“I guess it was only a boat whistling,” Tom said.

“It’s pretty lonesome up here,” Hervey commented.

The side of the mountain which they were ascending was less precipitous than the side facing the camp, and save for occasional patches of thicket where the path was overgrown, their way was not difficult.

“But I think it’s longer than the trip would be straight from camp,” Hervey said.

“Sure it is,” Tom said; “Llewellyn proves that; he went down the shortest way.  He might have come down this way to the Hudson, only he hit a bee line for the nearest water.”

After about three quarters of an hour of this wearisome climb they came out on the edge of a lofty minor cliff which commanded a panoramic view of Temple Camp.  They were, in fact, close to the edge of the more precipitous ascent and near the very point whence the eagle had swooped down.

From this spot the path descended into the thicket and down the steep declivity.  Below them lay Black Lake with tiny black specks upon it—­canoes manned by scouts.  The faintest suggestion of human voices could be heard, but they did not sound human; rather like voices from another world.

Suddenly, in the vast, solemn stillness below them a shrill whistling sounded clear out of the dense jungle.  It might have been a hundred yards down, or fifty; Tom could not say.

He was not at all excited nor elated.  Holding up one hand to warn Hervey to silence, he stood waiting, listening intently.

Again the whistle sounded, shrill, clear-cut, in the still morning air.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE RESCUE

“Take off your shoes and leave them here,” Tom whispered; “and follow me and don’t speak.  Step just where I step.”

Tom’s soft moccasins were better even than stocking feet and he moved down into the thicket stealthily, silently.  Not a twig cracked beneath his feet.  He lifted the impediments of branch and bush aside and let them spring easily back into place again without a sound.  Hervey crawled close behind him, passing through these openings while Tom held the entangled thicket apart for both to pass.  He moved like a panther.  Never in all his life had Hervey Willetts seen such an exhibition of scouting.

Presently Tom paused, holding open the brush.  “Hervey,” he said in the faintest whisper, “they say you’re happy-go-lucky.  Are you willing to risk your life—­again?”

“I’m yours sincerely forever, Slady.”

“We’re going home the short way; we’re going down the way the turtle did,” Tom whispered.  “It’s the only way—­look.  Shh.”

With heart thumping in his breast, Hervey looked down where Tom pointed and saw amid the dense thicket a glint of bright red.  Even as he looked, it moved, and appeared again in another tiny opening of the thicket close by.