Any one
who has ever chased a worn-out but still lively feather up and down a
long hall can imagine the scene with hundreds of them flying about.
"They're the meanest lot of feathers,--pretty much all fuzz," said one
exhausted brave.
When the last handful had been crowded into the basket, Williams
attempted opening the door.
"No; you're to make your exit the same way you made your ingress,"
announced the Captain.
Williams stared blankly at the trap-hole in the ceiling.
Dropping down through a trap-door and going up through the same, with
no visible means of support but the floor, are naturally different
exercises.
"You're fertile in expedients; can't you devise some good way of
getting out?" coolly asked the Captain.
"We might stand on each other's shoulders," suggested one small
savage, whom the blood-thirsty Williams afterward confessed he longed
to scalp at this juncture.
"Very well, do so," ordered the Captain.
Then one of the noble savages stood under the trap-door while one by
one the others sprang upon his shoulders, caught the edges of the
opening above, wriggled, writhed, contorted his limbs, and finally
succeeded in drawing himself up to his own story, while all down the
hall, on either side, there appeared at the open ventilators over the
doors the eyes of pairs of miserable Diggers, and for every Camanche
that wriggled up there resounded a succession of groans.
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