Tom Slade on Mystery Trail | Page 9

over and hung beneath it, like an opossum.
Twisting and wriggling his way out of this predicament, he scrambled
on, handing himself from branch to branch, and once losing his
foothold and hanging by one hand.
Tom Slade watched spellbound, as the agile form ascended, using
every physical device and disregarding every danger. More than once
Tom almost shuddered at the chances which his young companion took
upon some perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to
call a warning, but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in
that young dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown
moving in and out of the darkened green above him. Once he was on
the point of shouting advice to Hervey about what to do in the unlikely
event of his reaching the nest before the eagle, or in the more serious
contingency of an encounter with that armed warrior.

For, thrilled as he was at the young scout's agility and fine abandon, he
was yet doubtful of Hervey's power of deliberation and presence of
mind. But no one could advise a creature capable of being carried away
in a very frenzy of nervous enthusiasm, and Tom, sober and sensible,
knew this. Hervey Willetts would do this thing or crash his brains out,
one or the other, and no one could help or hinder him.
Amid the crackling sound of breaking limbs and a shower of leaves and
smaller twigs, the mighty bird of prey, extricating himself from every
obstacle, tore his way into the leafy recess where his little victim
waited, trembling. Every branch seemed agitated by his ruthless,
irresistible advance, and the hanging nest swayed upon its slender
branch, as the cruel talons of the intruder fixed themselves in the
yielding bark. The weight of the monster bird upon the very branch
which his little victim had chosen for a home caused it to bend almost
to the breaking point, and the hanging nest, agitated by the shock,
swung low near the end of the curving bough.
[Illustration: HERVEY SAVES THE LITTLE BIRD FROM THE
EAGLE.
Tom Slade on Mystery Trail. Page 42]
That was bad strategy on the part of the invader. As the end of the
bough descended under his weight, there was the appalling sound of a
splitting branch, which made Tom Slade's blood run cold, and he held
his breath in frightful suspense, expecting to see the form of his young
friend come crashing to earth.
But the boy who had ventured out so far upon that straining branch had
swung free of it just in time, and was swinging from the branch above.
The great bird had played into the hands of his dexterous enemy when
he had placed his weight upon the branch above, from which the nest
hung.
Hervey could not have trusted his own weight upon that upper branch,
and he knew it. But even had he dared to do this he could not have
passed the enraged bird who stood guard within a yard or two of his

little victim. When the weight of the bird's great body bent the branch
down, Hervey, close in toward the trunk just below, saw his chance. He
did not see the danger.
Scrambling out upon that slender branch, he moved cautiously but with
beating heart, out to a point where the bending branch above was
within his reach. If the eagle had left the branch above, that branch
would have swung out of Hervey's reach and he would have gone
crashing to the ground when his own branch broke. He knew that
branch must break under him. He knew, he must have known, that the
chances were at least even that the eagle would desert the branch above
in either assault or flight.
Hervey's chance was the chance of a moment, and it lay just in this: in
getting far enough out on the branch before it broke to catch the branch
above before it sprang up and away from him. Also he must trust to the
slightly heavier branch above not breaking.
It would be impossible to say by what a narrow squeak he saved
himself in this dare-devil maneuver. His one chance lay in lightning
agility.
Yet, first and last, it was an act of fine and desperate recklessness--the
recklessness of a soul possessed and set on one dominating purpose.
This was Hervey Willetts all over. And because he had a brain and the
eagle none or little, he thus used his very enemy to help him
accomplish his purpose.
In that very moment when Tom Slade heard with a shudder the
appalling sound of that splitting branch, something beside the brown
nest was also dangling from the branch which the baffled eagle had
suddenly deserted. Right close to