The cutting down of the trees did not occupy them a very long time. They chose only those of slender girth—the more slender the better, so long as they answered the requirements as to length. Trees of about fifty feet in total height were the best: as these, when the weaker part of the tops was cut off, yielded lengths of thirty or more feet. Where they were only a few inches in diameter, there was very little trouble in reducing them to the proper size for the sides of the ladders—only to strip off the bark and split them in twain.

Making the rounds was also an easy operation—except that it required considerable time, as there were so many of them.

The most difficult part of the work—and this they had foreseen—would be the drilling of the holes to receive the rounds; and it was the task which proved the most dilatory—taking up more time in its accomplishment than both the cutting of the timber, and reducing it to its proper shapes and dimensions.

Had they owned an auger or a mortising chisel, or even a good gimlet, the thing would have been easy enough. Easier still had they possessed a “breast bit.” But of course not any of these tools could be obtained; nor any other by which a hole might be bored big enough to have admitted the points of their little fingers. Hundreds of holes would be needed; and how were they to be made? With the blades of their small knives it would have been possible to scoop out a cavity—that is, with much trouble and waste of time; but vast time and trouble would it take to scoop out four hundred; and at least that number would be needed. It would be a tedious task and almost interminable, even supposing that it could be accomplished; but this was doubtful enough. The blades of the knives might be worn or broken, long before the necessary number of holes could be made.

Of course, had they been possessed of a sufficient number of nails, they might have done without holes. The steps of the ladders could have been nailed upon the sides, instead of being mortised into them. But nails were a commodity quite as scarce with them as tools. With the exception of those in the soles of their shoes, or the stocks of their guns, there was not a nail in the valley.

It is not to be denied that they were in a dilemma. But Karl had foreseen this difficulty, and provided against it before a stick of timber had been cut. Indeed, close following on the first conception of the scaling ladders, this matter had passed through his mind, and had been settled to his satisfaction. Only theoretically, it is true; but his theory was afterwards reduced to practice; and, unlike many other theories, the practice proved in correspondence with it.

Karl’s theory was to make the holes by fire—in other words, to bore them with a red-hot iron.

Where was this iron to be obtained? That appeared to offer a difficulty, as great as the absence of an auger or a mortise-chisel. But by Karl’s ingenuity it was also got over. He chanced to have a small pocket pistol: it was single-barrelled, the barrel being about six inches in length, without any thimbles, beading, or ramrod attached to it. What Karl intended to do, then, was to heat this barrel red-hot, and make a boring-iron of it. And this was exactly what he ............